"Very well," he observed; "where Citizen Christ cannot stay,
I have nothing to do," and went out. "Equality doesn't consist in
dragging me down to your level," he said to one who had impudently
given him the _thou_, "but in raising you to mine, if possible. You
will always be a pitiful creature, even though you call yourself
Citizen; and though you call me Citizen, you can't help my being the
Abbate Parini." To another, who reproached him for kindness to an
Austrian prisoner, he answered, "I would do as much for a Turk, a
Jew, an Arab; I would do it even for you if you were in need." In his
closing years many sought him for literary counsel; those for whom
there was hope he encouraged; those for whom there was none, he made
it a matter of conscience not to praise. A poor fellow came to repeat
him two sonnets, in order to be advised which to print; Parini heard
the first, and, without waiting further, besought him "Print the
other!"
VITTORIO ALFIERI
Vittorio Alfieri, the Italian poet whom his countrymen would
undoubtedly name next after Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso, and
who, in spite of his limitations, was a man of signal and distinct
dramatic power, not surpassed if equaled since, is scarcely more than
a name to most English readers.
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