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the French. It was not till he had relieved his mind by an apology for the unhappy Louis XVI., then a prisoner, and a furious invective against the whole nation, entitled Il Misogallo, that Alfieri could again turn his attention to Italian literature. Still it was his unhappy fate twice before he died to see the objects of his especial hatred enter Florence-once in 1799, and again in 1804, when he peremptorily refused the French general's request to make his acquaintance.

In the spring of 1793

we find him aiding personally in the recital of his tragedies by a society of dilettanti in Florence. He made great progress in the art of declamation, giving the light and shade, inflection of voice, and variety of action necessary to make the characters he personated stand out distinctly and vividly before his audience.

Saul was his favourite tragedy. After reciting it several times, he was prevailed upon to play the part of the Hebrew king, in a private theatre at Pisa, and there he tells us "rimasi quanto al teatro, morto da Rè." Authors do not always give the preference to their best works, but the Italian critics confirm Alfieri in his predilection for Saul, esteeming it the best and most powerful of his tragedies. Alfieri made a previous study of the character of Saul in Holy Writ, and the inspired language seems to have been present to his mind throughout the composition of the piece. We recognize it in the beautiful song of David, which stills for a while the king's madness, of which we can only give a faint idea in translation :—

"O Thou who in eternal power dost reign O'er all created things dread Lord Divine, Thou, at whose word I was from nothing ta'en,

How dare I lift my trembling eyes to Thine! Thou, from whose gaze the depths of earth contain

No secret paths, and night as day doth shine :

Speak but Thy word, and worlds in chaos
close,

Stretch forth Thine arm, and scatter'd flee
Thy foes.

Borne earthwards on the rushing fiery wings
Of myriad cherubims Thy chariot stayed,
And with Thy Word, which mightiest power
brings,

Didst Israel's leader once vouchsafe to aid;

Wisdom and speech didst give from living springs,

And Thou Thyself his sword and buckler made.

Let but one ray of Thine effulgent light Pierce through the clouds and strike our dazzled sight." Saul, Act. iii. Sc. 4.

expression of the deep religious feeling Again, we frequently find it in the which is the mainspring of each and all of the characters. "Miseri noi! che siam, se Iddio ci lascia," David exclaims, in his pity for Saul (Sc. 1). "Col Rè sia pace is Jonathan's salu

"E sia col Padre "Meco è sempre

tation to his father. Iddio," adds Michal. il Dolore," replies the unhappy king. The dream of Saul, the departure of David on the eve of the battle, are worth referring to, as they abound in the rich metaphors which give such an Eastern colouring to the drama.

An interval of ten years elapsed between the nineteen tragedies which were published by Didot and the two last compositions, the Alceste Prima and Seconda. These were the results of his Greek studies late in life, and Alfieri was not a little vain of having learnt Greek at the age of fortysix. "Better late than never," he account of this new accomplishment; observes in the chapter devoted to the and in his mature years he read for the first time, in the original, the story of Alcestis "brought from the grave." It took such a hold of his imagination, that he breaks the vow which he had

solemnly made never to write another tragedy, and gives us a finished composition remarkable for a soft delicacy foreign to his other works. The return of Alcestis to life in the concluding scene is beautifully told, recalling by its tender feeling the last scene of the Winter's Tale. When, like Hermione, Alcestis

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makes the sight draw tears from Hercules, the mighty hero, who had snatched her from the very grasp of death.

"It was the crowning grace of that great heart

To keep back joy; procrastinate the truth,
Until the wife, who had made proof and found
The husband wanting, might essay once
more,

Hear, see, and feel him renovated now, Able to do, know, all herself had done, Risen to the height of her: so hand in hand The two might go together, live and die." 1 Thus once again embarked in literary labours, Alfieri, at the close of his career, wrote six comedies, and was engaged in revising them when the illness overtook him of which he died at Florence, October 4, 1804. But these comedies did not add to his reputation, nor did the rather "puerile vanity," as he terms it, which prompted him to celebrate his lately acquired Greek scholarship by the invention and self-investment of an Homeric Order of Merit. This consisted of a chain, or collar, from which hung a cameo representing Homer, and bearing on the reverse a Greek distich, invented by Alfieri, and translated also by him into Italian rhyme :

"Forse inventava Alfieri un ordin vero,

Nel farsi ei stesso Cavalier d'Omero."

