covered with shame. “Had you killed me,” he said to the man, “you would have acted rightly. If you wish, kill me while I sleep to-night, for I deserve it.” The valet took no such reprisal, he had been with his young master long enough to understand the sudden outbursts of his temper, and was content to keep the two blood-stained handkerchiefs that had bandaged his head and show them occasionally to Alfieri as a reminder.

In Lisbon the traveler formed a close friendship with the Abbot of Caluso, whom he called a “true, living Montaigne.” The Abbot tried to interest the young man in literature, induced him to write some verses, and gave him the benefit of his criticism. For a short time the interest in poetry lasted, then it flagged, and again Alfieri felt himself without any purpose. He decided to return home, and in May, 1772, arrived at Turin.

Now he took a house for himself, furnished it elaborately, and made it the headquarters of a youthful society that sought amusement in various forms. Some of them wrote, and Alfieri tried his pen for their amusement, but soon tired of writing as a sport, and gave himself up to other occupations. Continually searching for something to still his restlessness he again fell in love, this time with a woman of rank, some ten years his senior, and of a most unenviable reputation. He became absolutely her slave, worked himself into frenzies on her account, would consider nothing but the happiness of being with her. He fell very ill, but when he recovered found himself as much in love as ever. For two years he lived in this state of obsession, tormented by self-reproach, but unable to rid himself of his own yoke.

Finally he decided to quit Turin and break his fetters. When he was only a short distance on the road to Rome his resolution failed and he returned. Again he resolved to leave the city for a year. The year lasted eight days. He was thoroughly ashamed, disliked being seen in Turin, but could not keep away. He felt finally that he must take one last stand or lose all self-respect and control forever. He had his hair cut so short that he dared not appear in society, and shut himself into his house to read. He could not keep his thoughts on the books, and tried composition. He wrote a sonnet, and sent it to a friend, and received a reply highly praising it. Then he remembered that a year before as he sat watching by the sick bed of the woman who had so charmed him he had lightly outlined a tragedy on the life of Cleopatra, taking his subject from tapestries that hung in the room. He threw himself into the work of writing that tragedy now, and found that interest in it drove all other thoughts away. He wrote rapidly, continually, only stopping when he was completely tired. When those times came, still frightened with the possibility of leaving the house, he had himself tied into a chair. He only allowed himself freedom when he knew he had won self-control. By that time he had finished his tragedy in blank verse called “Cleopatra,” and a short farce called “The Poets,” the latter ridiculing the former. He sent them to a theater in Turin, where they were produced on June 16, 1775, and met with success. The author did not value either play highly himself, and sought to have them withdrawn. He wrote later, comparing these works with those of his contemporaries, “The sole difference which existed between their pieces and mine was that the former were productions of learned incapacity, whereas mine was the premature offspring of ignorance, which promised one day to become something.”

His battle against what he considered a highly unworthy infatuation had restored Alfieri’s self-respect and health, and out of this curious struggle sprang his first real and lasting ambition. “A devouring fire took possession of my soul,” he says, “I thirsted one day to become a deserving candidate for theatrical fame.” The date of that first performance marked a turning point, not only for Alfieri, but for his country’s literature. It was, said the Italian critic, Paravia, “a day and a year of eternal memory not only for the Turinese, but for all Italians; because it was, so to speak, the dawn of the magnificent day which, thanks to Alfieri, was to rise upon Italian tragedy.”

The restless energy which had driven Alfieri across the various European countries now concentrated in an all-pervading determination to become a tragic poet. He launched into that effort with the same unbounded ardor with which he had so frequently before launched into love. He was twenty-seven years of age when he seriously set himself to work to acquire command of Italian so that he might think in the language of his native land rather than in that of France. He described his resources as “a resolute, obstinate, and ungovernable character, susceptible of the warmest affections, among which, by an odd kind of a combination, predominated the most ardent love, and hatred approaching to madness against every species of tyranny; an imperfect and vague recollection of several French tragedies which I had seen represented several years before, but which I had then neither read nor studied; a total ignorance of dramatic rules, and an incapability of expressing myself with elegance and precision in my own language.”

To accomplish his purpose Alfieri now began at the very beginning and took up the study of Italian grammar, and thence made a first-hand acquaintance with all the best of the early Italian writers. He would not allow himself any longer to read French, and tried to break himself of the habit of thinking in that tongue. He moved from town into a small country village in order that nothing might distract him. There he re-wrote for the third time his tragedy of “Cleopatra,” and practised turning into Italian verses the outlines of two tragedies which he had recently written in French. He pored over Tasso, Ariosto, Petrarch, and Dante until he felt that he at last really caught the full spirit of each author’s style, then he tried writing poetry of his own.

His ignorance of Latin continually vexed him, and now he employed a teacher to begin over those lessons he had so thoroughly disliked at school. It was very hard work at first, but he would learn what he now considered essential to his purpose, and after three months’ study of Horace he found that he could read Latin. He took up the other classics and translated some of them into modern Italian for practice in their varied styles.

Turin was too near France to satisfy his new passion for only the purest Italian and so he went to Pisa, and thence to Florence. In the latter city he found that his ideas were at last shaping themselves in the rich and clear Italian he was seeking, he wrote verses which critical friends pronounced at last worthy of the name of poetry, and planned several poetic tragedies. He had worked hard and felt that he needed a little rest. For this purpose he returned to Turin and had the pleasure of entertaining his old friend the Abbot of Caluso there. He, as well as other friends, urged Alfieri to make literature his field. He decided that it was best for him to live in Tuscany, and as he hated to have to ask royal permission each year to allow him to remain away from Piedmont—as was the custom with the nobility—he gave his estates at Asti to his sister, and contented himself with half his former income. Then he moved to Florence, which, except for intervals spent at Rome and Naples, was for a considerable time to be his home.

On his way to Florence Alfieri was obliged to stop at Sarzana, where he chanced upon a copy of Livy, and was so impressed with the story of Virginia and Icilius that he immediately planned a tragedy