oughts highly poetical,
there is more reflection, and the nobler properties of mind and
intellect are brought into more intense action, not only than in the
whole course of French poetry, but also in the whole of continental;
nor do I think (I must here also speak with hesitation) that any one
drama of Shakespeare contains so many. Smile as you will, Signor
Conte, what must I think of a city where Michel Angelo, Frate
Bartolomeo, Ghiberti (who formed them), Guicciardini, and Machiavelli
were secondary men? And certainly such were they, if we compare them
with Galileo and Boccaccio and Dante.

_Alfieri._ I smiled from pure delight, which I rarely do; for I take
an interest deep and vital in such men, and in those who appreciate
them rightly and praise them unreservedly. These are my
fellow-citizens: I acknowledge no other; we are of the same tribe, of
the same household; I bow to them as being older than myself, and I
love them as being better.

_Salomon._ Let us hope that our Italy is not yet effete. Filangieri
died but lately: what think you of him?

_Alfieri._ If it were possible that I could ever see his statue in a
square at Constantinople, though I should be scourged for an idolater,
I would kiss the pedestal. As this, however, is less likely than that
I should suffer for writing satirically, and as criticism is less
likely to mislead me than speculation, I will revert to our former
subject.

Indignation and contempt may be expressed in other poems than such as
are usually called satires. Filicaia, in his celebrated address to
Italy, steers a middle course.

* * * * *

A perfect piece of criticism must exhibit _where_ a work is good or
bad; _why_ it is good or bad; in what degree it is good or bad; must
also demonstrate in what manner, and to what extent, the same ideas or
reflections have come to others, and, if they be clothed in poetry,
why by an apparently slight variation, what in one author is
mediocrity, in another is excellence. I have never seen a critic of
Florence, or Pisa, or Milan, or Bologna, who did not commend and
admire the sonnet of Cassiani on the rape of Proserpine, without a
suspicion of its manifold and grave defects.

* * * * *

Does not this describe the devils of our carnival, rather than the
majestic brother of Jupiter, at whose side upon asphodel and amaranth
the sweet Persephone sits pensively contented, in that dee