Burning with an unquenchable hatred for all things French, Alfieri returned to Florence with the countess of Albany, in which city he remained till his death. In the tranquillity of his position, his love of study awoke with renewed force. But whether it was that his fiery temperament burnt itself quickly out, or that the ardour of his studies, joined to ill health and intemperate abstemiousness, exhausted him. Alfieri appears to have grown prematurely old. The spirit of invention was dead within him; and nothing can be more deplorable than that which he mistook for such, under whose influence he wrote laughterless comedies and toothless satires, the most dolorous and innoxious that can be imagined. Still, though original invention was dead, industry, perseverance, and fervour in the pursuit of learning were as warm as ever in his heart. He brought to a conclusion his translations of Terence, the "Æneid," and Sallust: the latter is an excellent specimen of style; but his poetic translations are languid and unworthy. As to the unlucky "Misogallo," in which he accumulates, in prose and verse, the whole force of his detestation of the French, it remains a monument of how little men know themselves, and the mistakes to which genius is liable, when it exchanges the nobler pursuit of the good and beautiful, to soil itself by the pettier passions of our nature.
While thus employed, a more genial pursuit occupied him for a short period, which he calls waste of time, but which, by linking him in agreeable intercourse with his fellow creatures, and wearing away the rust produced by despondency and over-excited feelings, would have made his latter years happier; but Alfieri, ever bent on fighting with difficulties, and thwarting his natural tendencies, cast from him the medicine offered to his diseased mind. Some friends of his, possessed of histrionic talent, got up his tragedy of "Saul:" Alfieri filled the part of the unfortunate king. Others of his plays were afterwards represented, in which he also acted; but he always preferred the part of Saul, which confirms our opinion, that it is, of all the characters he has pourtrayed, the best fitted for the stage, and the nearest approach to those unrivalled princes of the drama, the heroes of Shakspeare.
After some months had been occupied by these representations, Alfieri gave them up, and devoted himself exclusively to study. He had many plans for composition: the chief of these were what he called tramelogedie, or tragic melodramas, only one of which, "Abel," he found energy to write, and this is an entire failure. He entered on a new field, to which his genius was not adapted—the mingling of human beings and spirits, of the passions of the heart and the airy creations of our fancy; a species of composition which is to be found in perfection in Calderon, and which Goëthe, Byron, and Shelley have made familiar to us in modern times, and, according to their various capacities, adorned with the mystery, fire, and glowing imagery peculiar to each.—But of this creative power, that peoples our world with beings not of it, though in it,—Alfieri was wholly destitute. We have already remarked how entirely his writings are wanting in the more ideal attributes of imaginative poetry.
At the age of forty-six he applied himself with desperate ardour to the study of the Greek language. Forty-six is no advanced age: how many men are in their prime at that epoch! but it was not so with Alfieri; his very memory failed him, but he persevered with his accustomed energy, battling with difficulties as if they had been opponents, inspired with a sense of opposition. Thus he read the most difficult authors, with the notes of the scholiasts, learning an infinite multitude of verses by heart, and acquiring, in the end, by dint of unwearied industry, a considerable knowledge of the language.
His health was infirm and his quiet disturbed by the progress of the French armies. They came, they said, to liberate Italy, and, under this pretence, destroyed its native governments, introduced their own crude institutions, and then, on pretence of the opposition their tyranny met, despoiling the Italians of their works of art, endeavouring even to supplant their divine language, and treating with contempt and insolence their peculiar manners and customs; so that any welcome given by the Italians to these pretended friends only showed more plainly their insulting pretensions and rapacity. When the French first appeared in Florence, Alfieri and the countess hurried away as if it had been visited by the plague. They established themselves at a villa in the environs, having removed all their property from their house in the city; and here they remained till the French were temporarily driven from Tuscany. On their second invasion, Alfieri had no time to retreat, and he satisfied his feelings of scorn and hatred by never speaking to a Frenchman, or admitting the visits of the leaders of its armies.
