Little as any anti-national motive can be attributed to the Adelchi, it is true that Manzoni's patriotism was chiefly evinced in his lyrics, and that he was not prominent as a patriotic dramatist. This part was reserved for Giovanni Battista Niccolini (1782–1861). In times of trial and distress the measure of service is apt to be the measure of applause, and popular gratitude may for a time have exalted Niccolini's Tragedies to a higher level than that due to their strictly literary desert. They are nevertheless fine productions, and the most patriotic are usually the best. Arnaldo di Brescia, too bold an apotheosis of the fiery monk who defied the Papacy in the twelfth century to be printed in Italy for many years after its appearance in France, is the most poetical, but is neither intended nor adapted for the stage. Notwithstanding its historical subject, this mighty tragedy, as Mr. W. D. Howells, the translator of some of its finest passages, not unjustly terms it, is an idealistic work. The other dramas, taken from history, and representing such crises in Italian story as the destruction of Florentine liberty and the Sicilian Vespers, are more compliant with ordinary dramatic rules; but the most celebrated and successful on the stage is Antonio Foscarini, founded on the same incident in Venetian history that had afforded the subject of Pindemonte's poem. Before he became imbued with the spirit of the romantic school, Niccolini had acquired great distinction as a classical dramatist, especially by his Potissena and his Medea. His first performance, Nabucco (1816), idealised the fall of Napoleon in a Babylonian tragedy. Among his plays is a free translation of Shelley's Cenci, in general excellent, but remarkable for the entire disfigurement of the opening speech, no doubt for prudential reasons. At first poor,
