It is related that the superficial and occasional character of
Niccolini's conversion was discovered by this test, and that he
underwent the apposite penalty. He rebelled against the treatment he
received, and was arrested and imprisoned for his contumacy. When
Ferdinando III had returned and established his government on the
let-alone principle to which I have alluded, the dramatist was made
librarian of the Palatine Library at the Pitti Palace, but he could
not endure the necessary attendance at court, where his politics were
remembered against him by the courtiers, and he gave up the place.
The grand duke was sorry, and said so, adding that he was perfectly
contented. "Your Highness," answered the poet, "in this case it takes
two to be contented."
II
The first political tragedy of Niccolini was the _Nebuchadnezzar_,
which was printed in London in 1819, and figured, under that
Scriptural disguise, the career of Napoleon. After that came his
_Antonio Foscarini_, in which the poet, who had heretofore been a
classicist, tried to reconcile that school with the romantic by
violating the sacred unities in a moderate manner. In his subsequent
tragedies he seems not to have regarded them at all, and to have been
romantic as the most romantic Lombard of them all could have asked.
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