Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/341

Rh He survived the downfall of the monarchy, and died in 1793, just as the pension of which he had been deprived was about to be restored to him. The first half of his life had been full of vicissitudes and entertaining adventures, agreeably recounted in his memoirs.

The future master of comedy commenced his dramatic career with a melodrama, Amalasunta, which he burned, and followed this up with another, of whose success he afterwards professed himself ashamed. He was not long, nevertheless, in discovering his proper vocation; he inwardly, and from his point of view rightly—for he could never have been a Gozzi—declared war against the popular Comedy of Masks, and when a piece of his succeeded, whispered to himself, "Good, but not yet Molière." The great Frenchman was the object of his idolatry, and justly, for not only was Moliere the true monarch of the comic stage, but his period was neither too near nor too remote, and his world neither too like nor unlike Goldoni's, for successful imitation. By 1753 Goldoni's apprenticeship was over, and none but literary enemies contested his title of the Italian Molière, a title confirmed by the suffrage of posterity. Un Curioso Accidente, Il Vero Amico, La Bottega del Caffè, La Locandiera, and many other comedies that might be named, while true to the manners of a past age, retain all their freshness in our own. Italian audiences yet take delight in his pictures of their ancestors. "One of the best theatres in Venice," says Symonds, "is called by his name. His house is pointed out by gondoliers to tourists. His statue stands almost within sight of the Rialto. His comedies are repeatedly given by companies of celebrated actors." Yet as Cæsar called Terence a halved Menander, so we may term Goldgni a halved