psychological study more minute than any stage play could ever be, Alfieri was only very moderately interested in the subtle analysis or representation of character and state of mind; the fine touches which bring home a person or a situation did not attract his attention; nor was he troubled by considerations concerning the probability of a given word or words being spoken at a particular moment and by a particular man or woman: realism had no meaning for him. As it was with intellectual conception, so was it also with instructive sympathy: Alfieri never subtly analysed the anatomy of individual nature, nor did he unconsciously mimic its action and tones; what most of us mean by pathos did not appeal to him. Neither metrical nor imaginative pleasurableness, nor descriptive charm, nor lyric poignancy, nor psychological analysis or intention entered, therefore, into Alfieri's conception of a desirable tragedy, any more than any of these things fell within the range of his special talents; for, we must always bear in mind that with this man, whose feelings and desires were in such constant action and reaction, with this man whose will imposed his intellectual notions on his feelings, and his emotional tendencies on his thoughts, the thing which he enjoys is always as the concave to the convex of the thing which he produces. But although Alfieri was not a poet, and was not even a potential novel writer, he was, in a sense, essentially a dramatist; though even here we must distinguish and diminish. Alfieri was not a man who cared for rapid action or for intricate plot: he never felt the smallest inclination to violate the old traditions of the pseudo-classic stage by those thrilling scenes or sights which had to be described and not shown, nor by those complications of interest which require years for an action instead of the orthodox twenty-four hours.