n and the
class of society which he detested most.

Such Alfieri appears to me, and such I think he must appear to everyone
who conscientiously studies the extraordinary manner in which this
apostle of liberty came to preach in favour of despotism. But in his own
eyes, and in the eyes of the Countess of Albany, Alfieri doubtless found
abundant arguments to prove himself perfectly logical and magnanimous.
This French Revolution was merely a revolt of slaves; and what tyranny
could be more odious than the tyranny of those whom nature had fitted
only for slavery? What are the French? "The French," answers one of the
epigrams of the _Misogallo_, "have always been puppets; formerly puppets
in powder, now stinking and blood-stained puppets." "We indeed are
slaves," says another epigram, "but at least indignant slaves" (a
statement which the whole history of Italy in the nineties goes to
disprove); "not, as you Gauls always have been and always will be,
slaves applauding power whatever it be." The nasal and guttural
pronunciation of the French language, the bare existence of such a word
as _quatrain_, is enough to prove to Alfieri that the French can never
know true liberty. Alfieri, who had looked the _ancien regime_ more than
once in the face, actually persuaded himself that, as he writes, "the
frightful French mob robbed and slaughtered the upper classes because
those upper classes had always treated it too kindly." Alfieri actually
got to believe these things. He would, had power been put in his hands,
have headed a counter revolution and exterminated as many people again
as the republicans had exterminated. Power not being in his hands, he
hastened to do what seemed to him a vital matter to all Europe, a sort
of fatal thrust to France; he solemnly recanted all his former writings
in favour of revolutions and republics. He, who had witnessed the taking
of the Bastille and sung it in an ode, deliberately wrote as follows:
"The famous day of the 14th July 1789 crowned the victorious iniquity
(of the people). Not understanding at that time the nature of these
slaves, I dishonoured my pen by writing an ode on the taking of the
Bastille." Surely, if we admit that to see liberty degraded by its
association with revolutionary horrors must have been unbearably bitter
to the nobler portion of Alfieri's nature, we must admit that to see
Alfieri himself, Alfieri so proud of his former ferocious love of
liberty, turned into a mere ran