attempts at drama, and finally left us nineteen tragedies, six political comedies, a vast number of satires and epigrams, Misogallo, a collection of anti-French verses and prose writings, a short poem called L'Etruria Vindicata, and a plentiful harvest of lyric verses. In prose we have a wonderful human document of his life and times in his Autobiography, in numerous letters and newspapers, besides his book on Tyranny, and his Latin and Greek translations.

Alfieri's life takes a prominent position in Italian bibliographical literature. In its sincerity and strength, it recalls the work of Rousseau and Cellini, whose methods he possibly imitated unconsciously. He gives an exact and detailed portrait of himself, omitting neither his shortcomings nor his weaknesses. Successful as he was, he scorned to make excuses for his past, preferring to give his own frank version than that others should draw on their imagination for the story of his life.

His rough and unpolished style brings the man and the poet vividly before us. The pregnant epoch at the close of the eighteenth century, between the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle and the French Revolution, affecting as it did Italy, England, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Holland and Norway, is a fitting frame for the poet's life. Kings, writers, politicians, artists, and other European notabilities, live for us in his pages, with the habits and customs of many countries between which there were great national differences. Older Europe, both before and during the Revolution, had an unbiassed and characteristic chronicler in Alfieri. Many of his satires and epigrams are popular to-day in Italy. His lyric poetry still has devoted admirers, but Alfieri's name is principally associated with his life and his tragedies. In France, at that time, tragedy had reached its culminating point in the poets of Louis XVI.'s reign; in Italy the same form offered an occasion of revival in poetry.

While greatly admiring Shakespeare's plays, Alfieri's dread of unconscious imitation prevented him studying them seriously. His aim was ever for individuality, even at the price of success. There was something of the fanatic in his prejudice-he lost his sense of proportion in his devotion for the classics. Living as he did in an age of great expansion of thought, it is the more astonishing. France had its Diderot; Germany, Lessing; Italy, Baretti, who, himself of Piedmontese extraction, lived almost exclusively in London.

Politically, by a strange paradox, he was as democratic as he was aristocratic in his writings. He sought after a more than classic success in his rigid preservation of the unities in drama. He forbade himself the smallest license in his struggle with the difficulties of tragic construction. While admitting the value

and importance of Chorus in classic writings, he never used it in his own work. Although in the French drama he saw that movement and action had their advantages, he, for his part, dispensed with both. From Horace he had learned that the fourth person in the action should not speak, and he took that lesson as gospel, limiting the action of his own tragedies almost invariably to the three main figures. And recognising that to lay undue stress upon love-interest was, in a sense, to "play to the gallery," he banished love itself from his tragedies.

His object was to blend artistic and moral truth, beauty and teaching. He looked upon the stage as a school where men might learn the lessons of liberty, power, and charity, "trasportati pella vera virtu, insofferenti d'ogni violenza, amanti della patria, veri conoscitori dei propri diritti, e in tutte le passioni loro ardentissimi retti e magnanimi.”

Taking tragedy from this standpoint, it was only natural that, while following the Græco-French method, he himself voluntarily renounced all the artificial aids of the Théâtre Français. He deletes the secondary interest from every scene: excluding anything which might retard the development of his theme, for he rightly held that the unnecessary has no place in art, and must be sternly eliminated. The secondary interest has no real standing in drama, and however well characterised by the author, is always inopportune.

To reduce the number of persons in a tragedy is easy; to make the remaining few hold the interest of their audience, and discuss the same subject for five acts, without undue repetition, is the crux. Further, to prohibit the use of letters, spies, spectral messages, heavenly visitants, unlikely situations, useless deaths, and unnecessary warnings-in short, all cheap theatrical effectsthis was the task Alfieri set himself to accomplish.

His action moves inevitably to its appointed end without explanatory dialogue, without avowals or questions, without any of the petty tricks common to drama. His tragedies recall George Hegel's theory of the aesthetic balance of tragedy and sculpture. There is something sculptural in Alfieri's methods. His stern brevity, the solemn purity of his results; his scornful heroes who love little, but are greatly tried, and in a few scenes live, suffer, and fall by the hand of destiny, are as so many marble figures hewn from solid rock.

He sought after originality, even though it led him in wrong directions. In his eyes, an author's crowning defect was imitation. Other authors, above all, his contemporaries, have used specious incidents, dramatic meetings, to attain their ends, but he, true to his ideal, excised all such false aids from his writings, holding his public by the passion of his tragedy alone. Nine of the

subjects of his nineteen tragedies have been treated by other poets. No other tragic author has, however, shown such fertility of invention and individuality even in time-honoured subjects, Alfieri's mode of treatment being entirely his own.

His verse-in the construction of which he admitted his debt to Cesarotti for the Ossian translation-is sometimes harsh, but it conforms with the type he sought after in tragedy. Tragic poetry, to be really harmonious, requires the nobility and high standard of the epic, but has no cantilena, and from time to time it must be lightened by lyrics.

Alfieri raised a new building in Italian literature. Other writers had hidden the Temple of Tragedy with flowers and wreaths, but he transformed its very foundations.

An essential of his scheme was the powerful excitation of good and evil passions, without which tragedy would have no meaning. It is the secret of his influence upon posterity.

