CHARACTERS. 



467 



jects unforeseen, all this must 

 eyince in La Fantastici a wonderful 

 command of powers : yet, judging 

 from her studied and polished com- 

 positions, which are dull enough, T 

 shouldsuspect that thisimpromptu 

 exercise seldom leads to poetical 

 excellence. 



THEATRE. — ALFIEUI. 



(From the Same.) 



Alfieri is, next to Dante, the 

 Italian poet, most difficult to Ita- 

 lians themselves. His tragedies 

 are too patriotic and austere for the 

 Tuscan stage. Their construction 

 is simple, perhaps too simple, too 

 sparing of action and of agents. — 

 Hence his heroes must often soli- 

 loquize, he must often describe 

 whataShakspeare would represent, 

 and this to a nation immoderately 

 fond of picture. Every thought, 

 indeed, is warm, proper, energe- 

 tic ; every word is necessary and 

 precise ; yet this very strength and 

 compression, being new to the 

 language and foreign to its ge- 

 nius, have rendered his style in- 

 verted, broken, and obscure ; full 

 of ellipses, and elisions ; speckled 

 even to affectation with Dantesque 

 'terms; without pliancy, or flow, 

 or variety or ease. 



Yet where lives the tragic poet 

 equal to Alfieri ? Has England or 

 France one that deserves the name? 

 Schiller may excel him in those 

 peals of terror which thunder 

 through his gloomy and tempes- 

 tuous scenes ; but he is poorer in 

 thought, and inferior in the me- 

 chanism of his dramas. 



Alfieri's conduct is more open 



than his works to censure. Though 

 born in a monarchy, and living un- 

 der mild princes, this count con- 

 centered in his heart ail the pride, 

 brutality, and violence of the purest 

 aristocracies that ever raged in Ge- 

 noa or Venice. Whoever was 

 more or less than noble was the 

 object of his hatred or his contempt. 

 The same pen levelled his Tiran- 

 nide against princes, and his Anti- 

 gallican against plebeians. The pa- 

 triotism which he once put on 

 could never sit easy upon such a 

 mind, nor fall naturally into the 

 forms and postures of common life. 

 He forced it on so violently, that it 

 burst, and was thrown aside. 



This hatred of princes led him to 

 dedicatehisAgisto our Charleslst. 

 I admit the jurisdiction of posterity 

 over the fame of dead kings. But 

 was it manly, was it humane, to 

 call up the shade of an accom- 

 plished prince, a prince fully as un- 

 fortunate as he was criminal, on 

 purpose to insult him with a mock- 

 dedication ? and of all Italians, 

 did this become Alfieri, the re- 

 puted husband of that very wo- 

 man whose sterility has extinguish- 

 ed the race of Charles ? 



His aristocratical pride, working 

 on a splenetic constitution, breaks 

 out into disgusting eccentrici- 

 ties, meets you at his very door, 

 bars up all his approaches, and 

 leaves himself in the solitude of a 

 sultan. How unbecoming of a 

 poet was his conduct to General 

 Miollis, the declared friend of all 

 poets living and dead 1 How often 

 has he descended from his theatri- 

 cal stateliness to the lowest scurri- 

 lity ! How true is his own de- 

 scription of himself ! 



Orstimandomi Achilleed orTersite. 

 2H2 



