XVI. ALFIERI AND METASTASIO.
(Fraser, 1856; Wks., v. 1876.)

METASTASIO. The Contessa di Albani has conferred on me the long-desired honour of presentation to your Excellency.

ALFIERI. I rejoice in her goodness, thus anticipating my wishes. As you are journeying toward Rome, Signor Abbate, I fear I may enjoy but too few opportunities of conversing with so justly celebrated a personage. Already the company begins to assemble round about us, especially the English, eager, no doubt to derive a little pure Italian from so high a source; such, in the estimation of all, is that of the Abbate Metastasio, Poeta Cesarèo.

METASTASIO. I bow, not indeed, as too frequently is the case, in acknowledgment and acceptance, but in humility and confusion. Proud, however, am I that our own Italy—

ALFIERI. Ours? Ours? No, sir! but, by heaven! it shall be! Let us descend into the library. France perhaps, after the imminent war with Austria, may barter one piece of robbery for another. Already she has seduced the affections of Savoy, and it is reminding the Venetians that, flourishing and happy as they have continued for a thousand years, it is shameful to owe any happiness or prosperity to nobles. Either by fraud or force, on the humiliation of Austria, Venice may be thrown to her, like a stranded weed with empty shells upon it.

METASTASIO. Austria ever have Venice? Are there no Powers to prevent it? If no virtues, are there no jealousies? God help us! we have calamities enough already.

ALFIERI. No, Abbate, we have not enough; we must have more, many more, much greater. Then, and only then, will nations spring up from apathy to despair, and smash the bloody idol. We shall be free before the French will.

METASTASIO. Since your Excellency hath resolved to leave your native Piedmont, I know not where you could have settled more comfortably than here in Tuscany.

ALFIERI. It is something to be unmolested. The prince, I hear, is tolerant; the people, I find, are civil; a few are intellectual; most of them acute. If the Jews lost ten tribes, they may recover nine in this country.

METASTASIO. By what indication?

ALFIERI. Such as the cut of the eye, the sallowness of complexion, the low stature, the love of gain, the importunity of selling, and the shibboleth.

METASTASIO. In what instances?

ALFIERI. In the pronunciation of Cicero and Cæsar, words among the Romans neither sibilant nor dental; nor do I believe they had any such guttural as you hear in cocomero.

METASTASIO. I would rather institute a comparison between their respective merits. The Jews alone, of all eastern nations, were great in poetry and music. I would not compare, as many scholars have done, the Psalms of David with the Odes of Pindar, nor do I readily believe that, musician as he was, his symphonies were equal to Handel's. There are various men who think it a duty to uphold it, and scholars too catch the enthusiasm.

ALFIERI. Weak minds, like weak liquors, soon effervesce; and sound scholars have not always strong heads.

METASTASIO. Permit me to remark one signal difference between the Jews and Tuscans. The Jews were always more morose than any other people, the Tuscans less.

ALFIERI. Dante may be called morose by the inconsiderate. To be morose is one thing, to be indignant is another. He saw crimes in high places which the vulgar thought inaccessible; but he scaled the eminence and dragged out Cacus from his fastness. The Italians are tied to the stake at home: the Jews are scattered abroad. Which fate is the worse of the two? Both evils will pass away: men will be men again. They will abstain from roasting one another: royal feasts will employ less numerous and less expensive cooks, and be served up in lighter dishes. Human fat will be no longer the approved medicament for deafness and debility. The lover of Beatrice, he who shed tears over Francesca, he whose stout heart so failed him that he fainted at the recital of her sorrows, could never have been morose. Glory to him! everlasting glory! I envy his tears; I share his indignation.

METASTASIO. There is somewhat of the Englishman in his austerity and sternness; and he is not over delicate in expressing what he feels.

ALFIERI. The English are innately vulgar, with some few exceptions. Noblemen, suspicious and invidious of untitled gentlemen, whose families are more ancient and more honorable than theirs, and who perhaps lost their fortunes and their station by the wars of the Plantagenets, have no reluctance or dislike to walk and converse with jockeys and boxers; for those they gather the flowers of their phraseology. A new word springs up monthly, and it is usually what they call slang. I will give you an example. A few days before I left England there had been a duel; on this occasion the younger, a man of rank and modesty, was declared by my informant to have shown pluck. You will suppose that by this expression he meant courage: he did so. We Italians would have said spirit, or heart, which comes nearest. But the meaning of pluck, until this year, had always been the entrails of animals, torn out of them, and the vilest parts of them. The Romans were content with cor and pectus; we with their content: animo and coraggio suffice us: what is ejected from a beast is to an Englishman the coronal of glory.

METASTASIO. We shall owe, in great measure, the consummation of ours to the departed whose remains are around us.

ALFIERI. In greater measure to those who are not departed, if we follow the right leaders. But what are leaders without soldiers, or soldiers without arms?

METASTASIO. Ah! ah! how grateful to the senses is the odour of these volumes in bulgaro!* Signor Conte, the most splendid of them best deserves its splendour.

ALFIERI. Rarely the case in anything.

METASTASIO. Vittorio, Alfieri, Tragedie. Opere di Vittorio Alfieri. Pardon me, is this richly embroidered ribbon, with a crown pendant from it, the pattern for that Order of Merit which it is reported your Excellency is about to institute?

ALFIERI. No indeed; the ribbon is none of mine.

METASTASIO. May not the investiture be displeasing to potentates?

ALFIERI. Are any of those people, then, potentates in literature? Shall the most ignorant of mortals presume to decide on the merits of literary men? Shall ministers of state be appointed as presidents, or even admitted as members, of societies formed for the promotion of arts and sciences? Keep these men to their places, while they have any, but never let them get into ours.

METASTASIO. Will your Order include others besides Italians?

ALFIERI. As many as are worthy of it and will receive it. Some, perhaps the most-part, will be kept away from the acceptance by timidity and baseness.

METASTASIO. In some measures it might be an impediment to their advancement. The glory of the decoration, in the generality of cases, would be posthumous: the whole number would occupy but a small bench in a narrow chamber. There are forty in France! Were there ever ten at one period in the world? Should you beat the drum for recruits, how many would enlist who must be rejected as below the standard highth? Poets and philosophers and critics, I am told, there are more in Germany, and better too, than in the rest of Europe.

ALFIERI. I know nothing of their language; what I have read translated from it pleases me: the best, as being the most classical, is Stolberg's Theseus. Heroes, in my eyes, look more advantageously with brazen helmets on their heads than with black triangular feltry. I would rather see Helen in sandal or slipper, than supported by high-heeled red morrocco shoes with diamond buckles on them. Being timorous, whenever I pass the porter's lodge of surly Graff Pyrrhus, I whistle my dog away, first saluting the gamekeeper in green jacket. Etcocles and Polinices are in the field above, models of gentlemen, quite correct in lifting up their beavers to each other before they make their passes with the rapier.

METASTASIO. It must be indeed confest that whatever is far removed from fashionable life and changeable manners is best adapted to the higher poetry. We are glad and righteously proud to possess two worlds, the one at present under our feet, producing beef and mutton; the other, on which have passed before us, Gods, demigods, heroes, the Fates, the Furies, and all the numerous progeny of never-dying, never-aging, eternally parturient, Imagination. Great is the privilege of crossing at will the rivers of bitterness, of tears, of fire, and to wander and converse among the Shades.

ALFIERI. Great indeed: and few incommode us in the ferry-boat; but we must pay for it.