prose and verse of the most violent and
indiscriminate abuse of France, and every thing connected with it, as
its name imports. On the evacuation of Florence by the French in July,
they returned to the city, but again left it on the second invasion in
October, 1800. The French commander-in-chief wrote to Alfieri,
requesting the honor of the acquaintance of a man who had rendered such
distinguished services to literature: but he told him in reply, that if
he wrote in his quality as Commandant of Florence, he would yield to his
superior authority; but that if it was merely as an individual curious
to see him, he must beg to be excused.

We now find him irresistibly impelled to try his hand at comedy, and he
accordingly wrote the six which are published with his other works. They
are entitled respectively, _L'Uno_, _I Pochi_, _Il Troppo_, _Tre Velene
rimesta avrai l'Antido_, _La Finestrina_, and _Il Divorzio_. The first
four are political in their character, and written in iambics, like his
tragedies. The last is the only one that can be ranked with modern
comedies. Sismondi truly remarks, that in these dramas he exhibits the
powers of a great satirist, not of a successful dramatist.

His health was by this time seriously impaired, and he felt it necessary
to cease entirely from his labors. On the 8th December, 1802, he put the
finishing stroke to his works, and amused himself for the short
remainder of his life in writing the conclusion of his _Memoirs_.
Feeling extremely proud at having overcome the difficulties of the Greek
language in his later years, he invented a collar, on which were
engraved the names of twenty-three ancient and modern poets, and to
which was attached a cameo representing Homer. On the back of it he
wrote the following distich:

[Greek:

Auton poiesas Alpherios hippe Homeron
Koiranikes timen elphane zeioteran,]

which may be thus Englished:

"Perchance Alfieri made no great misnomer
When he dubb'd himself Knight of the Order of Homer."

With the account of this amusing little incident, Alfieri terminates the
history of his life. The date it bears is the 14th of May, 1803, and on
the 8th October of the same year he breathed his last, in the
fifty-fifth year of his age. The particulars of his death are given in a
letter addressed by the Abate di Caluso to the Countess of Albany. An
attack of gout in the stomach was the immediate cause of it. The
delicate state of his health