the narrative of what must
in many of its details have been a common schoolboy's life at that
time.

Meanwhile, what had become of young Goldoni? His boyhood was as
thoroughly plebeian, various, and comic as Alfieri's had been
patrician, monotonous, and tragical. Instead of one place of
residence, we read of twenty. Scrape succeeds to scrape, adventure to
adventure. Knowledge of the world, and some book learning also, flow
in upon the boy, and are eagerly caught up by him and heterogeneously
amalgamated in his mind. Alfieri learned nothing, wrote nothing, in
his youth, and heard his parents say--'A nobleman need never strive to
be a doctor of the faculties.' Goldoni had a little medicine and much
law thrust upon him. At eight he wrote a comedy, and ere long began
to read the plays of Plautus, Terence, Aristophanes, and Machiavelli.
Between the nature of the two poets there was a marked and
characteristic difference as to their mode of labour and of acquiring
knowledge. Both of them loved fame, and wrought for it; but Alfieri
did so from a sense of pride and a determination to excel;
while Goldoni loved the approbation of his fellows, sought their
compliments, and basked in the sunshine of smiles. Alfieri wrote with
labour. Each tragedy he composed went through a triple process of
composition, and received frequent polishing when finished. Goldoni
dashed off his pieces with the greatest ease on every possible
subject. He once produced sixteen comedies in one theatrical season.
Alfieri's were like lion's whelps--brought forth with difficulty,
and at long intervals; Goldoni's, like the brood of a hare--many,
frequent, and as agile as their parent. Alfieri amassed knowledge
scrupulously, but with infinite toil. He mastered Greek and Hebrew
when he was past forty. Goldoni never gave himself the least trouble
to learn anything, but trusted to the ready wit, good memory, and
natural powers, which helped him in a hundred strange emergencies.
Power of will and pride sustained the one; facility and a
good-humoured vanity the other. This contrast was apparent at a very
early age. We have seen how Alfieri passed his time at Turin, in
a kind of aristocratic prison of educational ignorance. Goldoni's
grandfather died when he was five years old, and left his family in
great embarrassment. The poet's father went off to practise medicine
at Perugia. His son followed him, acquired the rudiments of knowledge
in that town, and then proce