Chapter XII: Part 12

"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."]

MONTI

1754-1828.

Monti is, without question, the greatest Italian poet that has appeared since the golden days of its poetry: he alone emulates his predecessors in the higher flights of the imagination. It has been pronounced of Dryden, that if each of the princes of poetry surpassed him in their peculiar vein, yet his fire and originality give him a near place beside them. Thus Monti has not the sublimity of Dante, nor the tenderness of Petrarch; neither the inventive flow of Ariosto, nor Tasso's epic conception and voluptuous grace: but he has a fervour, a power of imagery, an overflowing and redundance of ideal thought, that mark the genuine poet.

He came to revive the languid and unnatural style that flourished under the reign of the Arcadians. Some few real poets had sprung up in Italy in the interval between Ariosto and Monti: they are recorded in this volume. Chiabrera and Filicaja are the chief. These men found in the inspiration of their own minds the power that led them to adopt a style of their own, and to bestow originality--which, in one shape or another, is the vivifying soul of composition,--on their productions. Metastasio carried clearness and grace of expression to a great perfection, but he wanted strength and daring: Alfieri had not a trace of that sunshiny and rainbow-like (so to speak) colour-giving power of fancy, without which there is no real poetry. For the rest, the poets of those days were Arcadians; the very word seems to express volumes of inane affectation, and turgid, yet soulless, language. It is thus that a clever Italian critic of the present day speaks of them:--"To the hyperboles and conceits of the seicentisti, succeeded the follies and pastorals of the Arcadians. The subject treated by these poets were restrained in narrow limits; they were all futile, trite, vulgar, or silly,--adulatory, or false. A new-married pair, a nun,--the new-born babe of some sovereign or noble,--the election of a cardinal, or a bishop, or even of an abbé--a funeral or a feigned love; such were the favourite themes of the Arcadians. Was a marriage in question,--Hymen was adjured to bring its chains to link two hearts; and a new Hercules or Achilles was prognosticated as the future result of the union. If a girl shut herself up in the cloister, the poets expatiated on her happiness; they described the heavenly bridegroom as descending and stretching out his hand to her, while the mischievous Cupid angrily threw away his golden quiver; a censurable mixture of sacred and profane imagery was thus introduced, and their ideas were steeped in two fountains, in contradiction one to the other, the Bible and mythology. The most shameless flattery blotted their pages, as they praised one another, and depicted themselves on the heights of Parnassus,--beside the waters of Hypocrene,--in the company of Apollo and the Muses; and the wonders of Orpheus and Amphion were renewed, to express the charms of each other's verses. No Arcadian dared imagine himself enamoured of a human being: she was no mortal woman, but a goddess,--a Venus sprung on the instant from the foam of the sea: lips, and eyes, and hair, had all their appropriate, still-repeated epithets: did their lady sigh, or did one word escape the paling of her ivory teeth,--tempests fled, the winds were stilled, and Jove was again tempted to transform himself into a bull for her sake."[52]

Men can do strange things when they associate in companies, and keep each other in countenance by a wide-spread folly, that bars out the wholesome fear of ridicule. Thus, the Arcadians had colonies all over Italy. They gave feigned names to each other; they lauded, and celebrated, and crowned each other. Good sense and good taste were sacrificed in the emulation each felt to transcend his rivals in a sonorous and turgid system of words, in which neither passion nor thought appeared.[53] A new genius was wanted to trample on this overgrowth of vanity or folly, and to gift the tamed and chained language of Dante and Bojardo with wings and liberty. Such was the poet, the incidents of whose life we now proceed to detail.

