hundred sonnets, and some other poems in various styles, complete the collection of Alfieri's works, as they were published in his life-time. His posthumous productions, which began to make their appearance in 1804, and which extend to thirteen volumes in octavo, have occupied the attention of Italy, and indeed of all the literati of Europe, without adding much to the author's reputation. His Abel, which he whimsically entitled a Tramelogedy, is a composition in which he has attempted to blend together the lyric and the tragic style of poetry, and to unite the melody of the opera with the most powerful workings of the feelings. The allegory, however, is fatiguing upon the stage, and the versification of Alfieri does not possess the loftiness and the fascination which are requisite to adapt it to music. The whole drama is cold and uninteresting. Two tragedies on the story of Alcestes follow: one is from Euripides, and is merely a happy translation; the other, which is on the same subject, the poet has recast and treated in his own manner. For ten years Alfieri abstained from writing for the stage. In that interval not only his ideas, but his character itself, sustained a change; he had been softened down by the domestic affections; and his Alcestes does not resemble any of his former tragedies. Conjugal tenderness is beautifully painted in it; and the intervention of supernatural powers and of the chorus, together with a happy termination, give it quite a different character. Yet the seal of genius is most strongly impressed upon his earlier tragedies. The comedies of Alfieri, of which there are six, are contained in two volumes; and in all probability they will never be played upon any stage. It is difficult to conceive how this celebrated man could ever have entertained the whimsical idea of making a comedy a vehicle for his political sentiments. The four first, which are in fact only one drama divided into four parts, are written to illustrate the monarchical, the aristocratical, the democratical, and the mixed form of government. He has entitled them, One, Fen, Too many, and The Antidote. They are all in iambics, like his tragedies. The scene of the first is laid in Persia, and the subject of it is the election of Darius to the throne by the neighing of his horse. The drama turns upon the fraud of Darius's groom, who, by an artifice, makes his master's steed neigh before any of the others; and the king's ingratitude in sacrificing his horse to the sun, and then raising a statue to him, forms the catastrophe. The scene of the second, the drama of aristocracy, is laid at Rome, in the house of the Gracchi; the subject of it is the contest between the latter and Fabius, for the consulate. Their defeat, and humiliation, induces them to propose an Agrarian law. The scene of the third drama, Democracy, or Too many, is laid at the court of Alexander, and the orators are introduced who have been despatched to the king by the Athenians. These orators are ten in number, and are divided into two parties, of which Demosthenes and Æschines are the leaders; and they are in turns courted and mocked by Alexander and his courtiers. Their baseness, their jealousy, and their venality are fully displayed in the drama, which, however, can scarcely be said to boast of any action. The drama of Mixed Government, or, as it is also singularly entitled, Mix three Poisons and you will have the Antidote, is a plot of his own invention, and the scene is laid in one of the Orcades. It was, to a certain extent, a new idea to choose heroic characters to fill the parts in a comedy. In the present age, a taste has arisen for the comedy of common life; and Alfieri has expressed his dislike to this manner of debasing the dramatic art, and of associating poetry with the most vulgar sentiments and circumstances. It is strange, however, that he should himself have felt no disgust at attributing vulgarity of manner, of feeling, and of language, to men whose very names, rendered so familiar to us by history, lead us to expect something elevated and noble from them. He seems to have thought it necessary to introduce into his comedies the most distinguished men, merely to display their low and vulgar qualities. He has endued them with all the passions which their rank should have engaged them most anxiously to conceal; he has attributed to them language which they would have blushed to hear; and he expects to excite laughter by exposing the poverty and often the grossness of great men's wit. Very little praise is due to a writer who entertains us at an expense like this, but Alfieri has not even so far succeeded. To make vice ridiculous, it is not necessary to excite repugnance; but Alfieri, in his comedies, produces in the reader a deep disgust for the society into which he is introduced, and a humiliating sense of the depravity of the human race, which even in the highest ranks can be thus debased. Of the two remaining comedies of Alfieri, the one entitled La Finestrina is very fantastical: the scene is laid in Hell, and the comedy, in fact, consists of the dialogues of the dead dramatised. The other is entitled The Divorce; not because a divorce is the subject of the piece, but because the author concludes by laying down a maxim that a marriage in Italy puts the parties upon precisely the same footing as a divorce elsewhere. This is the only one of his dramas which can fairly be classed with modern comedies. The characters in it are finely drawn, and it contains a true, but very severe, representation of Italian manners. All the personages are more or less vicious, and there is therefore very little gaiety in the piece; for it is impossible to laugh at any thing which powerfully excites our indignation. The author manifests in these dramas the powers of a great satirist, not of a successful dramatist. The satires, which entirely