His melancholy increased with the irritation caused by political events, by unwearied study, and the physical weakness produced by his systematic abstinence. He was happy in the society of the countess of Albany, and that of his dear friend, the abbate Caluso: but many long hours he spent by himself in gloomy reverie. The bitterness and asperity of his mind was thus increased, and his dislike of society prevented the beneficial action of sympathy and mutual forbearance. He considered himself, to a great degree, a disappointed man in his literary career, and was ignorant of the universal applause bestowed upon his tragedies. He divided his time with the most scrupulous exactitude, and his horses were still dear to him. Many hours were spent in the aisles of Santa Croce, or other churches of Florence, listening to the music, and absorbed in reverie.
During the last years of his life, he was visited each spring by a fit of the gout, and each summer by a desire to employ himself upon original composition, to which he devoted himself with an ardour which brought on, each autumn, a dangerous illness. His six unlucky comedies were the principal objects of these ill-fated labours; and his life was at last their sacrifice. A theorist in all things, he imagined that, as the gout proceeded from inflammation, it could be starved out of his frame; and he commenced a system of abstinence that deprived him of the nutriment necessary to support life. The countess in vain implored him not to adhere to so senseless a plan: it has often happened that, by resisting the prescriptions of physicians, and the aid of medicine, a man has conquered inherent disease, and lived to an old age; but as soon as he begins to administer remedies to himself, and to act from theories, instead of from that long and arduous practice necessary to give the smallest insight into the delicate structure of our physical nature, he must become the victim: thus it was with Alfieri; hard study and abstinence reduced his life to a mere flickering spark; he became a skeleton in appearance; each day he took less nourishment, and the weaker he grew, the more resolutely did he apply himself to study, as the sole solace of his worn-out and burthensome existence. In the month of October, 1803, he was attacked by gout in the stomach. The physicians wished, by means of blisters and sinapisms, to draw it to the extremities; but a childish dislike to the inconvenience which would ensue, and the impossibility of taking his daily walk, if these remedies were applied to his legs, caused him to refuse them. Opium was given instead, and his pain was moderated; but still he sat up; and his mind was rather excited than calmed by the narcotics administered: he remembered as in dreams, but with the utmost vividness, various incidents of his past life, or passages from his own writings and those of others; and these he repeated to the countess, who sat by him watching. No idea of approaching death seems to have entered his mind; and the priest, who came to offer the usual offices of the catholic religion to the dying, was sent away with an invitation to return on the morrow; whether because he believed that by that time he should be beyond such interference, or as a mere excuse for delay, cannot be told. As he grew weaker, he sent for the countess, and when she came he stretched out his hand, saying "Stringetemi la mano, cara amica; mi sento morire." "Press my hand, dear friend; I am dying." These were his last words. He died on the 8th of October, 1803, at the age of fifty-five.
He was buried in Santa Croce, and the countess of Albany erected a tomb to his memory, sculptured by Canova. It is not one of his happiest efforts; but the inscription, which has been called pretending, appears to me simple and affectionate. "Louisa de Stolberg, countess of Albany, to Vittorio Alfieri," is surely no impertinent obtrusion of the name of his dearest friend; and it may be remarked, that, while the countess has been censured for recording her name so prominently. Alfieri, in the epitaph he himself composed for her, makes it her chief praise that she was "quam unice dilexit,"—the only love of the poet.
This account of the life of a man who was endowed with the chief attribute of genius,—that of spontaneously forming and manifesting itself, despite every obstacle or adverse circumstance,—may be concluded by the quotation of the sonnet in which he describes his own person; a faithful translation of which, which we also append, appeared, some years ago, in "The Liberal." It may be quoted with the more propriety at the end of his life, since it was written when time had robbed him of the graces of youth; giving instead those characteristic marks stamped by the action of his disposition and pursuits.
"Sublime specchio di veraci detti
Mostrami in corpo e in anima qual sono.
Capelli or radi in fronte, e rossi pretti;
Lunga statura e capo a terra prono;
Sottil persona su due stinchi schietti;
Bianca pelle, occhi azzurri, aspetto buono,
Giusto naso, bel labbro, e denti eletti,
Pallido in volto più che un re sul trono.