Europe, and let it interrupt his work and mar his intellect for many months together.  Alfieri was a patriot, and hated France.  Goldoni never speaks of politics, and praises Paris as a heaven on earth.  The genial moralising of the latter appears childish by the side of Alfieri’s terse philosophy and pregnant remarks on the development of character.  What suits the page of Plautus would look poor in ‘Oedipus’ or ‘Agamemnon.’  Goldoni’s memoirs are diffuse and flippant in their light French dress.  They seem written to please.  Alfieri’s Italian style marches with dignity and Latin terseness.  He rarely condescends to smile.  He writes to instruct the world and to satisfy himself.  Grim humour sometimes flashes out, as when he tells the story of the Order of Homer, which he founded.  How different from Goldoni’s naive account of his little ovation in the theatre at Paris!

But it would be idle to carry on this comparison, already tedious.  The life of Goldoni was one long scene of shifts and jests, of frequent triumphs and some failures, of lessons hard at times, but kindly.  Passions and ennui, flashes of heroic patriotism, constant suffering and stoical endurance, art and love idealised, fill up the life of Alfieri.  Goldoni clung much to his fellow-men, and shared their pains and pleasures.  Alfieri spent many of his years in almost absolute solitude.  On the whole character and deeds of the one man was stamped Comedy:  the other was own son of Tragedy.

If, after reading the autobiographies of Alfieri and Goldoni, we turn to the perusal of their plays, we shall perceive that there is no better commentary on the works of an artist than his life, and no better life than one written by himself.  The old style of criticism, which strove to separate an author’s productions from his life, and even from the age in which he lived, to set up an arbitrary canon of taste, and to select one or two great painters or poets as ideals because they seemed to illustrate that canon, has passed away.  We are beginning to feel that art is a part of history and of physiology.  That is to say, the artist’s work can only be rightly understood by studying his age and temperament.  Goldoni’s versatility and want of depth induced him to write sparkling comedies.  The merry life men passed at Venice in its years of decadence proved favourable to his genius.  Alfieri’s melancholy and passionate qualities, fostered in solitude, and aggravated by a tyranny he could not bear, led him irresistibly to tragic composition.  Though a noble, his nobility only added to his pride, and insensibly his intellect had been imbued with the democratic sentiments which were destined to shake Europe in his lifetime.  This, in itself, was a tragic circumstance, bringing him into close sympathy with the Brutus, the Prometheus, the Timoleon of ancient history.  Goldoni’s bourgeoisie, in the atmosphere of which he was born and bred, was essentially comic.  The true comedy of manners, which is quite distinct