Page:The Oxford book of Italian verse.djvu/27

INRODUCTION humanity, his mind is essentially meditative, and his inspiration is certainly the fruit of emotion remembered in tranquillity. Like Wordsworth, too, he occasionally descends to the commonplace. He has no quality, however, resembling the deep sense of tragedy that we find, for instance, in The Affliction of Margaret, nor does the natural loveliness of the world haunt him ‘like a passion’; in compensation, he has a remarkable power of wise irony which shines in Il Giorno like an accusing light amid the dull artificialities that made up the life of a Milanese giovanotto of his time. His lyric poems are the simple and exactly appropriate expression of his own sensations; he is content to abjure all the tropes and flourishes of the languishing Arcadia and to be completely individual. The Arcadians, like the Matthew Arnold of a famous caricature, were never wholly serious; Parini is always quietly in earnest, and his poetry, with its complete freedom from strained and pompous diction and foolish conceits, is a perfect and dignified protest against the moribund dynasty of the verbose.

With Alfieri the ironical spirit develops into savage hatred, so that his voice becomes harsh or shrill, and he seems to threaten the tyrants and fools of his world with wild and passionate gestures. He, too, is intensely in earnest about life, about himself—his pride in his own attitude of Prometheus defying the Zeus of despotism is akin to that of Byron.

Tiene il Ciel da' ribaldi, Alfier da' buoni.

The tranquillity of mind and all-embracing sympathy of a Shakespeare or a Molière were denied him; the artist in 27