Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 2.djvu/219

not as celebrated as the author of the “Promessi Sposi” on this side of the Alps, but in Italy he has attained an equal, and indeed, in some respects, a higher reputation. Niccolini is a tragic and lyric poet, and a great prose writer. He commenced his career, as a dramatist, by tragedies on Greek and mythological subjects. His mind full of the verses of Dante, Tasso, and Ariosto, he reproduced on the stage, garbed in simple and sublime poetry, the theatre of the Greeks. His “Polixena”—his “Ino e Temisto,” and his “Œdipus,” might be said to be written on the model set by Alfieri, and equally liberal in sentiment. They were acted, and the beauty of the verses insured their success. Niccolini soon, however, became aware that his works did not meet the wants of modern society, and that he ought no longer to remain in the ways trodden by his masters; but that the time had arrived when to cease imitating the ancients. He resolved to seek the reputation of an original poet, and to create a new theatre. The “Foscarini,” a national subject, in which he paints, in the liveliest and blackest colours, the dark tyranny of the Venetian aristocracy, had a success on the stage previously unexampled in Italy. The enthusiasm spread among every rank of society; country people, farmers and labourers from the environs of Florence, were seen