fill the third volume of Alfieri's posthumous works, have had greater success in Italy than all his other compositions, notwithstanding their occasional obscurity, the ruggedness of the verse, and their prosaic style. Alfieri had something of the cynic in his character, which affects his language, when he is not elevated by the dignity of the sock. The rest of his posthumous works consist of translations from the ancient authors, the productions of his latter years, after he had renounced dramatic composition, and when the want of occupation, which he never felt until an advanced age, had induced him to study Greek. The two last volumes contain the life of Alfieri, written by himself, with that warmth, vivacity, and truth of feeling, which throw such a charm over confessions like these, and which never fail to interest the reader, although the author, honestly displaying his faults, sometimes appears in no very amiable light. If the study of the human heart, even where the individual has no claim to a rank above mediocrity, is so attractive, how much more precious must those confessions be which present us with portraits of men distinguished by their talents, who have, from time to time, influenced the opinions or the characters of their contemporaries; who have struck out new paths, led the way to new glories, and created new schools of poetry; and who, having impressed their cha racter upon the age in which they lived, are cited by posterity as having constituted the glory of their times! The study of the human mind becomes still more interesting, when the individual is no less remarkable for his intellectual qualities than for his personal character; and when he possesses that inexhaustible fountain of genius which tinctures every thing which it touches with its own colours. It is in his memoirs alone that we can become acquainted with Alfieri.* Extracts from them can give no adequate idea of that boiling impatience of character, which perpetually propelled him towards some indefinite object; of that melancholy agitation of spirit which affected him in every relation of society, in every situation of life, and in every country; of that imperious want, which he ever felt in his soul, for something more free in politics, more elevated in character, more devoted in love, more perfect in friendship; of that ardour for another existence, for another universe, which he vainly sought, with all the rapidity of a courier, from one extremity of Europe to another, and which he was unable to discover in the real world; and of his thirst for that poetical creation which he experienced before he knew it, and which he was unable to satisfy, until casting off the passions of his youth, his thoughts turned to the contemplation of that new universe which he had created in his own bosom, and the agitation of his soul was calmed by the production of those masterpieces which have immortalized his name. * Alfieri was descended from a rich and noble family, was born at Asti, in Piedmont, on the seventeenth of January, 1749, and died at Florence on the eighth of October, 1803. His first tragedy, Cleopatra, which he afterwards regarded as unworthy of being published, was acted for the first time at Turin, on the sixteenth of June, 1775. In the seven following years he composed the fourteen tragedies, which form the first part of his works. After having renounced dramatic composition, he began, at the age of forty-eight, to learn Greek, and made himself completely master of that difficult language. His connexion for more than twenty years with a lady, not less distinguished by her character and wit than by her rank, proves that he united many amiable qualities to those faults which he has with so much candour displayed. CHAPTER XXII. ON THE PROSE WRITERS AND EPIC AND LYRIC POETS OF ITALY, During THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. ALTHOUGH We have devoted the five last Chapters to the Italian poets of the eighteenth century, we have not yet proceeded farther than the dramatic writers. Metastasio, Goldoni, Gozzi, and Alfieri, almost at the same time, carried the opera, comedy, farce, and tragedy, to the highest pitch which those compositions ever reached in Italy. Those authors have, therefore, justly assumed their rank amongst the classics of which their country is proud, while their reputation has extended itself beyond the limits of their native land, and has become the glory of the age. There were, however, other Italians who, at this period, devoted themselves to other branches of literature; and who, without being able to take the place of the great men of the sixteenth century, yet proved that the ancient genius of the nation was not absolutely extinct. The individual who approached most nearly to the spirit of earlier times, and who almost appeared to belong to another age and another state of things, was Niccolo Forteguerra, the author of Ricciardetto, the last of the poems of chivalry. With this author terminated that long series of poetical romances, founded on the adventures of Charlemagne's peers, which extended from the twelfth to the eighteenth century. Niccolo Fortinguerra, or Forteguerra, was born at Rome, in 1674, of a family originally from Pistoia; he was educated to the priesthood, and was made a prelate by the Roman Court. This was one of the reasons which induced him not to publish his poem under his own name, assuming that of Carteromacho, which is a translation of it into Greek. He displayed at an early period his talents for verse; but he had little idea of ever becoming an author, and it was a sort of challenge which gave birth to his poem. He happened to be residing in the country with some persons who were enthusiastic admirers of Ariosto, and who, discovering some hidden meaning in every freak of the poet's imagination, fell into ecstasies at the richness of inven |