Alfieri, VITTORIO, COUNT, one of the most famous of modern Italian poets, was born at Asti, in Piedmont, on the 17th January 1749. His education was very defective, but at fourteen he found himself master of a vast fortune. The chief interest of his youth was a passionate love for horses, which he retained through life. The years 1767-72 he spent in travelling through the greater part of Europe, after which he returned to Turin, and devoted himself to literary pursuits, renouncing idleness and unworthy amours. The applause which his first attempts received, encouraged him in his determination to win fame as a dramatic author. But as he clearly saw the deficiencies of his education, he began at a mature age to learn Latin, and also to study the Tuscan dialect, for which purpose he went to Tuscany. In Florence (1777) Alfieri made the acquaintance of the Countess of Albany, wife of the Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart. He became deeply attached to her, and in this—the one persistent love of his life—he found the impulse that his vacillating nature needed. To render himself worthy of her esteem, he strove with unremitting earnestness after poetic excellence; and in order to be perfectly free and independent of all other cares, he transferred his whole property to his sister, in exchange for an annuity which was hardly half his former income. He now lived alternately in Florence and in Rome, latterly with the Countess; and after the death of her unworthy husband, they lived together in Alsace or in Paris, until the Revolution drove them first to England, and next to Florence. Here Alfieri died, on the 8th October 1803. Their ashes repose in the church of Santa Croce, in Florence, under a beautiful monument by Canova, between the tombs of Michael Angelo and Machiavelli. Alfieri published twenty-one tragedies, six comedies, and one 'tramelogedia'—a name invented by himself. These show a want of fresh imaginative vigour, and betray the laborious perseverance with which their author did violence both to himself and to art. He was inspired more by politics than by poetry. He wished to breathe a spirit of freedom into the dormant minds of his countrymen, and considered the theatre as a school in which the people might learn to be 'free, strong, and noble.' In order to preserve the purity of his muse, Alfieri had resolved to read no other Italian poet. He wished to produce an effect by the very simplest means, and, renouncing the aid of ornament, to please by manly strength and earnestness alone. His works are on this account cold and stiff, his plots simple even to poverty, his verse hard and unpleasant, and his language destitute of that magic splendour of colouring which stirs the inmost soul. In spite of this, Alfieri did good service to
Italian tragedy. He corrected the effeminate taste which had before prevailed, as well as the pedantry of an affected imitation of Attic models. Succeeding writers endeavoured to imitate his strength and simplicity. His comedies are less successful than his tragedies. They manifest the same serious political tendency; the invention is poor, the development of the plot uninteresting, and the characters are only general sketches, without individuality. The most successful of his dramatic works is his 'tramelogedia' Abele, a mixture of tragedy and opera. Besides his dramatic works, he left an epic poem in four cantos, an autobiography, also many lyrical poems, sixteen satires, and poetical translations of Terence, Virgil, and portions of Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. After his death, appeared his Misogallo, a memorial of his hatred to the French. His Opere were published at Pisa in 22 vols. (1805-1815). Centofanti published a life in 1842, and Teza in 1861. See also Vernon Lee's Countess of Albany (1884).