But as the most eminent tragic writer of Italy he is worthy of the highest honour. Full of vigour and power, he breathes new life into the languid scenes of Italian tragedy. He will have no imitation of French gallantry, no Spanish rhodomontades. Italy must have a theatre of her own, speaking her pure idiom, and representing her own ideas on either classical or modern subjects. With one sweep he clears the stage of all confidants and secondary personages; so that, if you run your eye down the list of characters, you see that they rarely exceed six or seven, and are generally limited to four.

"In my

tragedies," he says, "you will find no convenient eavesdropper ready to hear and reveal the secret on which the whole plot depends, no mysterious characters 1 Balaustion's Adventure, Robert Browning, p. 147.

(with the one exception of Egisto, in Merope) unknown either to themselves or to others. I have not availed myself of either supernatural or physical aid; no flitting ghosts haunt my scenes; no thunder and lightning enhance my catastrophes. I have abstained from unnecessary murders and massacres. In short, I have rigidly denied myself the usual license permitted to dramatic writers." But the very simplicity of his tragedies laid him open to attack on account of their uniformity of method; and the author does not deny that he pursues the same system with each and all alike, trusting to the variety of subject and character to obviate this monotony. His own opinion of his works, as deliberately expressed as if he was discussing those of another author, was constantly corrected by contemporary criticism. He recognised the justice of the enlightened comments of 11 Calzabigi and of Cesarotti, whose blank verse had served him for a model; but to the captious fault-finding of the Florentine Academy he was perfectly indifferent.

"Uom se' tu grande o vile?

Morì e il saprai,"

are the concluding words of the sonnet in which he describes for posterity the strange mixture of good and evil in his character. And if the critics busied themselves with his works during his lifetime, they dissected them after his death in the most unsparing manner. The French revenge themselves with bitter invective for the abuse Alfieri had heaped upon their nation. Schlegel is scant of his praises, and only selects the Saul as worthy of favourable comment; but the opinion of his own nation, as summed up in the discourse of Pietro del Rio, is of more consequence. must not look," he says, "for daz zling variety of metaphor, nor yet for persuasive forms of speech; but you will always find a magnificent power in the style, life and vigour in the action of the drama, force in the dialogue, vivacity and truth in the characters, and occasional passages of astounding eloquence." CATHERINE M. PHILLIMORE.

To be continued.

"You

228

THOROUGH ANTI-RESTORATION.

SIR,-On reading Mr. Loftie's article on Thorough Restoration," in last month's Macmillan, my first reflection was that I had never felt more pointedly the truth of the injunction, "Judge not, that ye be not judged," since, after having for years been amongst the most earnest of protesters against the system he condemns, I find my sentiments and almost my very words taken out of my mouth, and adduced to my own condemnation.

This is the more excruciating, when I find in a list of damaged churches one at least which had filled me with such wrath as to provoke me (though without expressly naming it) to introduce a most pungent paragraph into my inaugural address, when elected President of the Institute of British Architects; and then find one of my own (which I had rather plumed myself upon) introduced in the same list. This, however, is a mere flea-bite; for, while Mr. Loftie does not think it worth while to say much about the common run of restoration, such as those which have provoked my most earnest protests, he devotes himself with a special gusto to writing down some of my own which I had flattered myself were unassailable, or to which I had at least devoted special love and earnest anxiety.

