and honourable. Such characters abound in Italy, and wonderful it is that only one member of so observant and lively a race should have won an European reputation as a comic author. Tragedy has in some measure flourished since the death of Alfieri, but Goldoni still stands alone. The absence of any predecessor is explicable from the circumstances enumerated at the beginning of this chapter: the national style of comedy was not literary, and no literary reputation could be built upon or out of it; while those who followed a different path produced simply academic work devoid of all vitality. Goldoni broke the spell; and gave Italy a classical form of comedy which has not indeed remained uncultivated, but has never since his time been cultivated by a master. He was born at Venice in 1707, and was the son of a physician. His dramatic tastes were inherited from his grandfather, a Modenese, and all the endeavours of his parents to direct his activity into other channels came to nothing. He was indeed educated for a lawyer, graduated, held at different times a secretaryship and a councillorship, seemed to have settled steadily down to the practice of law, when an unexpected invitation carried him off to Venice, and for years he did nothing but manage theatres and write plays, directing all his energies to supersede the national Comedy of Masks, and comedies of intrigue dependent upon intricacy of plot, by representations of actual life and manners. Many of his best plays were written in the Venetian dialect. At length (1761) umbrage, as was thought, at the vogue of Gozzi's fairy dramas induced Goldoni to accept a royal invitation to Paris, where he spent the remainder of his life composing plays in French, and writing his memoirs in the same language.
