CAIN.
211
Alfieri, called "Abele."[1] I have never read that, nor any other of the posthumous works of the writer, except his Life.
Ravenna, Sept. 20, 1821.
- ↑ [Alfieri's Abele was included in his Opere inediti, published by the Countess of Albany and the Abbé Calma in 1804.
"In a long Preface . . . dated April 25, 1796, Alfieri gives a curious account of the reasons which induced him to call it . . . 'Tramelogedy.' He says that Abel is neither a tragedy, a comedy, a drama, a tragi-comedy, nor a Greek tragedy, which last would, he thinks, be correctly described as melo-tragedy. Opera-tragedy would, in his opinion, be a fitting name for it; but he prefers interpolating the word 'melo' into the middle of the word 'tragedy,' so as not to spoil the ending, although by so doing he has cut in two . . . the root of the word—τραγος."—The Tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri, edited by E. A. Bowring, C. B., 1876, ii. 472.
There is no resemblance whatever between Byron's Cain and Alfieri's Abele.]