Now, how am I to account for this? Am I really such a self-deceiver as to fancy my own works to be honest and conscientious, while in fact they are just as bad as those against which I have been crying out "in season and out of season for so many years?

or do I look at matters from a different stand-point from Mr. Loftie?—or is that gentleman's perception warped or obscure? I cannot answer these questions. There is only one test that

I can think of. It is clearly useless to discuss the abstract merits or demerits of works. I can, however, examine into questions of fact, and by inference from these it is possible that some aid may be obtained in judging of questions of opinion. Anyhow, it will be the better for the general subject that it be divested from any palpable errors of this

nature.

Mr. Loftie lays great stress upon the restoration, ten years back, of the church of St. Michael, near St. Alban's. "A very bad case, indeed," says he, "where one of the oldest churches in England has been deliberately ruined." The excellent incumbent, who is absolutely devoted to his church, and well knows every stone and brick of it, says on the contrary, "I consider the restoration of the church as thoroughly conservative, and often point out to visitors evidences of your great anxiety that every old feature should be distinctly shown. Pray accept my best thanks for your true and careful restoration of the dear old church of St. Michael's."

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Another competent person, who watched the work throughout, says: "I have no hesitation in saying that a more careful restoration was never carried out, special care to preserve every portion of the building being taken by Sir Gilbert Scott." For my own part I can assert the same. I took a very special interest in the building and its conservation; and even walls which it seemed at first impossible to save, were bolstered up and embalmed, one may say, against the common decay of nature, by being saturated internally with cementing matter; so that their surface remained identically as I found it, with

all its strange intermixture of flint, stone, and Roman tile. In this course of laborious conservation, work, appar ently Saxon, constructed in Roman brick, has been discovered throughout the church. An arch and doorway on the north of the chancel, and windows on either side the nave, of this age and material, have been discovered and carefully opened out to view, cut through and ignored by the Norman arcade, itself so old that Clutterbuck says of the arches, that "they bear a striking resemblance to those in part of the nave in the Abbey Church." The old roofs of the nave, the north aisle, and the south chapel of the nave have been cleared from the lath and plaster which largely concealed them, carefully repaired without in the least disturbing their antiquity, and exposed again to sight. The half-timber work of the south chapel has been opened out to view; while not a wall or a bit of wall has been disturbed or renewed except a small amount of reparation imperatively demanded for safety. Windows of later date, long walled up, have been opened out again and, where necessary, repaired. None, however, have been renewed excepting the east window of the chancel, which had fallen out and was replaced by a wooden frame; and, even in this single renewal, the jambs, &c., are the old ones, and the arch contains the only old stone which could be found of it. In fact, the loving pains taken to preserve and hand down in its identity this ancient fabric, with all the changes in its history not only retained, but rediscovered and brought again to light, was beyond what I can describe. And this is what Mr. Loftie calls being "deliberately ruined"!

Hitherto, however, difference of view may be pleaded. Let us come, then, to more palpable questions of fact. He says-still speaking of St. Michael's-" the Elizabethan entrance ceiling and pews were all relics of his [Lord Bacon's] time, and were all swept away, and the chapel reduced to the level of an ordinary chancel

aisle." These expressions evidently took their rise from Mr. Thorne, who probably trusted too much to his memory, and similarly speaks of the "Elizabethan porches, ceilings, and fittings" as "strengthening Baconian associations;" and further says: "The Verulam Chapel opposite the tomb, with its Elizabethan entrance, ceiling, and pews, had quite a Baconian character before the recent restoration when . . . . the chapel was reduced to an ordinary chancel aisle." I learn also that Mr. Loftie speaks of a "ceiled pew," as being the very seat in which Bacon sat, "alluded to in the touching epitaph"-the epitaph containing the words, Sic sedebat.

