'I did

'or deemed themselves, its guardians. 'everything, I resorted to everything, and I remained in Rome, tolerated by these charlatans and even aided by those petty 'priests, who had or assumed any influence in the affairs of my lady.'

When he had thus fairly or unfairly earned a temporary domicile in the Eternal City, he managed to regulate his life as nearly as possible after the plan which (barring sundry drawbacks) had succeeded so well at Florence. His place of residence was the Villa Strozzi, near the Baths of Dioclesian; a 'dwelling,' he says, 'in entire harmony with my temperament, 'my character, my occupations. So long as I live I shall think 'of it with regretful longing.' His literary pursuits and his usual two hours' ride filled the morning and forenoon, and part of every evening was passed with the Countess, from whom he professed to draw inspiration for the resumption of his labours on the morrow. It would seem that the Countess sometimes accompanied him in his rides, for speaking subsequently (1784) of his horses, fourteen of which he had bought in England, he says: The fifteenth was my beautiful roan, Fido, the same 'that in Rome had often carried the pleasing burthen of my 'lady, and for that reason was dearer to me then all the rest of 'my stud.' He ranks his fondness for horses as third, for intensity, amongst his passions: the Countess being No. 1. and the Tragic Muse No. 2. There are passages in his 'Life' which anticipate the sentiment of a graceful French poet:

'A ses moindres discours suspendre tout son être,
Emu d'un doux espoir,

Et mourir tout le jour, hélas! à se promettre

Un sourire le soir.'

But although Alfieri may have succeeded in deceiving himself, he will not deceive others. He was rather an example of the Byronic theory: Man's love is of man's life a thing 'apart.' When the excitement of positive prohibition or interference was over, he subsided into a regular punctual, habitual lover of the où passerai-je mes soirées ? school, and versified his tragedies with the steadiness of taskwork. He had resolved to complete a certain number, enough to commence an epoch in Italian dramatic literature, before publishing any. His original plan was not to exceed twelve; but prior to the end of 1782 he had well nigh put the finishing hand to fourteen; the sudden temptation to write Merope' and Saul' having proved irresistible. 'Saul' was his favourite work, and (what rarely happens in the case of favourite works) it has been generally esteemed his best. He proposed to dedicate

it to Pius VI. in the course of a private interview, during which the Pope had highly complimented him on his 'Antigone'; but the Pope adroitly declined the honour, on the plea that he could not accept the dedication of any theatrical compositions, be they what they might. Alfieri was deeply mortified, first, at having invited what he considered an affront; secondly, at having had the meanness, the weakness, the 'duplicity to wish to pay the tribute, in token of respect and esteem, of one of my works, to a man whom I deemed inferior enough to myself in true merit.' Knowing what we do of the estimate he had of himself as a poet, and the intensity of his self-consciousness, we suspect that what he goes on to name as his primary motive was at least a secondary one:

'This reason then was, that I, having for some time become aware of rumours proceeding from the house of the relative of my lady, through which I learnt his discontent, and that of all his circle, at my being too much at her house; and this discontent being constantly on the increase, I sought, by flattering the Sovereign of Rome, to create in him a support against all persecutions, of which I already seemed to have a presentiment in my heart, and which in fact about a month afterwards were let loose against me.'

His presentiments did not deceive him; for the Pretender's assurances, when he thought himself dying, impressed the Cardinal strongly, or, more correctly speaking, opened his eyes to what was already palpable to the commonest observer. It hardly required the solemnity of a death-bed to give weight to the convictions of the deserted husband, the soundness of which may be contested without questioning their good faith; and the permitted intimacy of the suspected lover with the fugitive wife was utterly indefensible in any point of view or on any construction of the facts. Alfieri fairly admits as

much:

'And here I certainly shall not make the apology of the usual life of Rome and all Italy as regards almost all married women. I will say, however, that the conduct of this lady in Rome towards me was much more on the safe side than the other, of the customs most tolerated in this city. But I will end all this, for the love of truth and right, by saying that the husband, and the brother, and their respective priests, had every reason not to approve my great intimacy, although it did not exceed the bounds of honour. I regret at the same time that, as to the priests (who were the sole movers of the whole machine), their zeal in the matter was neither evangelical nor pure from secondary ends; since not a few of them, by their sad examples, pronounced at once the eulogy of my conduct and the satire on their own. The affair was the daughter, not of true religion and virtue, but of revenge and intrigue.'

Sir Horace Mann states that the Cardinal, on his return from hearing his brother's statement, laid the whole before the Pope, and obtained an order to Alfieri to leave Rome within fifteen days. This he denies, and says that on hearing of the plot brewing against him, he intimated to the Sardinian Minister his readiness to save the lady's honour and peace of mind by a voluntary departure; a course which he preferred to the utterly unendurable one of remaining in the same place without seeing her. Accordingly, on the 4th of March, 1783, he started for Sienna: like one stupid and deprived of sense, leaving my only love, books, town, peace, my very self, in Rome. Of his four or five separations, this was the saddest, because the future was more uncertain, and he declares that he as good as lost two years by reason of it, so great were the disturbance of his mind and the interruption of his pursuits. The effect must have been terrible indeed if, as he states, it made him utterly insensible to the harshest criticisms levelled at the style of his published writings, sprinkled over with durissimo, oscurissimo, stravagantissimo. He managed to get through a good deal of work notwithstanding, listened incognito with some complacency to a reading of his 'Virginia' in Turin, and undertook an expedition to England to buy horses. The praises lavished on them by connoisseurs pleased him, he admits, little if at all less than those accorded to his

verses.

