s metre constitutes its material externality; in
that tendency to see things surrounded by, disguised in, a swarm, a
masquerade, of associated ideas; deficient in the power of suggesting
images, of conceiving figures of speech; in fancy, imagination, in the
metaphorical faculty, or whatever else we may choose to call it. Nor did
he perceive or describe visible things, visible effects, in their own
unmetaphorical shapes and colours: not a line of description, not an
adjective can be found in his works except such as may be absolutely
indispensable for topographical or similar intelligibility; Alfieri
obviously cared as little for beautiful sights as for beautiful sound.
This being the case, everything that we might call distinctly poetical,
all those things which are precious to us in Shakespeare, or Marlowe,
or Webster, in Goethe or Schiller, nay, even, occurring at intervals,
in Racine himself, at least as much as mere psychology or oratory or
pathos, appeared to Alfieri in the light of mere meretricious gewgaws,
which took away from the interest of dramatic action without affording
him any satisfaction in return. As it was with metre and metaphor and
description, so it was also with the indefinable something which we call
lyric quality: the something which sings to our soul, and which sends a
thrill of delight through our nerves or a gust of emotion across our
nature in the same direct way as do the notes of certain voices, the
phrases of certain pieces of music: instantaneously, unreasoningly and
unerringly. Of this Alfieri had little, so little that we may also say
that he had nothing; the presence of this quality being evidently
unnoticed by him and unappreciated. So much for the absolutely poetical
qualities. Of what I may call the prose qualities of a playwright, only
a certain number appealed to Alfieri, and only a certain number were
possessed by him. In a time when the novel was beginning to become a
psychological study more minute than any stage play could ever be,
Alfieri was only very moderately interested in the subtle analysis or
representation of character and state of mind; the fine touches which
bring home a person or a situation did not attract his attention; nor
was he troubled by considerations concerning the probability of a
given word or words being spoken at a particular moment and by a
particular man or woman: realism had no meaning for him. As it was
with intellectual conception, so was it also w