_), "that a man
whose soul possessed an uncommon share of ardour and sensibility, and
had experienced all the violence of the passions, should scarcely have
condescended to introduce love into his tragedies; or, when he does,
that he should only employ it with a kind of reserve and severity.
whose soul possessed an uncommon share of ardour and sensibility, and
had experienced all the violence of the passions, should scarcely have
condescended to introduce love into his tragedies; or, when he does,
that he should only employ it with a kind of reserve and severity.
Byron
Swinburne's tragedy, while innocent in act, she is smitten with remorse
for a passion which overmasters her loyalty to her husband. Byron's
Angiolina is "faultily faultless, . . . splendidly null. "
In a letter to Murray, dated January 4, 1821 (_Letters_, 1901, v. 218),
he says, "As I think that _love_ is not the principal passion for
tragedy, you will not find me a popular writer. Unless it is Love,
_furious_, _criminal_, and _hapless_ [as in _The Mysterious Mother_, or
in Alfieri's _Mirra_, or Shelley's _Cenci_], it ought not to make a
tragic subject. When it is melting and maudlin, it _does_, but it ought
not to do; it is then for the gallery and second-price boxes. " It is
probable that he owed these sentiments to the theory and practice of
Vittorio Alfieri. "It is extraordinary," writes M. de Fallette Barrol
(_Monthly Magazine_, April, 1805, reprinted in Preface to _Tragedie di
Alfieri_, A. Montucci, Edinburgh, 1805, i. xvi. _sq.
_), "that a man
whose soul possessed an uncommon share of ardour and sensibility, and
had experienced all the violence of the passions, should scarcely have
condescended to introduce love into his tragedies; or, when he does,
that he should only employ it with a kind of reserve and severity. . . . He
probably regarded it as a hackneyed agent; for in . . . _Myrrha_ it
appears in such a strange character, that all the art of the writer is
not capable of divesting it of an air at once ludicrous and disgusting. "
But apart from the example of Alfieri, there was another motive at
work--a determination to prove to the world that he was the master of
his own temperament, and that, if he chose, he could cast away frivolity
and cynicism, and clothe himself with austerity "as with a garment. " He
had been taken to task for "treating well-nigh with equal derision the
most pure of virtues, and the most odious of vices" (_Blackwood's Edin.
Mag. _, August, 1819), and here was an "answer to his accusers! "]
[403] {368}[The exact date of Marin Falier's birth is a matter of
conjecture, but there is reason to believe that he Was under
seventy-five years of age at the time of the conspiracy. The date
assigned is 1280-1285 A. D. ]
[de] {369} ----_has he been doomed?
