LITERATURE.

Colonist, Issue 1, 23 October 1857, Page 4

LITERATURE.

REVIEW.

Alfieri and Goldoni; their IdvcS and, Ammturss. By E. Copping. London: Addoy and Co. 2857. Mr. Coppin's work does not profess to be one of original research or exhaustive completeness. His object is, within compendious limits and in an attractive form, to embody lifelike images of the two Italian dramatists and their several careers. It is an ambitious effort under an unpresuming appearance; for, perhaps, of all forms of biography, the one he has chosen is the most difficult to deal with successfully. It is not easy to be at once brief and discriminating— to employ no unnecessary space in the outline, and yet to preserve all those delicacies of coloring on which the charm of biography depends. Yet it is an object worth striving iav. Few of the lessor works of art are capable of giving higher pleasure, or deservedly coimnand a more permanent attention, than the sort of lives of which Southey's Nelson has often been cited as affording one of the best examples. Mr. Copping has wisely steered clear of the semibiogTaphics, semi-romances, which have of late been in fashion, in which iho adventures of men of the same period are drawn into a. common field of view by links arranged according to the inventive genius of the biographer—in which a branching growth of detailed narrative springs from a scarcely appreciable root of fact, and the favoured author, wilting from the inner consciousness of his hero,' assigns him his thoughts, his motives, and his most secret experiences „ with a completeness which is highly satisfactory ro those who abound in faith, and an accuracy which no reader is in a position to disprove. Thus to., treat a dead man as clay in the hands of the potter, and mako any -. attractive-looking thing you please out of his remains, & not difficult, and k not instructive; but to n^Ke the dry bones live—to preserve with accuracy at least the frame of what a man was, and, with a conscientious adherence to fact, to fill up as full and faithful an image of what that living* man once was as the materials permit—is a task which demands singleness of character as well as a liigh degree both of the insight aud the reconstructive power of genius. In one respect, the present writer has been very successful. His narration is clear, simple, and continuous—his incidents unfold themselves easily, and leave a distinct and connected impression on the reader's iiiind. Kis strength lies in dealing with facts, and is -counterbalanced by a weakness m the opposite direction. He is more at home with events than with men, and hence his book is rather a record of the lives and adventures of his heroes, than a very -lifelike presentment of the j men themselres. T?he passionate self-willed career I of Alfieri, the strange mixture of reckless abandonment and rigorous self-control in his character, the j force and the limits of his genius, demand, to do ' thenj justice, an imagination more powerful and a<■ criticism -more profound and comprehensive than the present biographer has brought to bear upon" them. Indeed, the absence of all criticism on his - writings is an omission of the importance of which the writer of his life ought to have been sensible. One does not wish for an elaborate account of Goldoni's works—one can understand bis life perfectly well without it. But the writings of some men are a part of their lives, and with no man was this more the case than with Alfieri. He wrote, not like Shakespeare, from a placid imagination, creating and moring in a new world hi true harmony with all human conditions, yet removed like a dream from the personal feelings and condition of the poet—he wrota from the fh-e burning in his own. heart. The intensity of his. own emotions, not the vividness of his imagination, breathed passionate life into his creations. JShakcspeare sways the fate of his creatures like the careless gods of Olympus controlling the lives of men. He balances them in an airy aad invisible hand— effortless, because all-powerful. Tse dritftytimii. . hither and tliither without strain and without sympathy. But Alfieri is keen aiid direct—he is himself engrossed.—he identifies himself with the feelings and circumstances of his characters, and they in return rent Ills own Ideas and his own feelings. He stood on a level with the beings he imagined—breathed the same air, and shared the same conflicts. He trrote in haste, in passion, abandoning himself, not to his imagination, but to his ' emotions. The first act'of his Alcestis was composed, he tells us himself, with the fury of a madman, and with-floods of-tear* - . The strict moulds of art hi which he cast his conceptions, and the laborious pains lie employed in the process, may seem at first sight in strange contradiction with the impulsive character of his' <>':nius, or ratlter of hi 3 nature —£or his literary genius and his personal nature were identical:—

