I thanked heaven that I was not born his slave." Thence he went to Denmark, and passed the winter in Copenhagen, leaving it for Sweden in the following spring, and was delighted with "the savage majestic nature of its vast woods, lakes, and precipices." Having visited the famous university of Upsala, he went to Finland, and thence to St. Petersburg. He seems to have viewed the Russians with great disgust, and did not even seek to be introduced to the Empress Catherine, whom he calls "a philosophical Clytemnestra." He next went to Königsburg and Dantzic, and all he saw made him "understand better and long more for happy England," whither he again turned his steps, and arrived there in the end of 1770. After wasting his time in a discreditable intrigue with a married lady of rank, and being wounded in a duel by her husband, he went to Holland, and thence through France, Spain, and Portugal, and returned to Turin in May, 1772, after an absence of three years. He now took a magnificent house in the handsomest quarter of the city, furnished it splendidly, and got his old companions of the academy about him. They were, by his own account, a motley set, "rich and poor, good and bad, wits and fools, learned and unlearned." These formed a club, the president of which was elected weekly, and at which they read their bizarre compositions, generally in French, which, it would seem, was the very worst possible. In addition to these triflings, he was even more culpably occupied with an attachment which lasted two years, though perhaps from it we are to date his first successful effort as a poet. During a serious indisposition of the lady, Alfieri sat by her bed from morning to night without speaking, lest the sound of his voice should disturb her. "Upon one of these occasions," he says, "to amuse the tedium, I took up a sheet of paper that chanced to lie beside me, and commenced, without any plan, to sketch out a scene of something, I knew not what to call it, whether tragedy or comedy, whether in one act, or five, or ten, but which was to be in the form of dialogue, and in verse." This was the first scene of the "Cleopatra." He soon freed himself from his unworthy passion, and applied himself diligently to the study of Italian, in which he was very imperfect; and so enamoured was he with his new occupation, and Inflamed with the captivating and exalting love for fame, that he laboured assiduously, and at length produced the third, and almost totally different, composition of "the Cleopatra," in five acts, which was performed with entire success in Turin in 1775.
He was now an author, and henceforth literature was to be his vocation. He applied with diligence to accomplish himself in Latin. "A secret voice," he says, "whispered in the depths of my heart, amid all the applause of my friends,—'You must retrace your steps, begin with your childhood again, study your grammar, and in succession everything that is requisite to enable you to write correctly and artistically.'" The veil had fallen from his eyes—he saw his own deficiencies. He says, "I made a vow to myself that I would spare neither fatigue nor inconvenience till I had placed myself in the position of knowing my own language as well as any man in Italy." The result was, that from an idler he became a most studious man. In three months after Cleopatra was acted, he had composed two tragedies, "Filippo" and "Polinice." in French prose, and subsequently translated them into Italian verse. After this came "Antigone," and, at various intervals, "Agamemnone," "Virginia," "Oreste," "La Congiura dei Pazzi," "Don Garcia," "Rosmunda," "Maria Stuarda," "Timoleone," "Ottavia," "Merope," "Saulle," the last of which was written in 1782; that is, fourteen tragedies in seven years, besides several other compositions both in prose and verse. Alfieri made two visits for literary purposes to Tuscany, and upon the second of these, in 1777, it was that he first met at Florence the beautiful Louisa Stolberg, better known as the countess of Albany, the wife of Charles Edward, who had assumed that title. His description of her is that of a singularly lovely woman. "Un dolce focoso negli occhi nerissimi accoppiatosi, (che raro addiviene,) con candidessima pelle e biondi capelli, davano alia di lei bellezza un risalto, da cui difficile era di non rimanere colpito e conquiso." She was then only twenty-five years of age, fond of the fine arts and of literature, and married most unhappily to one more than double her years, and of an unamiable disposition and sottish habits. From his cruelty she sought protection, first in a convent, and afterwards, in 1780, at the house of her brother-in-law, the cardinal of York, in Rome. Here Alfieri again met her. After this he visited England for the third time. Meantime the countess went to Switzerland, whither Alfieri followed her, having first disposed of all his property in Piedmont. He now resumed his studies, and wrote "Agide," "Sofonisba," "Mirra," and "Bruto."