Now, all this is most perplexing. In the first place, the "ordinary chancel aisle" into which I have succeeded in reducing the " Bacon chapel " or "ceiled pew"-neither exists nor ever did exist. The chancel has not and never had an aisle! Clutterbuck correctly describes the church, as it was then and now is, as consisting (besides the tower), of "a nave, north side-aisle, a south chapel of the nave, and a chancel; " " but no chancel aisle was there. Again, there was no ceiled pew or anything of the kind; nor was there any form of "Elizabethan ceiling" whatever. The chancel, it is true, was ceiled-but how? Let us hear from the clerk of the works. "The roof was for the most part fir, some of the rafters were chestnut. The whole of it is in such a rotten state, it was found impossible to do anything with it; and but for the modern ceiling shaped in fir to form the same must have collapsed." This "Elizabethan ceiling" was probably put up " during the repair of the church," which Clutterbuck mentions "in the year 1808." Mr. Thorne mentions "new roofs." The only new roof takes the place of this, which was so rotten as only to be held up by a modern ceiling!

Let us come, however, to the "Bacon chapel" or pew. I never heard of its having anything to do with Bacon, nor did any one I have

inquired of, and I utterly disbelieve it. Even Mr. Loftie can hardly believe it to be identical with (hardly that it contained) the handsome arm-chair referred to in the "Sic sedebat"! It was a common, ordinary pew, bearing no signs of antiquity, and was about one-third of it in the chancel, and two-thirds in the nave; as a consequence, if it is older than 1808, it was severed in two by the chancel screen, which it seems was only removed in that year. Besides this frustum of the Gorhambury pew, the main portion of which (with its fireplace) was in the nave, the chancel contained "three ordinary square seats for the Gorhambury servants," of which the incumbent says: My own opinion is that the pews were made by some of the members of the family of the present owners of Gorhambury, the Grimstons."

In corroboration of this opinion I have (in addition to my own memory and that of a most trustworthy assistant) the testimony of the clerk of the works that "no remains of posts were found which could have supported such a covering [or ceiling'], but only a curtain on brass rods; that the framing was part deal, and some few panels on sides in wainscot, but quite modern; not small, square panels, with moulded styles and rails like Queen Anne's period, but simply coarse moulding." He gives the section, which is of quite modern character.

So much for the "Bacon chapel," which I, for one, never till last month heard of. The "Elizabethan porch" or "entrance" consisted of jambs and lintel of Portland stone, in section like the nosing of a stone step, which the clerk of the works from its own evidence, states to have been “re-used”

that is removed here from some place where it had been previously employed. "The insertion of it," he says, "caused the destruction of one half of the decorated canopy of a tomb found in the south wall of the chancel," and now opened out to view. I do not know that Portland stone was brought into

the neighbourhood of London till Inigo Jones's time, which hardly allows of these pieces having been used and reused before Bacon's decease in 1626. The fact is that this entire Baconian theory is a mere mare's nest. Neither "chapel," "ceiled "ceiled pew," "porch," "entrance," nor "ceiling" of Bacon's time, existed, save in the fertile imaginations of these zealous gentlemen! Nor had the church ever exhibited its antiquities so profusely or so plainly as has been the case since (in Mr. Loftie's language) it has been "deliberately ruined.”

I now come to the glorious abbey church (now happily the cathedral) of St. Alban's.

I may begin by saying (at the risk of egotism) that for scarcely any church have I so strong and earnest a love as for this. It was the daydream of my boyhood to be permitted to visit it, and on the earliest opportunity which offered-only a year less than half a century back-I made, with a palpitating heart, my first pilgrimage there. This was before the repairs were undertaken by Mr. Cottingham, and while the small leaded spire, so characteristic of the district, still crowned the central tower. Ever since that time I have been a not unfrequent visitor and student, and my various reports, as well as, to those who recollect them, my many peripatetic lectures, will show how earnest have been my feelings towards this, probably the most interesting of all English churches; and I can scarcely think it possible for any one to believe (whatever may have been my errors of judgment) that I should have purposely injured a building so dear to me.

Mr. Loftie begins by saying that "the works, as carried out, have already been the subject of controversy." No one knows this better than himself, for it was he who raised

Mr. Hull, the geologist, in his Treatise on Building Stones, says of Portland stone: "previously to 1623 this stone does not appear to have attracted any attention."

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