Vincenzo Monti was born in Romagna, on the 19th of February, 1754. His father's simple, and even humble, but pretty and agreeable, house was situated among the vineyards and agricultural country which lies between Fusignano and the Alfonsine, in the Ravennese territory. The air is healthy and serene, the country fertile and diversified, and the style of life of his parents such as at once cultivated simplicity of taste and kindness of heart. Nothing can be more primitive and patriarchal than the mode of life of the smaller landholders in Italy; and to this class Monti's father belonged. The farm-house--or villa, as it is called, if a little better than a cottage--is situated amidst the ground they cultivate. The name of _podere_ is given to these small farms, enclosed by hedges, within whose limits grapes, corn, vegetables, and fruits are all cultivated in a sort of picturesque confusion. The vines, trained on trellises, form covered walks; and the sound of the water-wheel is continually heard, and of the water trickling through the conduits that lead it to the various parts of the grounds. The Italian farmer works very hard, and the cottager still harder. He divides the produce of the land with his landlord, entertains few servants, and his habits are at once laborious and frugal. The parents of Monti were an excellent specimen of the virtues of this unpretending race. They are still remembered in the country by numbers of the poor whom they assisted and comforted. Their children were brought up to consider it a valuable privilege to bestow help upon those in want of the necessaries of life, and Vincenzo in particular inherited from them a warm heart and a tenderness of feeling that caused him to be idolised in his domestic circle.

Monti passed his early boyhood in this rural retirement. To the end of his life he remembered with fondness the days of his childhood, which were spent gaily amidst a large family of three brothers, older than himself, and five sisters. The reward for good behaviour among them was a permission to distribute charity among the indigent,--a sacred, soul-saving duty with catholics. The well-known benevolence of his parents drew numbers to their house, where portions of food were distributed to them. His mother never felt so happy as when thus engaged; and it is related of her that, when, a few years after, the family removed to Majano, where their charitable habits were at first unknown, she complained in a sort of alarm that they were no longer visited by the poor. The same biographer relates a story of Vincenzo. On one occasion he was permitted to distribute the portions of food to mendicants, who entered at one door and went out at the other: some among them fancied that they could deceive the child, and returned twice; and he, with ingenuous shame, turned away, and gave to them twice without looking, that he might not be obliged to accuse them of their trick. "An anecdote," continues his biographer, "perhaps scarcely worth relating, only that it describes the character, or rather, it may be said, the whole life of Monti, who, even in old age, frequently suffered himself voluntarily to be imposed upon." Were a philosophical analysis of Monti's disposition to be attempted, it might be discovered how this sensitiveness to the shame of others, this sparing of their feelings in preference to the assertion of truth and honesty, makes a part of the same weakness that led him always to regard as a secondary consideration moral truths and political integrity, when put in competition with the happiness and welfare of his domestic circle. We call this sort of sensibility weakness, because, though usually united to great private rectitude of character, it is incompatible with the heroism of the patriot and the martyr.

For several years Monti had no instructors except his kind parents; but, soon after their removal to Majano, he was sent to the seminary of Faenza, which enjoyed a good reputation for the solidity of its instruction; there he learnt early and well the Latin language. His first attempts in Latin verse were, however, so singularly infelicitous, that his master thought it necessary to put him into a lower class than that in which he had first been placed. The boy, roused to indignation, made no complaints, but secretly learned by heart the whole of the Æneid; and persevered so earnestly in conquering the difficulties, that his Latin verses soon became distinguished for a style and harmony that announced his poetic talent. His second trial was so different from the first, that his masters began to regard him as a sort of prodigy; and he himself entered with delight and ardour on the study of the Roman poets. The full force of his impetuous and fertile imagination was early awakened by them, and he began to exercise the art peculiar to his country of extemporising verses; but his master had the judgment to withdraw him from an exercise so pernicious to the strength and critical delicacy of poetry, and induced him to write with care and meditation. He was yet a boy when, under this tutelage, he composed a volume of elegies, several of which have been printed.

