whom he stigmatizes as "a philosophical Clytemnestra."

He next visited England for the second time, arriving at the end of
1770. During his stay in London, which lasted for seven months, he
became involved in an affair which excited an extraordinary sensation at
the time, and which is even remembered by the scandal-mongers of the
present day. He formed the acquaintance of the wife of an officer of
high rank in the Guards, and this intimacy soon assumed a criminal
character. Her husband, a man of a very jealous temperament, suspected
his wife's infidelity, and had them watched. On finding his suspicions
confirmed, he challenged Alfieri, and they fought a duel with swords in
the Green Park, in which the future poet was wounded in the arm. The
husband pressed for a divorce, and Alfieri announced his intention of
marrying the lady as soon as she was free; but, to his horror, she
confessed to him one day, what was already known to the public through
the newspapers, although he was ignorant of it, that before she knew him
she had been engaged in an intrigue with a groom of her husband! Despite
this discovery, it was some time before his affection for her abated;
but at length, on her announcing her determination to enter a convent in
France, he quitted her at Rochester, and left this country himself
almost immediately afterwards. He went to Paris, and there bought a
collection of the principal Italian poets and prose-writers in
thirty-six volumes, which from that time became his inseparable
companions, although he did not make much use of them for two or three
years. However, he now learned to know at least something of the six
great luminaries, Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, Boccaccio, and
Machiavelli.

He next proceeded to Spain and Portugal. At Lisbon he formed the
acquaintance of the Abate Tommaso di Caluso, younger brother of the
Sardinian minister. The society of this distinguished man produced the
most beneficial effect on him. One evening, when the Abate was reading
to him the fine _Ode to Fortune_ of Alessandro Guidi, a poet whose name
he had never even heard, some of the stanzas produced such extraordinary
transports in him, that the former told him that he was born to write
verses. This sudden impulse of Apollo, as he calls it, was however only
a momentary flush, which was soon extinguished, and remained buried for
a long time to come.

He now bent his steps homewards, and reached Turin in May, 1772, after
an