. He was afterwards heartily ashamed of this
freak, which he wonders he could ever have been guilty of. An ardent
desire for glory now seized him, and after some months spent in constant
poetical studies, and in fingering grammars and dictionaries, he
succeeded in producing his first tragedy; which, like the sketch already
mentioned, he entitled _Cleopatra_. It was performed at Turin, on the
16th June, 1775, at the Carignan Theatre, and was followed by a comic
after-piece, also written by him, called _The Poets_, in which he
introduced himself under the name of Giusippus, and was the first to
ridicule his own tragedy; which, he says, differed from those of his
poetical rivals, inasmuch as their productions were the mature offspring
of an erudite incapacity, whilst his was the premature child of a not
unpromising ignorance. These two pieces were performed with considerable
success for two successive evenings, when he withdrew them from the
stage, ashamed at having so rashly exposed himself to the public. He
never considered this _Cleopatra_ worthy of preservation, and it is not
published with his other works. From this moment, however, he felt every
vein swollen with the most burning thirst for real theatrical laurels,
and here terminates the epoch of Youth and commences that of Manhood.

Up to this point we have seen Alfieri's character as formed by nature,
and before it was influenced by study, or softened down by intercourse
with the world. We have seen him ardent, restless beyond all belief,
passionate, oppressed by unaccountable melancholy, acting under the
toiling impulse of the moment, whether in love or hate, and, what is of
extreme disadvantage to him as respects the career he is about to enter
upon, suffering from a deficient education. We have now to see how he
overcame all the obstacles arising from his natural character, and from
a youth wasted in idleness and dissipation; and how he gradually won his
way from victory to victory, until he at length attained the noble and
enviable eminence which is assigned to him by universal consent as the
greatest, we had almost said the only, modern Italian poet.

He describes the capital with which he commenced his undertaking as
consisting in a resolute, indomitable, and extremely obstinate mind, and
a heart full to overflowing with every species of emotion, particularly
love, with all its furies, and a profound and ferocious hatred of
tyranny. To this was added a faint