At this
age he was sent to the academy at Turin, attended, as befitted a lad
of his rank, by a man-servant, who was to remain and wait on him at
school. Alfieri stayed here several years without revisiting his home,
tyrannised over by the valet who added to his grandeur, constantly
subject to sickness, and kept in almost total ignorance by his
incompetent preceptors. The gloom and pride and stoicism of his
temperament were augmented by this unnatural discipline. His spirit
did not break, but took a haughtier and more disdainful tone. He
became familiar with misfortunes. He learned to brood over and
intensify his passions. Every circumstance of his life seemed strung
up to a tragic pitch. This at least is the impression which remains
upon our mind after reading in his memoirs the narrative of what must
in many of its details have been a common schoolboy's life at that
time.
Meanwhile, what had become of young Goldoni? His boyhood was as
thoroughly plebeian, various, and comic as Alfieri's had been
patrician, monotonous, and tragical. Instead of one place of
residence, we read of twenty. Scrape succeeds to scrape, adventure to
adventure. Knowledge of the world, and some book learning also, flow
in upon the boy, and are eagerly caught up by him and heterogeneously
amalgamated in his mind. Alfieri learned nothing, wrote nothing, in
his youth, and heard his parents say--'A nobleman need never strive to
be a doctor of the faculties.
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