was confined to the minister of the day-the nation which he has praised so often in his memoirs he did not degrade in his poetry. Indeed his ode on the Bastille contains an appendix with which we cannot but be content. This is a short apologue, in which the English are the bees, the French the flies, of the fable.

The other volume of his lyrics consists in great part of amatory sonnets, almost all addressed to the same person. The delicacy of his sentiments, the fire of his passion, and the novelty of his turns of thought, redeem that want of elegance and harmony, which must be observed in the whole performance, and may, perhaps, be discovered in the following specimens.

The first was written in the Album, at Petrarch's house, at Arquà.

“O Cameretta, che già in te chiudesti

Quel Grande alla cui fama è angusto il mondo,
Quel gentile d' amor mastro profondo
Per cui Laura ebbe in terra onor celesti.
O di pensier soavemente mesti

Solitario ricovero giocondo!

Di che lagrime amare il petto inondo
In veder che ora innonorato resti!
Prezioso diaspro, agata, ed oro
Foran debito fregio e appena degno
Di rivestir si nobile tesoro.

Ma no; tomba fregiar d' uom ch' ebbe regno
Vuolsi, e por gemme ove disdice alloro:
Qui basta il nome di quel Divo Ingegno."

The other is on the tomb of Dante.

"O gran padre Allighier, se dal ciel miri
Me non indegno tuo discepol starmi,
Dal cor traendo profondi sospiri,
Prostrato innanzi a tuoi funerei marmi;
Piacciati, deh! propizio a' bei desiri,
D'un raggio di tua mente illuminarmi :
Uom che a perenne e prima gloria aspiri
Contro invidia e viltà dee stringer l'armi?
Figlio, i' le strinsi, e ben men duol, che dièdi
Nome in tal guisa a gente tanto bassa
Da non pur calpestarsi co' miei piedi-
Se in me fidi, tuo sguardo non abbassa ;
Va, tuona, vinci, e niun di costor vedi,
Non che parlarne ; ma sovr' essi passa."

sarcasm.

His work, called the 'Misogallo,' of which he speaks with so much complacency in his own memoirs, was not printed until the year 1814, ten years after his death, and just as the French evacuated Italy. One might have thought the period well chosen; and yet the editors were obliged to leave gaps in certain passages, particularly where he told truth of the Popes. The Misogallo is a mixture of prose and of epigrams. These latter would be a wretched effort, even in a middling author-they betray the rage of impotent As for the book itself, it is also seasoned more with spite than wit-a remark that holds good of some other epigrams published during the life-time of the author. Mr. Forsyth has cited two that are just in point.* The prose of the Misogallo contains two pieces worthy of perusal : one is the defence which Alfieri would have put into the mouth of Louis XVI. in presence of the Convention. The other is the apology of the author himself, for his detestation of the French revolution, as having ruined the cause of liberty, that cause to which Alfieri had dedicated all his talents, and the better portion of his fortune and his life.

Amongst the ancient and modern poets of Italy, no one has furnished so many pictures and busts as Alfieri. Fabre, who excels in portraits, and was his friend, has taken four likenesses in oil; all of them much esteemed, and, it should seem, justly. There is also a profile, having for inscription the sonnet in which he describes both his person and hic character.

"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, occhio azzurro, aspetto buono,
Giusto naso, bel labbro, e denti eletti,
Pallido in viso 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;

* Remarks, &c., on Italy, p. 62, 2nd edit.

Per lo più mesto, e talor lieto assai,
Or stimandomi Achille, ed or Tersite.
Uom, sei tu grande, o vil? Mori e il saprai."

Compare the Orestes,' the Virginia,' the Myrrha,' the 'Saul,' and some other of his tragic masterpieces, with his comedies and his Misogallo, and we shall almost think it was the voice of conscience that told him he was sometimes the Achilles, sometimes the Thersites of authors.

His own opinion of his dramatic supremacy may be collected from an autograph inscription, at the back of a miniature portrait of himself, which is now preserved at Holland House.

"Chi fu, che fece, e che mertò costui?

Tentò il coturno; in cui

Fors' ebbe ei pregio il non valor altrui."

-Vittorio Alfieri.

