Nothing in Alfieri's life was more like him than his death, of which the Abbate di Caluso gives a full account in his conclusion of the poet's biography. His malady was gout, and amidst its tortures he still labored at the comedies he was then writing. He was impatient at being kept in-doors, and when they added plasters on the feet to the irksomeness of his confinement, he tore away the bandages that prevented him from walking about his room. He would not go to bed, and they gave him opiates to ease his anguish; under their influence his mind was molested by many memories of things long past. “The studies and labors of thirty years,” says the Abbate, “recurred to him, and what was yet more wonderful, he repeated in order, from memory, a good number of Greek verses from the beginning of Hesiod, which he had read but once. These he said over to the Signora Contessa, who sat by his side, but it does not appear, for all this, that there ever came to him the thought that death, which he had been for a long time used to imagine near, was then imminent. It is certain at least that he made no sign to the contessa though she did not leave him till morning. About six o'clock he took oil and magnesia without the physician's advice, and near eight he was observed to be in great danger, and the Signora Contessa, being called, found him in agonies that took away his breath. Nevertheless, he rose from his chair, and going to the bed, leaned upon it, and presently the day was darkened to him, his eyes closed and he expired. The duties and consolations of religion were not forgotten, but the evil was not thought so near, nor haste necessary, and so the confessor who was called did not come in time.” D'Azeglio relates that the confessor arrived at the supreme moment, and saw the poet bow his head: “He thought it was a salutation, but it was the death of Vittorio Alfieri.” II I once fancied that a parallel between Alfieri and Byron might be drawn, but their disparities are greater than their resemblances, on the whole. Both, however, were born noble, both lived in voluntary exile, both imagined themselves friends and admirers of liberty, both had violent natures, and both indulged the curious hypocrisy of desiring to seem worse than they were, and of trying to make out a shocking case for themselves when they could. They were men who hardly outgrew their boyishness. Alfieri, indeed, had to struggle against so many defects of training that he could not have reached maturity in the longest life; and he was ruled by passions and ideals; he hated with equal noisiness the tyrants of Europe and the Frenchmen who dethroned them.