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 observed in his, as in the ancient dramas; but he has rigidly adhered to a unity of action and interest. He occupies his scene with one great action, and one ruling passion, and removes from it every accessary event or feeling. In this excessive zeal for the observance of unity, he seems to have forgotten, that its charm consists in producing a common relation between multiplied feelings; and not in the bare exhibition of one, divested of those various accompaniments which give harmony to the whole. Consistently with that austere and simple manner which he considered the chief excellence of dramatic composition, he excluded from his scene all coups de théâtre, all philosophical reflections, and that highly ornamented versification, which had been so assiduously cultivated by his predecessors. In his anxiety, however, to avoid all superfluous ornament, he has stripped his dramas of the embellishments of imagination; and for the harmony and flow of poetical language, he has substituted, even in his best performances, a style, which, though correct and pure, is generally harsh, elaborate, and abrupt;—often strained into unnatural energy, or condensed into factitious conciseness. The chief excellence of Alfieri consists in powerful delineation of dramatic character. In his Philip II. he has represented, almost with the masterly touches of Tacitus, the sombre character, the dark mysterious counsels, the suspensa semper et obscura verba of the modern Tiberius. In Polinice the characters of the rival brothers are beautifully contrasted; in Maria Stuarda, that unfortunate Queen is represented unsuspicious, impatient of contradiction, and violent in her attachments. In Mirrha, the character of Cynaras is perfect as a father and king, and Cenchris is a model of the virtues of a wife and mother. In the representation of that species of mental alienation where the judgment has perished, but traces of character still remain, he is peculiarly happy. The insanity of Saul is skilfully managed; and the horrid joy of Orestes in killing Egisthus rises finely and naturally to madness, in finding that, at the same time, he had inadvertently slain his mother.

Whatever may be the merits or defects of Alfieri, he may be considered as the founder of a new school in the Italian drama. His country hailed him as her sole tragic poet, and his successors in the same path of literature have regarded his bold, austere, and rapid manner, as the genuine model of tragic composition.

Besides his tragedies, Alfieri published during his life many sonnets, five odes on American independence, and the poem of Etruria, founded on the assassination of Alexander I. Duke of Florence. Of his prose works, the most distinguished for animation and eloquence is the Panegyric on Trajan, composed in a transport of indignation at the supposed feebleness of Pliny’s eulogium. The two books, entitled La Tiranide and the Essays on Literature and Government, are remarkable for elegance and vigour of style, but are too evidently imitations of the manner of Machiavel. His Antigallican, which was written at the same time with his Defence of Louis XVI., comprehends a historical and satirical view of the French revolution. The posthumous works of Alfieri consist of satires, six political comedies, and the Memoirs of his Life;—a work which will always be read with interest, in spite of the cold and languid gravity with which he delineates the most interesting adventures and the strongest passions of his agitated life. See ''Mem. de Vitt. Alfieri.—Sismondi de la Litt. du Midi de l’Europe''.—Walker’s Memoir on Italian Tragedy.—''Giorn. de Pisa''. Tom. LVIII.(.) ALHAZEN, an Arabian author of the eleventh century, who is better entitled to the appellation of philosopher, than most of those of his countrymen by whom it has been obtained. The place of his birth was Bassorah; the year, uncertain; but his death took place at Cairo in 1038. There was another author of the same name, who translated the Almagest of Ptolemy; but that writer lived during the reign of the Caliph Almamon. In some accounts of Alhazen, we find it said, that he lived in Spain; but it appears from Casiri, (Bibl. Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis), that, after he left his native city, Egypt was his place of residence. It also appears, that he was invited to that country by one of the Fatemite Caliphs; and that the reason was, some boasts which he had made of being able to obviate the evils attendant upon the overflowing, as well as the decrease of the waters of the Nile. He surveyed the country with a view to this project, to aid which, every thing that he asked was liberally furnished by the Caliph; but finding that his imagination had seduced him into a wild and impracticable scheme, he feigned madness, thereby to avoid the punishment which he dreaded; and he continued to play this humiliating part till the Caliph’s death relieved him from his apprehensions.

But whatever figure he may have made as a projector, there can be no doubt that he was a skilful geometrician; and that his name deserves a conspicuous place among the improvers of the science of optics. He was not a mere compiler from the ancients, or commentator upon their works; he followed the bent of his own genius; and, striking into the right path of experiment and observation, his inquiries were productive of a real accession to the stock of knowledge, in regard to some of the most interesting phenomena of nature. He refuted the error of the ancient philosophers, that vision was produced by rays emitted from the eye. He gave the first sensible explanation of the cause of the apparent increase of the sun and moon when seen near the horizon; showing that this is occasioned by their being then supposed, owing to the number of intermediate objects, to be at a greater distance from the spectator. He was the first who applied the laws of refraction, to show how the heavenly bodies are sometimes seen as if above the horizon when still below it; and who, in the same way, explained the cause of the morning and evening twilight;—of that beneficent provision of nature, by which the glories of day are made gradually to approach, and gradually to withdraw. These dioptrical discoveries of the Arabian philosopher have furnished M. Bailly with one of the many fine passages which embellish his celebrated work on the History of Astronomy. (Astron. Moderne, L. vi. sect. 20.)

As a writer, Alhazen is censurable for unmeaning prolixity, and scholastic subtlety. It appears, from