Page:The National Idea in Italian Literature.djvu/33

 who form the dominions of the princes of Savoy, and calling upon the other Italian rulers to follow their example, and restore in their subjects the ancient military discipline, whereby "they will see Italy delivered from servitude and brought back to her former glory" (4). But not even Giannone has yet the conception of the unification of the peninsula and its islands under the sceptre of the King of Sardinia.

I do not quote the famous sonnets of Vincenzo da Filicaia on Italy. The typically Italian spirit at any epoch reveals itself, I think, not in melancholy sentiment concentrated on Italy's "dono infelice di bellezza," but in sheer virility of thought and utterance—that virilità that Santa Caterina so prized even in the mystical life. And this national virilità is personified in the poet who arose during the period immediately preceding the French Revolution, the period of literary and intellectual renovation which heralded the Risorgimento. This poet, in whose person Piedmont became identified with Italy, was Vittorio Alfieri.

At the end of one of his works in prose, Del Principe e delle lettere, completed in 1786, Alfieri speculates upon the form in which the destiny of Italy will be accomplished. Italy, he thinks, will soon be reunited under two princes (evidently the kings of Sardinia and Naples), and these two kingdoms will afterwards, either by marriage or conquest, be reduced to one. At this stage in Alfieri's political creed, king and tyrant were synonymous. So he continues that this one remaining sovereign will proceed to abuse his excessive power, and will in 21