His ample wealth enabled him to indulge in pleasures and pursuits which often diverted his attention from his poetical labours. He was especially fond of riding and horses, and he made several pilgrimages to England to replenish his stud. English literature does not seem to have occupied much of his attention. In his Autobiography he mentions the works of Pope, and he says that he looked into Shakespeare and became fully aware of his faults. It would have been well if he had been equally alive to his beauties, and if he could have caught a reflection of their rainbow hues to irradiate his own statuesque tragedies. In later years he made the acquaintance of Louisa Stolberg, Countess of Albany, wife of Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, and she took refuge with him from the brutality of her drunken husband. They went together to Paris, and there he published his tragedies in four volumes, in 1789. They remained in Paris, convulsed as it was with the frenzy of the Great Revolution, up to the very last moment compatible with safety; and in 1792 they returned to Italy, just in time to escape the massacres of September. They took up their abode in Florence, where he amused himself with learning Greek and translating some of the tragedies of Euripides. He died in 1803, and the Countess of Albany had a magnificent monument by Canova erected to his memory in the Church of Santa Croce. Alfieri was a fertile writer, as was to be expected from the unwearied industry which was one of his most salient characteristics. He wrote numerous poems and satires, nearly thirty tragedies, several comedies, translations from the Greek and Latin, political tracts, and his Autobiography. His fame rests entirely on his Tragedies, his Autobiography, and, I think, his Satires, some of which are very racy and original, especially the piece descriptive of his travels in foreign countries. His Autobiography gives us a vivid picture of the Italy of the Eighteenth Century, of its torpor and frivolity. He reveals himself with a complete absence of reserve, and his Life is the only work in which he gives us vivid descriptions, all his other productions being rather colourless from the lack of descriptions. Want of colour is, indeed, the great defect of his poetry, as well as of his prose. He had little eye for the beauties of Nature, and less for the beauties of Art. He has nothing of the sweetness of Metastasio; he has none of the exquisite details of Parini. Indeed, the details of his works are singularly devoid of charm. To do them justice, we must consider them as a whole, and not dwell on detached passages. The best of his Tragedies, to my mind, is one of the earliest, the _Filippo,_ on the subject of Philip the Second of Spain and Don Carlos. One of the most striking passages in Alfieri is the laconic dialogue, terrible in its fierce abruptness, between Philip and his confidant Gomez, after they have overheard the interview between the lovers.