His example has confirmed the opinion, that genius is the distinctive merit of poets. Alfieri, whose education was very much neglected, and whose youth was sunk in the loosest dissipation (dissipatissima)*, rose, in a few years, to the highest literary distinction, and was ranked amongst the great writers of his country. His perseverance and his ardour were, it is true, such as are rarely seen the same perseverance, the same ardour, were employed in the production of his latter writings: his learning was greater, his knowledge of the world more extensive, and his understanding more enlightened by the progress of years, and by that revolution of which he was an eye-witness, and which sharpened even very inferior intellects: neither was he, at any period of his life, too advanced in age for mental exertion, for he was not fifty-three when he died. Yet it is incontestable that the suppression of the greater part of his posthumous publications would have been of infinite service to his fame. Perhaps he was born to shine

* See his letter to Mr. Calsabigi, printed in the preface to his tragedies.

in tragedy, and in tragedy alone; and perhaps the prodigious exertions of his first efforts exhausted his vigour and depressed his spirit, and condemned his latter years to languor and to regret. He might exclaim, with the ancient poet,

"Non sum qualis eram: periit pars maxima nostri

Hoc quoque, quod superest, languor et horror habent."

It is affirmed by those who knew him, that between his fits of melancholy, Alfieri conversed with warmth, but always with a certain tincture of bitterness; and it is distressing to be told that he studiously avoided all those whom he had not known for several years. He carried this aversion to new intimacies to such a length, that a letter addressed by any other than a well-known hand, and under any but the seal of a friend, was thrown into the fire unopened. It need hardly be added, that he had but two or three correspondents. The public journals and periodical papers he never once looked into for many of his latter years. Thus he had no means of becoming acquainted with his real share of that glory which had been the principal object of his life. Nor did he believe himself arrived at the position which he actually occupied in the eyes of his countrymen, and of all Europe. His melancholy divested the vanities of life of all their charms, and he refused to cherish the only illusion that could console his existence.

Count Alexander Pepoli, who inherited the wealth and the name of that powerful family which, during the middle ages, made themselves masters of Bologna, and alarmed the princes of Italy, was the contemporary, and, it may be said, the rival of Alfieri. He wrote tragedies, he wrote comedies: both the one and the other were applauded on the stage; both the one and the other now slumber in the libraries. He aspired to the invention of a new drama, which he thought Shakesperian, and which he called Fisedia '— a compliment to our poet, and a tacit reproof to all other writers for the stage, from Eschylus downwards. His Representation of Nature' pleased both the people and the

actors, but never came to a second edition. Like Alfieri, he also was passionately fond of horses, and he was bolder than our poet, for he drove a Roman car, a quadriga, at full gallop over some ascents and descents of the Apennines. He built a theatre for the representation of his own tragedies ; he founded the magnificent printing press at Venice, from which, under the name of the Tipografia Pepoliana, have issued many works, and particularly several editions of the Italian historians. His daily occupations were divided, with a scrupulosity which they hardly merited, between his studies, his horses, and his table. His guests consisted of men of letters, of buffoons, of people of fashion, and of parasites. His nights were devoted to the pursuits of gallantry, in which he was sufficiently successful; for he was handsome and he was rich. His amours were occasionally postponed for his billiards, at which he lost large sums of money, in the pursuit of an excellence which he would fain have attained at all games of skill. His great ambition was to be the first runner in Italy, and he died in 1796, before he was forty, of a pulmonary complaint, which he had caught in a foot-race with a lacquey. He merits a place in this memoir, not for the brilliancy of his compositions, but for the shade of relief which they furnish to the similar and successful efforts of Alfieri.

HIPPOLITUS PINDEMONTE.

The Marquis John Pindemonte, eldest brother of him who will be here treated of, is a proof of the preliminary observation that a man of literature may be very popular in Italy, and yet be without that settled reputation which owes its origin to the suffrages of the learned class of readers. This nobleman, in conjunction with Pepoli, kept for some time possession of the stage. The tragedies of John Pindemonte, which are now almost forgotten, brought crowds to the theatre at the time that Alfieri was listened to with impatience. Hippolitus Pindemonte has perhaps less imagi