and a good-humoured vanity the other.  This contrast was apparent at a very early age.  We have seen how Alfieri passed his time at Turin, in a kind of aristocratic prison of educational ignorance.  Goldoni’s grandfather died when he was five years old, and left his family in great embarrassment.  The poet’s father went off to practise medicine at Perugia.  His son followed him, acquired the rudiments of knowledge in that town, and then proceeded to study philosophy alone at Rimini.  There was no man-servant or academy in his case.  He was far too plebeian and too free.  The boy lodged with a merchant, and got some smattering of Thomas Aquinas and the Peripatetics into his small brain, while he contrived to form a friendship with an acting company.  They were on the wing for Venice in a coasting boat, which would touch at Chiozza, where Goldoni’s mother then resided.  The boy pleased them.  Would he like the voyage?  This offer seemed too tempting, and away he rushed, concealed himself on board, and made one of a merry motley shipload.  ’Twelve persons, actors as well as actresses, a prompter, a machinist, a storekeeper, eight domestics, four chambermaids, two nurses, children of every age, cats, dogs, monkeys, parrots, birds, pigeons, and a lamb; it was another Noah’s ark.’  The young poet felt at home; how could a comic poet feel otherwise?  They laughed, they sang, they danced; they ate and drank, and played at cards.  ’Macaroni!  Every one fell on it, and three dishes were devoured.  We had also alamode beef, cold fowl, a loin of veal, a dessert, and excellent wine.  What a charming dinner!  No cheer like a good appetite.’  Their harmony, however, was disturbed.  The ‘premiere amoureuse,’ who, in spite of her rank and title, was ugly and cross, and required to be coaxed with cups of chocolate, lost her cat.  She tried to kill the whole boat-load of beasts—­cats, dogs, monkeys, parrots, pigeons, even the lamb stood in danger of her wrath.  A regular quarrel ensued, was somehow set at peace, and all began to laugh again.  This is a sample of Goldoni’s youth.  Comic pleasures, comic dangers; nothing deep or lasting, but light and shadow cheerfully distributed, clouds lowering with storm, a distant growl of thunder, then a gleam of light and sunshine breaking overhead.  He gets articled to an attorney at Venice, then goes to study law at Pavia; studies society instead, and flirts, and finally is expelled for writing satires.  Then he takes a turn at medicine with his father in Friuli, and acts as clerk to the criminal chancellor at Chiozza.

Every employment seems easy to him, but he really cares for none but literature.  He spends all his spare time in reading and in amusements, and begins to write a tragic opera.  This proves, however, eminently unsuccessful, and he burns it in a comic fit of anger.  One laughable love-affair in which he engaged at Udine exhibits his adventures in their truly comic aspect.  It reminds us of the scene