he would create a new kind of tragedy. These two
halves of a proposition, of which he appears never to have entertained a
single moment's doubt, had originated at the same time and developed in
close connection: that he could be otherwise than an innovator was as
inconceivable to Alfieri as that he could be otherwise than a genius,
although, in reality, he was as far from being the one as from being
the other. The fact was that Alfieri felt in himself the power of
inventing a style and of producing works which should answer to the
requirements of his own nature: considering himself as the sole audience,
he considered himself as the unique playwright. Excessively limited in
his mental vision, and excessively strong in his mental muscle, it was
with his works as with his life: the ideal was so comparatively within
reach, and the will was so powerful, that one feels certain that he
nearly always succeeded in behaving in the way of which he approved, and
in writing in the style which he admired. And the most extraordinary
part of the coincidence was, that as he happened to live in a time and
country which had entirely neglected the tragic stage, and consequently
had no habits or aspirations connected with it, his own desires with
reference to Italian tragedy preceded those of his fellow-countrymen,
his own ideal was thrust upon them before they well knew where they
were; and his own nature and likings became the sole standard by which
he measured his works, his own satisfaction the only criterion by which
they could be judged. In order, therefore, to understand the nature of
Alfieri's plays, it is necessary, first of all, to understand what were
Alfieri's innate likings and dislikings in the domain of the drama.
Before all other things, Alfieri was not a poet: he lacked all, or very
nearly all, the faculties which are really poetical. To begin with the
more gross and external ones, he had no instinct for, no pleasure in,
metrical arrangements for their own sake; he did not think nor invent in
verse, ideas did not come to him on the wave of metre; he thought out,
he elaborately finished, every sentence in prose, and then translated
that prose into verse, as he might have translated (and in some
instances actually did translate) from a French version into an Italian
one. Moreover he was, to a degree which would have been surprising even
in a prose writer, deficient in that which constitutes the intellectual
essence of poetry a