Kiwh tragedy that ho wrote underwent three distinct operations before receiving tlye last finishing touches. In tho ni\st place, tho subject being con-conceived-in his mind, ho distributed it into scenes, fixed, the number of the cliar&ctera, and briefly wrote in prose the summary of what they were to .do and say, scene by scene! this he-c&lled conceiving. ' Hajnng done thus far, he put the imperfect work aside for some time, and did not approach it until his mind was entirely free of the subject. If ho did not then quite approve of what he had written, and feel a strong desiro to continue it, ho burnt the manuscript, or changed its plan : the former fate happened to a tragedy ho had sketched upon tho subjeoifof Itomeo and Juliet, and to one upoa.that of Charles I. If, on tho contrary, he approved his first sketch, lie submitted it to a second process, tvhick he called development. He took what he had previously written, wrote out at length in prose the scenes he had merely indicated in tho first instance—wrote theia with all the forco of which ho was capable,'without stopping to analyse a thought or correct an expression. He then proceeded to versify at his leisure the prose he had written, selecting with cr.re the ideas he thought best, and rejecting those which he deemed only worthy of euch treatment. Even then he did not'regard his ■work as finished, but incoaoflntly polished it verse by vcr.se, and made continual alterations as he considered them necessary.

Yet, in .reality, tluere is in all this the truest consistency. " In a man in whom the moulding imagination is all-powerful, all that ho writes assumes, naturally and insensibly, artistic forms. Tennyson, can hardly write at all without writing a poem; but n man in whom tho personal'element so utterly overpowers the imaginative as waS the case with Alfieri, is furnished in the first instance only with tho materials, which it needs an aftcreffbrfc to compgl into shape, and to furnish with completeness; and the less instinctive are a man's perceptions of the natural organic growth and structure of poetical ideas, the more dependent he is on deduced, roles, and the more inviting and more easy he finds it to avail himself of those which are precise and stringent. This is the reason why Alfieri adhered to Greek forma. We have said thus much to indicate the reasons why every life of Alfieri must be incomplete which does not furnish some insight into the character of his writings. Goldoni's is an easier character to appreciate. It has none of the strangeness and force of Ameri's; but it presents another and not| less difficulty in its evanescent hues, and the absence of definite outline. Such a character it is peculiarly difficult to describe within moderate limits. A biographer may choose whctlier he wJ& furnish his reader with all available materials, and leave him to gathdr his own ijjgar of tho pSi'so-n whose life it is his business to reproduce, or whether he, will himself use the materials and melt them 'Sown into an imago of his own. In the latter case alone he produces a work of art; but to render, in this manner, a truthful and lifelike image, is a task to which not one writer in a thousand is equal. The leaser traits and shades of thought and action, on which the finer distinctions of character so much depend, can occupy but small space on so reduced a canvass, and it becomes requisite that the writer should have the subtlety of apprehension necessary to appreciate their full significance, and judgment to decide upon their real-import. More than this, he must be.able to create anew' for othejp the impression that has been produced upon himself, not only with all its vividness, but with all its delicacy. Mj.:, Copping can scarcely be said to be equal to so high a demand upon h'hn. He has furnished an excellent epitome of the materials rather than sublimated a lifelike image from, them. Such lives have their value, but Hot so mush in aiding us in the. study of individual character as in filling up the interstices and finishing the outlines of history.

These two'biographies arc supplemented^ somo . remarks on the present state of the comic drama & England, embodying some curious specimens of the sort of translation and adaptation ■which entitles an Englishman to call himself the author of a French play. Mr. Copping's indignation is just, but we doubt whether it will ,have much offect in stripping our clique of dramatic jackdaws of their foreign feathers. Contempt must accumulate largely before it outweighs the inducements of gain and indolence.