He recommenced his travels; and his only gratification, in the absence of freedom among the continental states, came from contemplating the wild and sterile regions of the north of Sweden, where gloomy forests, lakes and precipices encouraged his sublime and melancholy ideas.

While thus employed, he became acquainted with Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern, also known as the Countess of Albany, who was living with her husband, Charles Edward Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie"), at Florence.

He supported the American Revolution and wrote a collection of odes published as L’America libera and dedicated a play about the ancient Romans to George Washington.

His application to study gradually tranquillized his temper and softened his manners, leaving him at the same time in perfect possession of those good qualities he inherited from nature: a warm and disinterested attachment to his family and friends, united to a generosity, vigour and elevation of character, which rendered him not unworthy to embody in his dramas the actions and sentiments of Grecian heroes.

Before his time the Italian language, so harmonious in the Sonnets of Petrarch and so energetic in the Commedia of Dante, had been invariably languid and prosaic in dramatic dialogue.

The pedantic and inanimate tragedies of the 16th century were followed, during the Iron Age of Italian literature, by dramas of which extravagance in the sentiments and improbability in the action were the chief characteristics.

[13] On these tragedies, it is difficult to pronounce a judgment, as the taste and system of the author underwent considerable change and modification in the intervals between the three periods of their publication.

[13] Another characteristic common to every Alfieri's tragedy is that the main character is always a tragic "hero of freedom" whose ambition and need of revolution push him to fight tyranny and oppression wherever they exist.

This desire for freedom always moves the hero into a dimension of solitude, pessimism, and internal torment, but he keeps going despite knowing that the majority of the people around him can't understand or share his views and struggles, or that his goals are almost impossible to reach.

In this excessive zeal for the observance of unity he seems to have forgotten that its charm consists in producing a common relation between multiplied feelings, and not in the bare exhibition of one, divested of those various accompaniments that give harmony to the whole.

Consistently with the austere and simple manner he thought the chief excellence of dramatic composition, he excluded from his scene all coups de theatre, all philosophical reflexions, and that highly ornamented versification so assiduously cultivated by his predecessors.

In his anxiety, however, to avoid all superfluous ornament, he has stripped his dramas of the embellishments of imagination; and for the harmony and flow of poetical language he has substituted, even in his best performances, a style that, though correct and pure, is generally harsh, elaborate and abrupt; often strained into unnatural energy or condensed into factitious conciseness.

In his Filippo he has represented, almost with the masterly touches of Tacitus, the sombre character, the dark mysterious counsels, the suspensa semper et obscura verba, of the modern Tiberius.

In Polinice, the characters of the rival brothers are beautifully contrasted; in Maria Stuarda (Mary Stuart), that unfortunate queen is represented as unsuspicious, impatient of contradiction and violent in her attachments.

The insanity of Saul is skilfully managed, and the horrid joy of Orestes in killing Aegisthus rises finely and naturally to madness in finding that, at the same time, he had inadvertently slain his mother.

[13] Besides his tragedies, Alfieri published during his life many sonnets; five odes on American independence; one tramelogedia, (Abele); and the poem of Etruria, based on the assassination of Alexander, duke of Florence.

Of his prose works the most distinguished for animation and eloquence is the Panegyric on Trajan, composed in a transport of indignation at the supposed feebleness of Pliny's eulogium.

His books La Tirannide and the Essays on Literature and Government are remarkable for elegance and vigour of style, but are too evidently imitations of the manner of Machiavelli.

It is proved Alfieri was initiated in the regular Masonic Lodge "Vittoria" of Naples which was an obedience of the Gran Loggia Nazionale "Lo Zelo", founded in 1874-185 by aristocrat Freemasons closely linked to the queen Maria Carolina of Austria.

The first edition of the Alfieri's tragedy was published in 1763 and sent to the following notable Freemasons: the von Kaunitz brothers of Turin, Giovanni Pindemonte e Gerolamo Zulian in Venice, Annibale Beccaria (brother of Cesare), Luigi Visconte Arese e Gioacchino Pallavicini in Milan, Carlo Gastone Rezzonico in Parma, Saveur Grimaldi in Genoa, Ludovico Savioli in Bologna, Kiliano Caraccioli which was Venerable Master in Naples, Giuseppe Guasco in Rome.

Some months later, the Savoia dynasty banned any Masonic activity from the Piedmont and the Great Master count Asinari of Bernezzo was obliged to transfer his title to the prince Diego Naselli of Naples.

Quando canta di voi con versi inetti.The chapter continues mentioning the Scottish Rite degrees of Venerabile, primo Vigilante, Oratore and Segretario.