The eighteenth century had thus endowed Italy with dramatic poets of European reputation, worthy to be inscribed on the same roll as Racine and Molière. All the varied dramatic activity of the Cinque Cento, Machiavelli’s _Mandragola_ and the two great pastoral dramas excepted, belonging essentially to a lower sphere, fails to counterweigh the masterpieces of Alfieri and Goldoni. Even their achievement, nevertheless, did not amount to the creation of a national drama. If tragedy and comedy can be said to have taken root at all, the latter degenerated, while the former put forth only sparse and occasional flowers. Alfieri’s best plays continue stock-pieces to this extent, that they are revived as offering the most suitable opportunities for the display of the brilliant histrionic genius which from time to time irradiates the Italian stage. A succession of gifted men--Monti, Foscolo, Manzoni, Pellico, Niccolini, Cossa--have continued the tradition, and on the whole the state of tragedy seems much the same in Italy as in England. Comedy, on the other hand, notwithstanding some encouraging signs of revival, is far from vigorous, and the melodrama which occupies the stage is devoid of literary pretensions. Under these discouraging circumstances it is not perhaps very extraordinary, though assuredly it is very amusing, that the Italian _literati_ of the present day, as reported by their interviewer-general, Signor Ojetti, should gravely pronounce the drama which they cannot write a rudimentary and superannuated form of art in comparison with the novel which they can--_ein ueberwundener Standpunkt_, as would be said in Germany. The idea of modern romancers transcending the art of Shakespeare and Sophocles is delightful from its modesty; but it must be evident that the short story alone can rival the artistic finish of a perfect drama, for every romance on a large scale must necessarily be eked out by descriptions, reflections, and episodes unessential to the main action.