Notwithstanding his dislike to France, Alfieri next went to live at Paris, for the purpose of bringing out an edition of all his tragedies by Didot. At the same time he brought out two prose works, "Del principe e delle lettere," and "Della Tirannide," at Kehl, in Germany, at the press of Beaumarchais. While here, the intelligence of the death of the count of Albany in Rome reached him and the countess in February, 1788. From this period to the death of Alfieri they never separated, but the same tender intimacy was continued; whether it had now the sanction of marriage is a disputed fact, which will, probably, never be settled. Alfieri remained in Paris over three years, occupied entirely with literature, and engaged upon his memoirs, which he finished up to May, 1790. Meantime, on his return to Paris, the kingly power in France was tottering to its fall, and the excesses committed by the popular party disgusted him, though an ardent lover of liberty. When the Bastile was destroyed, Alfieri and his friend Pindemonte were amongst those who collected its stones as relics; and the former composed an ode upon the subject. He then, with the countess, crossed over to England, where they remained a few months; but their property being invested in the French funds, they were soon obliged to return to France, and arrived in Paris in October, 1791, having come through Holland.
At last Louis XVI. was dethroned and imprisoned, and Alfieri determined on leaving France without delay; and on the 18th of August left the capital for Italy, having with difficulty obtained passports for himself and the countess. Even then an accident occurred, which had well-nigh defeated his arrangements. After his passports were examined and found right, and he was about to leave by the Barrierre Blanche, a drunken mob assailed the carriage, and endeavoured to appropriate its contents The guards in vain interposed; and at last Alfieri sprang from the carriage, and declaring that he was an Italian, insisted that he should pass. His courage awed the crowd, and he effected his escape, and reached Florence on the 3d of November. Here he wrote an apology for Louis XVI., and a satiric poem, called "Misogallo," relating to the events he had witnessed in France, and breathing the most intense hatred to the government then existing in that country. He now amused himself with getting up his plays for performance by an amateur society; and when he had attained the age of forty-six years, he commenced the study of the Greek language, and such progress did he make, that in less than two years he was able to read Greek with tolerable fluency, and had acquired a good knowledge of its form and construction; and in the following year Homer, Æschylus, and Sophocles were almost as familiar to him as his own language. At the same time he did not neglect Latin, but it seems that his attempts to learn English were but partially successful. The life of Alfieri was now one of methodical study, and he apportioned a great part of his day rigorously to the duties of literature.
In 1799 the French entered Tuscany, and seized upon Florence. Upon this he retired to Montughi to pursue his studies, and to withdraw himself from the notice of the French authorities, whose resentment he had, on account of his well-known dislike to their excesses, good reason to fear. Determined to resist to the utmost, he never retired to bed without having arms beside him. The dislike of Alfieri for the French is illustrated by a circumstance which occurred between him and the French general Miollis, upon a subsequent occupation of Florence. The general, anxious to see the poet, paid him several visits without succeeding, and then wrote to know when he would be visible. Alfieri replied, "If the general, in his quality of commandant in Florence, intimated that I should wait on him, I should immediately obey, as I would not resist the ruling power, whatever that might be; but that, if his wish to see me was the mere curiosity of an individual, Vittorio Alfieri was of a retiring disposition, and unwilling to form new acquaintance, and so requested to be excused." Alfieri does not give the reply of Miollis, which was very spirited: "Having read the tragedies of Vittorio Alfieri, I thought him a different man from what he is, and I wished to see him. Now that I know his nature, I no longer have that desire." When Alfieri left Paris, many of his works, which were printed, but not published, were seized and confiscated; and fearing that he might be confounded
