on the resemblance. A passage in
Alfieri's autobiography (_La Vie de V. A. ecrite par Lui-meme_, Paris,
1809, p. 17) may have suggested the parallel--

"Voici une esquisse du caractere que je manifestais dans les
premieres annees de ma raison naissante. Taciturne et tranquille
pour l'ordinaire, mais quelquefois extremement petulant et
babillard, presque toujours dans les extremes, obstine et rebelle a
la force, fort soumis aux avis qu'on me donnait avec amitie,
contenu plutot par la crainte d'etre gronde que par toute autre
chose, d'une timidite excessive, et inflexible quand on voulait me
prendre a rebours."

The resemblance, as Byron admits, "related merely to our apparent
personal dispositions." Both were noble, both were poets, both were
"patrician republicans," and both were lovers of pleasure as well as
lovers and students of literature; but their works do not provoke
comparison. "The quality of 'a narrow elevation' which [Matthew] Arnold
finds in Alfieri," is not characteristic of the author of _Childe
Harold_ and _Don Juan_.

Of this stanza, however, Alfieri's fine sonnet to Florence may have been
the inspiration. I have Dr. Garnett's permission to cite the following
lines of his admirable translation (_Italian Literature_, 1898, p.
321):--

"Was Angelo born here? and he who wove
Love's charm with sorcery of Tuscan tongue,
Indissolubly blent? and he whose song
Laid bare the world below to world above?
And he who from the lonely valley clove
The azure height and trod the stars among?
And he whose searching mind the monarch's wrong,
Fount of the people's misery did prove?"]

[mv] {370} _Might furnish forth a Universe_----.--[MS. M.]

[mw]
_And ruin of thy beauty, shall deny_
_And hath denied, to every other sky_
_Spirits that soar like thine; from thy decay_
{_Still springs some son of the Divinity_}
{_Still springs some work of the Divinity_}--[D.]
_And gilds thy ruins with reviving ray_--
_And what these were of yore--Canova is to-day_.--[MS. M.]

[433] [Compare "Lines on the Bust of Helen by Canova," which were sent
in a letter to Murray, November 25, 1816--

"In this beloved marble view,
Above the works and thoughts of man,
What nature _could_, but _would not_, do,
And Beauty and Canova can."

In _Beppo_ (stanza xlvi.), which was written in Octobe