It is the usual custom among the smaller landholders of Romagna to destine their youngest sons to the agricultural labours of their farms; and this was fixed as the career of Monti. He yielded to his father's commands, but with reluctance. His mind was opened to the necessity of cultivation, and mere manual labour and low-thoughted cares were infinitely distasteful to him. His heart was with the Latin poets, from whom he could not separate himself; and his dislike to every occupation that was not intellectual grew to be insurmountable. His father thought it necessary to reprove him; and a scene ensued similar to one recorded as having taken place, several centuries before, between Petrarch and his father. Vincenzo, moved by his parent's reproof to a belief that his literary predilections were reprehensible, made a resolution to renounce them. He led his father into his chamber, and there, before him, threw his favourite authors into a large fire. The good man, touched by this act of docility, gave him twelve sequins; and the youth, unable to resist the temptation thus held out, hastened to the neighbouring fair of Luga, and spent the whole sum in buying over again the authors whose works he had left at home, still warm in the ashes of the fire into which he had thrown them. His father, seeing the inutility of combating with his inclinations, sent him to the university of Ferrara, wishing him to enter on the legal or medical profession. But, after a few vain attempts to apply himself to these studies, Monti gave up every other pursuit, and dedicated himself wholly to the cultivation of literature and poetry. He still continued to write in Latin, and always retained a predilection for this language, and later in life translated some of his own works into it. His first Italian poem was "The Prophecy of Jacob." It was, of course, inexact in versification, and unequal; but when Jacob prophesies the future glory of the Lion of Judah, the style rises into vigour, and even sublimity. At this time the "Visions" of Varino and the sonnets of Minzoni, two Ferrarese poets, fell into his hands. They rose above the inanities of the Arcadians, and indicated to him the path he should pursue. Through reading them he was brought to the perusal of Dante, and his soul opened at once to the conception of all that Italian poetry contains of grand and beautiful. Henceforth Alighieri was his model and master, and he regarded at once with admiration and a sort of worship the elevated and godlike powers of this most inspired of poets. He wrote the "Vision of Ezekiel" in a sort of imitation of his favourite, in which he displayed that grandeur of imagery and command of language which distinguish his compositions.

Cardinal Borghese was at that time legate at Ferrara. Admiring the youth's genius, he took him under his protection. On his return from his legation, he obtained the elder Monti's consent to his son's accompanying him to Rome. He was now eighteen. The first intimacy that he formed in the capital was with Ennio Quirino Visconti, a man of vast erudition; and under his direction Monti extended his classical knowledge. It happened, while he was at Rome, that the Erme of Pericles and Aspasia were discovered,--one in excavations made in the villa of Cassius at Tivoli, the other at Cività Vecchia. Visconti wrote a treatise on these marbles, and invited his friend to celebrate them in a poem; and he wrote the "Prosopopea di Pericle," which is preserved in the Vatican museum, written with great simplicity of style, and his usual easy flow, yet fervour, of language. This was the first time that he appeared in the character of a poet at Rome; and it was followed by several other attempts. He thus attracted attention; but, having no fixed situation, after remaining some years in the capital, he was on the point of complying with his father's frequent requests that he would return home, when a circumstance happened to change his plans. The Arcadians of the Bosco Parrasio celebrated the Quinquenalli of Pius VI. (1780, ætat. 26.); when Monti recited some of his compositions, which attracted so much applause that the duke of Braschi, the pope's nephew, sent for him the next day, and offered him the place of his secretary, which was at once accepted. Monti remained at Rome in the house of the prince, who treated him with all the kindness of friendship, and he enjoyed full leisure to pursue his literary studies.

Yet it is, perhaps, matter of regret that Monti should have been thus employed. It is very difficult to make rules for the education of genius, when, on the one hand, care and want may fetter, and even crush, its loftiest aspirations; or too much case and leisure wean it from habits of industry, and foster the dissipation of thought and feeling which too frequently accompanies the poetic temperament. Monti's muse had surely not been silent if he had remained in his father's farm, surrounded by the luxuriant beauty of nature, and supported by conscious worth and independence. But no people need so much sympathy as poets. The interchange of thought and feeling, the fresh spirit of inquiry and invention, that springs from the collision or harmony of different minds, are with them a necessity and a passion. And though solitude is named the mother of all that is truly sublime, yet this solitude ought not to be that of desolation, but retirement to meditate on the stores heaped up in our intercourse with our fellow-creatures. Monti, among the uncultivated peasantry of Romagna, might have found his glowing enthusiasm grow cool from the absence of appreciation, and the want of sympathy and equal intercourse.