ith instructive sympathy:
Alfieri never subtly analysed the anatomy of individual nature, nor
did he unconsciously mimic its action and tones; what most of us mean
by pathos did not appeal to him. Neither metrical nor imaginative
pleasurableness, nor descriptive charm, nor lyric poignancy, nor
psychological analysis or intention entered, therefore, into Alfieri's
conception of a desirable tragedy, any more than any of these things
fell within the range of his special talents; for, we must always bear
in mind that with this man, whose feelings and desires were in such
constant action and reaction, with this man whose will imposed his
intellectual notions on his feelings, and his emotional tendencies on
his thoughts, the thing which he enjoys is always as the concave to the
convex of the thing which he produces. But although Alfieri was not a
poet, and was not even a potential novel writer, he was, in a sense,
essentially a dramatist; though even here we must distinguish and
diminish. Alfieri was not a man who cared for rapid action or for
intricate plot: he never felt the smallest inclination to violate the
old traditions of the pseudo-classic stage by those thrilling scenes
or sights which had to be described and not shown, nor by those
complications of interest which require years for an action instead of
the orthodox twenty-four hours.

He was perfectly satisfied with the no-place, no-where--with the vague
temple, or palace hall, or public square where, as in the country of the
abstract, the action of pseudo-classic tragedy always takes place, or,
more properly speaking, the talking of pseudo-classic tragedy always
goes on; he was perfectly satisfied with sending in a servant or a
messenger to inform the public of a murder or suicide committed behind
the scenes; he was perfectly satisfied with taking up a story, so to
speak, at the eleventh hour, without tracing it to its original causes
or developing it through its various phases. In such matters Alfieri was
as undramatic as Corneille or Racine. Nevertheless Alfieri had a
distinct dramatic sense: an intense _poseur_ himself, enjoying nothing
so much as working himself up to produce a given effect upon his own
mind or upon others, he had an extraordinary instinct for the theatrical,
for the moral attitude which may be struck so as to be effective, and
for the arrangement of subordinate parts so that this attitude surprise
and move the audience. The moral attitude, the