During the whole period of separation he kept up a voluminous correspondence with the Countess, who repaid him in kind; and it would seem that the electric chain of inspiration was not broken by the chilling medium of the post. In one of her letters she spoke of having been highly gratified by the Brutus' of Voltaire. On reading this he exclaims: 'I 'who had heard it recited ten years before, and had no recollection whatever of it, being instantaneously filled with a wild ' and disdainful emulation of both mind and heart, said to 'myself: What Brutuses? what Brutuses? I will make 'Brutuses, I will make them in duplicate; time shall show then if such subjects for tragedy were better addressed to me, or to a Frenchman born a plebeian, and subscribing himself 'for seventy years and more Voltaire Gentilhomme Ordinaire 'du Roi. No sooner said than done. Under the feverish excitement of jealous rivalry, he dashed off the plan of 'Il Bruto 'Primo' and Il Bruto Secondo.' But we are anticipating. This occurred in 1786, during another compelled absence; and the prolonged separation beginning with his banishment from Rome, terminated in the summer of 1784, when the Countess,

through the mediation of the King of Sweden, came to an arrangement with her husband. A formal instrument was signed by her, Charles Edward, and the Cardinal, and duly ratified by the Pope, by which, in return for the sacrifice of her pin-money, she obtained an amicable divorce a mensâ et thoro, with liberty to reside where she pleased. At least such was the contract as stated by Sir Horace Mann; but it would seem from subsequent occurrences that the Pope retained the power of regulating her movements or directing her place of residence.

The first use the Countess made of her partially recovered freedom was to give Alfieri a meeting at Colmar, where they spent two months together. The bond under which she lay to pass part of her time in the papal territory, obliged them to separate again at the approach of winter, which she passed in Bologna. His place of residence till the following summer was Pisa. They then met again at Colmar, which she soon afterwards quitted for Paris; whither, she having returned to Colmar after a few months' stay, he accompanied her in the autumn of 1786. The papal restriction being apparently taken off or relaxed by this time, she thought of taking up her permanent abode there, and he, much as he disliked both the country and the people, had the strongest inducements to do the same; as besides wishing to be near her, he was carefully revising a French impression of his works.

Whilst they had been thus occupied, Charles Edward had taken a step which is supposed to have excited in the heart and mind of the Countess a feeling of compunction or remorse which she had never experienced from his accusations or reproaches. In July 1784, he formally acknowledged his natural daughter by Miss Walkingshaw, and sent for her from the convent, where she was residing with her mother, to live with him as mistress of his family. Not content with calling her Lady Charlotte Stuart, he insisted on her bearing the title of Duchesse d'Albany, and on St. Andrew's Day, as if determined to celebrate it by some new extravagance, he performed the ceremony of investing her with the Order of St. Andrew, the badge of which she had already assumed.

Wraxall says: In 1779, Charles Edward exhibited to the 'world a very humiliating spectacle.' On the margin of her copy, Mrs. Piozzi wrote:

'Still more so at Florence in 1786. Count Alfieri had taken away his consort, and he was under the dominion and care of a natural daughter, who wore the Garter, and was called Duchess of Albany. She checked him when he drank too much or when he talked too

much. Poor soul! Though one evening he called Mr. Greathead up to him, and said in good English, and in a loud though cracked voice: "I will speak to my own subjects in my own way, Sare. Ay, "and I will soon speak to you, Sir, in Westminster Hall." The Duchess shrugged her shoulders.'

A still more curious anecdote is recorded of a conversation with Mr. Greathead, who being left alone with Charles Edward, gradually led him to talk of 1745. At first he shrank from the topic: the reminiscence was evidently sad. But as the visitor persevered, he seemed as it were to cast off a load; his eye lighted up, his demeanour became animated, and he began the narrative of his campaign with youthlike energy, spoke of his marches, his battles, his victories, his escape, and the dangers that surrounded him, of the self-sacrificing fidelity of his Scotch companions, of the dreadful fate that had befallen so many amongst them. The impression that after forty years the recollection of their sufferings made upon him, was so strong, that his strength gave way, his voice failed, and he sank senseless on the ground. On hearing the bustle, his daughter hurried in. "What means this, Sir?' she exclaimed. You have certainly 'been talking of Scotland and the Highlanders to my father.

No one should touch on these things in his presence.' He has been known to burst into tears on hearing the tune of 'Lochaber no more,' which the condemned Jacobites were reported to have sung in prison.

Another striking illustration of his native spirit and sensibility has been preserved. The Comte de Vandreuil, son of the officer who arrested Charles Edward at Paris in 1748, and a speaking likeness of his father, came to Rome in 1787, with the Duchesse de Polignac, and thoughtlessly requested to be presented to Charles Edward, who was merely informed that a foreigner of distinction desired to pay his respects. The name was not announced by the servant, the Duchess herself having undertaken the introduction; but the moment Vandreuil entered the room, the degrading scene with which his features were indelibly associated came back upon the unhappy exile like a flash. He dropped down in a fainting fit, and Vandreuil was hurried from the room.

On August 8th, 1786, Sir Horace Mann reports that he (the 'Pretender) has lately assumed the folly practised by his father 'and grandfather to touch people who are afflicted with scrofulous disorders: many old women and children have been 'presented to him for that purpose, to whom, after some cere'mony, he gives a small silver medal, which they wear about 'their necks.' This was Sir Horace Mann's last letter on the