iving it, of that justice which we dared to do
him in the first volume of the 'Encyclopedic,' when nobody as yet had
ventured to say a word in his defense. He prepared for us an article
upon 'Taste,' which has been found unfinished among his papers. We shall
give it to the public in that condition, and treat it with the same
respect that antiquity formerly showed to the last words of Seneca.
Death prevented his giving us any further marks of his approval; and
joining our own griefs with those of all Europe, we might write on
his tomb:--

"_Finis vita ejus nobis luctuosus, patriae tristis, extraneis
etiam ignotisque non sine cura fuit_."

VITTORIO ALFIERI

(1749-1803)

BY L. OSCAR KUHNS

Italian literature during the eighteenth century, although it could
boast of no names in any way comparable with those of Dante, Petrarch,
Ariosto, and Tasso, showed still a vast improvement on the degradation
of the preceding century. Among the most famous writers of the
times--Goldoni, Parini, Metastasio--none is so great or so famous as
Vittorio Alfieri, the founder of Italian tragedy. The story of his life
and of his literary activity, as told by himself in his memoirs, is one
of extreme interest. Born at Asti, on January 17th, 1749, of a wealthy
and noble family, he grew up to manhood singularly deficient in
knowledge and culture, and without the slightest interest in literature.
He was "uneducated," to use his own phrase, in the Academy of Turin. It
was only after a long tour in Italy, France, Holland, and England, that,
recognizing his own ignorance, he went to Florence to begin
serious work.

At the age of twenty-seven a sudden revelation of his dramatic power
came to him, and with passionate energy he spent the rest of his life in
laborious study and in efforts to make himself worthy of a place among
the poets of his native land. Practically he had to learn everything;
for he himself tells us that he had "an almost total ignorance of the
rules of dramatic composition, and an unskillfulness almost total in the
divine and most necessary art of writing well and handling his own
language."

His private life was eventful, chiefly through his many sentimental
attachments, its deepest experience being his profound love and
friendship for the Countess of Albany,--Louise Stolberg, mistress and
afterward wife of the "Young Pretender," who passed under the title of
Count of Albany, and from whom she was finally di