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stress on the mere accessories of that difference; upon the lack of "local colouring" and historical setting. But behind these externals there lies the crucial distinction that while the romantic drama, when true to itself, attempts to paint human character as moulded by the outward circumstances and accidents of life, the classical dramatists, and among them Alfieri, work by a rigid process of selection. They confine themselves to the circumstances which are part and parcel of the situation taken for the theme of the dramatic story. They set themselves to render only the inmost and most essential qualities of the soul. Their method is more severe, more concentrated, more abstract, than that of romance. And this severity of method is the first thing to strike us in Alfieri. His stage is a purely ideal stage, with nothing to mark that it is built in one place rather than another. His characters are purely ideal characters; stripped not merely of the costume which belongs to this or that particular age, but of the very clothing which, from long custom, we have come to regard as man's second nature; spiritual gladiators, who descend into the lists, prepared to smite down all who venture to cross the path of their passionate wickedness or no less passionate virtue. Of all classical dramatists he is the most unflinching; perhaps, also, the most typical.

His Comedies.

It is by his tragedies that Alfieri lives. Tragedy, however, was far from being the only field of his energies. Translations, critical theories, lyrics, sonnets, satires-the best known of which is I Misogallo (1792-99), a furious diatribe against the "tiger - apes" of the Revolution, in

mingled prose and verse-flowed in abundance from his pen. But the only writings, not tragical, on which it is necessary to dwell are the comedies and the autobiography, both of which belong to his closing years (1800-3). The former are by no means so well known as they deserve to be; the fame of the tragedies has probably stood in their light. One only-Il Divorzio, a lively satire on the Cicisbeo and other matrimonial institutions of Italy-deals with the ordinary themes of comedy. Another, La Finestrina, is a piece of pure fantasy. The remaining four -they are rather, as the author says, "one divided into four," L'Uno, I Pochi, I Troppi, L'Antidoto-are in the nature of political satire. And it is clear that Aristophanes, whose Frogs had been among the translations of the preceding years, was the model that the author had before his eyes. The themes of the first three are taken from classical story. Monarchy is ridiculed in the tale of Darius, his horse and his handy groom; aristocracy in a merciless burlesque of the Gracchi, Cornelia with the worst grace in the world receiving a morning call from an upstart heroine of finance, while Tiberius rehearses an oration before a looking-glass, to the accompaniment of a flute. Democracy is blasted in an equally contemptuous travesty of Demosthenes at the court of Alexander in Babylon. The concluding piece, the least successful of the four, shifts the scene from classical ground to a nameless island in the Orkneys; and the treatment is no less fanciful than the setting. It is only with the moral that we return to solid earth; and

the plunge is abrupt. The "antidote" to the three "poisons" is found in constitutional monarchy, so artfully tempered as to neutralise all their deadly qualities and, by a stroke of the wand, convert them into blessings. The allegory is uncommonly clumsy; and Alfieri is more at home in his classical burlesques. Whether it is legitimate to lay profane hands on memories so stately, is another question. But that once granted, the skill, the striking originality of the writer, can hardly be denied. And his own defence of his method is ingenious enough. "My century," he writes, "had set itself to fish tragedy out of comedy. . . . I struck into just the opposite path and sought to draw comedy out of tragedy; a task which appears to me more useful, more amusing, and more sound. For the great often make us laugh; while no bourgeois -banker, lawyer, or the like-ever excited our admiration. And the buskin fits ill upon a dirty foot."1 A characteristic hit at those beneath him in rank; an equally characteristic assertion of classical principles against the most cherished invention of the earlier phases of romance.

His auto

The autobiography is a more unquestioned achievement. The portraiture, both direct and indirect, is one of the most striking upon record. The biography. set picture is drawn with the fewest and the boldest strokes. And, unconsciously, the character of the poet reveals itself on every page in vivid phrases of scorn or admiration for the actions, of graphic description for the scenes, among which 1 Vita, Ep. iv., cap. 29.

his lot was cast. Nothing could be more stirring than the story of his duel with Lord Ligonier in Green Park; or his escape from Paris, after the 10th of August, with the Countess of Albany. Apart from such incisive portrayal of character and incident, the chief value of the Vita lies in the luminous account which it gives of the manner of his working,-an account more minute, though from the nature of the case less exciting, than Cellini's description of the casting of Perseus; as, indeed, in more ways than one the life of the poet recalls that of the boisterous sculptor. And it is a significant tribute to the prevalent tendencies of his age that the supreme champion of classical ideals should, in the last work of his life, have followed in the steps of Rousseau, the father of romance.

Consult the following, among other works: Petit de Julleville, Histoire de la Langue et de la Littérature française (8 vols., 1896-99); Hettner, Litteraturgeschichte (as before); Grimm, Correspondance littéraire (17 vols., 1813-14); Brandes, Hovedströmningr (as before); Chateaubriand, Mémoires d'Outre-tombe (12 vols., 1849-50); Madame de Staël, Dix Années d'Exil (1818); Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi (15 vols., v.d.), Portraits de Femmes, Portraits littéraires (3 vols.); Brunetière, Études critiques (6 vols., v.d.); Béclard, Sebastien Mercier (vol. i., 1903); Texte, J.-J. Rousseau et les Origines du Cosmopolitisme littéraire (1895); Jusserand, Shakespeare en France (1898); Morse Stephens, Orators of the French Revolution (2 vols., 1892); Storia Letteraria d'Italia, scritta da una Società di Professori (7 vols., 1900-6); Sismondi, De la Littérature du Midi de l'Europe (4 vols., 1813); Bouterwek, Geschichte der Poesie und Beredsamkeit seit dem Ende des 13en Jahrhunderts (vol. iii.—English translation, 2 vols., 1823); Alfieri, Vita, scritta da esso (1804); Biographie Universelle (85 vols., 1811-62); Nouvelle Biographie Générale (46 vols., 1853-66).

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CHAPTER IV.

OTHER COUNTRIES.

SPAIN: CLASSICAL TRADITION, AND REVOLT AGAINST IT-SENTIMENTAL
COMEDY-TRAGEDY-LA HUERTA-PORTUGAL-GREECE-HUNGARY
-NETHERLANDS CLASSICISM : BILDERDIJK-ROMANCE: FEITH-
E. WOLFF AND A. DEKEN-DENMARK AND NORWAY-BAGGESEN :
PREVALENTLY CLASSICAL--ROMANCE: WESSEL, EWALD-OEHLEN-
SCHLÄGER-SWEDEN-SLAV COUNTRIES-POLAND-FRENCH

INFLU

ENCE-NATIONALISM : IN POLITICS-IN LITERATURE-BOHEMIA

JOSEPH II.-NATIONAL REVIVAL-RUSSIA-CATHERINE II. PER-
SECUTION OF NOVIKOV-DRAMA: COMEDY-TRAGEDY-NOVEL-
CONCLUSION.

WITH Italy all that is vital in the literature of the period may be said to end. In dealing with the remaining countries no more is possible, nor perhaps desirable, than to indicate the main currents of thought and feeling, the general drift of literary activity, in each. We turn first to the two Latin countries which still stand over-to Spain and Portugal.

In Spain, as elsewhere, the interest of the period centres round the revolt, timid indeed but Spain: classical tradition, and yet clearly perceptible, against the classical tradition. During the first half of the eighteenth century that tradition had tightened its

revolt against it.

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