Corinna.

16.

Here repose
Angelo's--Alfieri's bones.
Stanza liv. lines 6 and 7.

Alfieri is the great name of this age. The Italians, without waiting for
the hundred years, consider him as "a poet good in law."--His memory is
the more dear to them because he is the bard of freedom; and because, as
such, his tragedies can receive no countenance from any of their
sovereigns. They are but very seldom, and but very few of them, allowed
to be acted. It was observed by Cicero, that nowhere were the true
opinions and feelings of the Romans so clearly shown as at the
theatre.[600] In the autumn of 1816, a celebrated improvisatore
exhibited his talents at the Opera-house of Milan. The reading of the
theses handed in for the subjects of his poetry was received by a very
numerous audience, for the most part in silence, or with laughter; but
when the assistant, unfolding one of the papers, exclaimed _The
apotheosis of Victor Alfieri_, the whole theatre burst into a shout, and
the applause was continued for some moments. The lot did not fall on
Alfieri; and the Signor Sgricci had to pour forth his extemporary
common-places on the bombardment of Algiers. The choice, indeed, is not
left to accident quite so much as might be thought from a first view of
the ceremony; and the police not only takes care to look at the papers
beforehand, but, in case of any prudential afterthought, steps in to
correct the blindness of chance. The proposal for deifying Alfieri was
received with immediate enthusiasm, the rather because it was
conjectured there would be no opportunity of carrying it into effect.

17.

Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose.
Stanza liv. line 9.

The affectation of simplicity in sepulchral inscriptions, which so often
leaves us uncertain whether the structure before us is an actual
depository, or a cenotaph, or a simple memorial not of death but life,
has given to the tomb of Machiavelli no information as to the place or
time of the birth or death, the age or parentage, of the historian.

TANTO NOMINI NVLLVM PAR ELOGIVM
NICCOLAVS MACHIAVELLI.

There seems at least no reason why the name should not have been put
above the sentence which alludes to it.

It will readily be imagined that the prejudices