Builders of United Italy. Rupert Sargent Holland

In the latter city he found that his ideas were at last shaping themselves in the rich and clear Italian he was seeking, he wrote verses which critical friends pronounced at last worthy of the name of poetry, and planned several poetic tragedies. He had worked hard and felt that he needed a little rest. For this purpose he returned to Turin and had the pleasure of entertaining his old friend the Abbot of Caluso there. He, as well as other friends, urged Alfieri to make literature his field. He decided that it was best for him to live in Tuscany, and as he hated to have to ask royal permission each year to allow him to remain away from Piedmont—as was the custom with the nobility—he gave his estates at Asti to his sister, and contented himself with half his former income. Then he moved to Florence, which, except for intervals spent at Rome and Naples, was for a considerable time to be his home.

      On his way to Florence Alfieri was obliged to stop at Sarzana, where he chanced upon a copy of Livy, and was so impressed with the story of Virginia and Icilius that he immediately planned a tragedy on the subject. Soon after he reached Pisa, but there he did not dare stay, fearful that he might be involved in a marriage with a young girl whom he had met there before and with whom he says that he had almost fallen in love. He himself contrasts his feelings at that time with those he had entertained when he had first thought of marriage. “Eight years afterwards, my travels through Europe, the love of glory, a passion for study, the necessity for preserving my freedom, in order to speak and write the truth without restraint—all these reasons powerfully warned me that under a despotic government it is sufficiently difficult even to live single, and that no one who reflects deeply will either become a husband or a father; thus I crossed the Arno and arrived at Siena.”

      In Siena he met a company of strongly intellectual people, and from one of these, a friend who became a close confidant, he gained the idea of writing a tragedy founded upon the conspiracy of the Pazzi. Here he also wrote the first two books of an essay upon Tyranny, which was printed several years later. Thoroughly absorbed in his literary work Alfieri moved to Florence at the beginning of the winter, and took up his residence there.

      At that time there were living in Florence, under the titles of Count and Countess of Albany, Charles Edward, “the Young Pretender” to the English throne, and his wife. The latter, who had been Louisa, Princess of Stolbergh, had been married when nineteen to the Stuart prince, who was considerably her elder. Charles Edward had an unsavory reputation and knew more drunk than sober moments. As a result the young Countess, who was very beautiful and extremely fond of the fine arts and of society, was the object of much romantic pity. When Alfieri came to Florence he found the entire city at the feet of the Countess. Every one condemned the Count’s quarrelsome, tyrannical, libertine nature, every one praised the Countess’s sweet and sunny disposition. Friends offered to introduce Alfieri to the star of Florence, but he declined on the ground that he always shunned women who were the most beautiful and most admired. He could not avoid, however, seeing her in the park and at the theater, and the first sight of her was destined never to be effaced. Thus he writes of her: “The first impression she made on me was infinitely agreeable. Large black eyes full of fire and gentleness, joined to a fair complexion and flaxen hair, gave to her beauty a brilliancy difficult to withstand. Twenty-five years of age, possessing a taste for letters and the fine arts, an amiable character, an immense fortune, and placed in domestic circumstances of a very painful nature, how was it possible to escape where so many reasons existed for loving?”

      De Stendhal gives an account of their first meeting, which if inaccurate (it does not appear in Alfieri’s memoirs) is at least characteristic of the man. According to this story Alfieri was presented to the Countess in one of the galleries of Florence, and noticed at the time that the lady was much interested in a portrait on the walls of Charles XII. She told the poet that she admired the costume exceedingly. Two days later Alfieri appeared in Florence dressed exactly like the portrait of the Swedish King, and so presented himself before the Countess. The act was quite in keeping with the poet’s nature.

      Alfieri made a determined effort to fight against the passion he had cause to fear, and made a hurried journey to Rome. He could not stay there, and returned to Florence, stopping at Siena to see his friend Gandellini, to whom he spoke of the Countess, and who did not counsel him against giving way to the fascination.

      On his return to Florence he acknowledged that he was deeply in love. This love, however, he felt ennobled him, and instead of causing him to give up his work, continually inspired him to new literary heights. He wrote, “I soon perceived that the object of my present attachment, far from impeding my progress in the pursuit of useful knowledge, or deranging my studies, like the frivolous woman with whom I was formerly enamoured, urged me on by her example to everything dignified and praiseworthy. Having once learned to know and appreciate so rare and valuable a friend, I yielded myself up entirely to her influence.” From the commencement of this new affection, the best and most lasting of his life, date the finest works of his genius.

      There had been long delays in settling Alfieri’s estate in Piedmont, and arranging that he might live in Tuscany, but the presence of the Countess urged him imperatively to remain in Florence. When the business arrangements were finally at an end he found it would be necessary for him to curtail his former expensive style of living. This he did, giving up his horses, all his servants, except a valet and cook, and most of his personal luxuries. Books were the only expense he indulged in, he acquired gradually a very large and choice library. He took a small house, and devoted himself to his dramas, seeing as much as he could in leisure moments of the beautiful Countess. During these three quiet years he wrote his tragedies “Virginia,” “Agemennone,” “Don Garzia,” “Maria Stuarda,” and “Oreste,” a poem on the death of Duke Alexander, killed by Lorenzino de’ Medici, had rewritten his drama of “Filippo,” and partly prepared the tragedies “Timoleone,” “Ottavia,” and “Rosmunda.” All of these works are built on the classic Grecian model, and flame with hatred of tyranny, and burn with civic virtue. In that they show their kinship to the author’s times. De Sanctis, always a brilliant critic, says: “The situations that Alfieri has chosen in his tragedies have a visible relation to the social state, to the fears, and to the hopes of his own time. It is always resistance to oppression, of man against man, of people against tyrant. … In the classicism of Alfieri there is no positive side. It is an ideal Rome and Greece, outside of time and space, floating in the vague … which his contemporaries filled up with their own life.”

      At about the end of the dramatist’s third year of residence in Florence, the ill-treatment of the Countess of Albany by her husband caused her friends, and chief among them Alfieri, to plan for her release from such servitude. To this end they secured her entrance first into a convent at Florence, and then, with the consent of the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Count’s own brother the Cardinal of York, her removal to Rome. So afraid were her friends lest the Count should effect a rescue that they surrounded her carriage with a body of horsemen as she left Florence, and Alfieri rode on the coach box until she was well on her road.

      While the Countess had been in Florence, Alfieri had worked assiduously there; now that she was gone he found composition impossible, and after a very short interval went to Naples, planning to wait there until he should learn what the Countess would do. It was not long before it became apparent that the courts of Europe had taken up the wife’s cause against her husband. The Pope gave her a pension and approved of her taking apartments in the house of her brother-in-law. The court of France gave her the pension which the Count had previously indignantly declined as being insufficient for his position. Alfieri learned at last that the Countess was living in entire independence of her husband, and after a further stay of a month in Naples in order to avoid possible scandal he moved to Rome, and took up his residence there.

      With this new settled existence he began to write again, and produced at this time “Saul,” his fourteenth tragedy, and one of his finest works. He took infinite pains with all his dramas, planned them again and again, wrote version after version, and then selected the forms he preferred after careful judgment, polished them line by line and word by word until he was satisfied. He wished to try the effect of his characters upon an audience, and had himself acted, together with some of his friends, his play of “Antigone.” He found he had not mistaken his ability as a dramatist. At about the same time he published part of his works, sending four dramas to the printer. Their publication