Alfieri had many obstacles to encounter on the path of fame, but his enthusiasm for work helped him to overcome them. He was not always historically accurate, and the harshness of his style may be condemned, but his characters were moulded on great lines. As Parini says:

"Incise col terribile

Odiator dei tiranni

Pugnale onde Melpomene

Lui fra gli Itali spirti unico armò."

His plays are still acted, and Gustavo Modena, Adelaide Ristori, and Salvini have alike interpreted his work.

But Alfieri's influence is shown not merely in the tragic construction, which was copied and carried on by Monti Foscolo, Pellico, and Niccolini, but chiefly in those political opinions which inspired all his writings.

The close of the century was the dawn of a new era of liberty, and noble phrases of Alfieri's dramas roused to enthusiasm patriots who, in their turn, stirred the people to action. So late as 1820, he still inspired devout disciples. He, himself, recognised this factor in his work-it was the only one in which he took pride.

At Florence, on the 12th February, 1795, to escape the madness of Carnival, he took refuge in the Boboli Gardens. There, as though the future of his country spread before him in a vision, he composed a powerful sonnet, predicting the influence of his work.

"Giorno verrà, tornerà il giorno, in cui
Redivivi omai gli Itali, staranno
In campo audaci, a non col ferro altrui
In vil difesa, ma dei Galli a danno.

Al forte fianco sproni ardenti dui

Lor virtu prisca, ed i miei carmi avranno ;
Onde in membrar ch' essi già fur, ch' io fui,
D'irresistibil fiamma avvamperanno.

E armati allor di quel furor celeste
Spirato in me dall' opre dei lor Avi,
Faran mie rime a Gallia esser funeste.

Gli odo già dirmi. O Vale nostro, in pravi
Secolo nato, eppur creato hai queste

Sublimi età, che profetando andavi."

As for the man himself, Villemain defined him as un démocrat féodal, poète de la méditation solitaire." He has been compared with Byron, and has certain points of likeness to the English poet in his love of women and horses, his adventures and travels, his passion for liberty. Even in his magnificent head there is a distinct resemblance to "Handsome George," as Byron is called in Venice to this day. Both were extraordinarily complex characters, whose strength of will went hand in hand with wild excesses and nobility of soul-strange examples of human regeneration, and of the power of fate.

A very just appreciation of Alfieri has been given by Vincenzo Gioberti in these words:" As a great poet and lover of liberty, Alfieri has many equals; as the saviour of Italian national genius, he stands alone. All honour to him: he takes a unique place amongst men who have striven to uphold their country's glory."

The renewal of Italian social life, the creation of the lay element in Italy, is due to Vittorio Alfieri, a second Dante, who, in our day, has secularised Italian spirit.

In these two centuries he has become a giant and, by a sublime historical contradiction, he is the most individual and sincere exponent of two eras, the past and the future of Italy. To-day we look to him as to the beacon of a safe port for, through his light, the diffused energies of Italy's many epochs have found harbour. Could the voice of his nation sound a finer tribute?

"E come albero in nave si levò."

(Dante.)

ART. JAHN RUSCONI.

(Translated by May Bateman.)

TRIBE AND FAMILY.

THAT "man is certainly descended from some ape-like creature " is the verdict of Mr. Darwin-a verdict which seems to be commonly accepted. Mr. Darwin supposed that our ape-like ancestors lived originally "either in small communities," or were lonely, unsocial creatures. In either case the male, says this naturalist, whether he had but one or several female mates, "jealously guarded them against all other men."1 If Mr. Darwin is right, the germ of what we call "marriage "-the matter to which humanity later gave the form-existed from the beginning. On this point Lord Avebury writes: "Neither Mr. Darwin, nor Mr. McLennan, nor, I may add, I myself, was unaware that the old male gorilla, the stag, and other animals formed with the female and offspring a small temporary group. But such groups are essentially temporary, and are based partly on affection, partly on force. Marriage, in our sense at least, is a relationship resting on contract, recognised by public opinion, and supported by custom, or, where law exists, by law." 2

It is manifest that "public opinion and "law" cannot come into play among ape-like animals. It is manifest, also, that the powers of affection, jealousy, and force among ape-like animals do produce an union of the sexes which, though "temporary,' might be variously moulded, later, by advancing humanity, into permanence, absolute or relative, by public opinion, custom, and law. The laws of divorce, in some American States, make marriage "temporary," and the Church had great difficulty in suppressing mere temporary unions ("hand-fasting") in the Highlands. In short, the habits of ape-like animals in sexual matters do undeniably afford a basis capable of various modificacations into marriage, as the ape-like one became human-savage, barbaric, and civilised. Thus marriage, in all its varieties, and the family, in all its protean forms, could, manifestly, spring from modifications of the habits of ape-like animals. These habits supplied the matter, and advancing human reason and emotion might work the matter into form.

We may therefore argue that the development of marriage and the family certainly could arise as the hypothetical ape-like creature becomes the lowest kind of savage, and so, through various degrees, reaches Christian, or Islamite, or Greek or Roman civilisation. A series of almost imperceptible alterations could, (1) Descent of Man, ii., 361-363, 1871.

(2) Origin of Civilisation, p. 88, Note 3, 1902.