"And thus," he says, "at the age of seven and twenty, I entered into the difficult engagement with the public and myself to become a writer of tragedies; and these were the props I had to sustain me in my undertaking,--a resolved, obstinate, and untamed spirit; a heart boiling over with all sorts of emotions, among which predominated the transports of love, and a profound and indignant abhorrence of every species of tyranny; a very slight recollection of the French tragedies I had seen acted, having read and studied none; an entire ignorance of the rules of the drama; and a total incapacity to command the language of which I made use;--all this was surrounded by a husk, not so much of presumption, as of petulance, and an impetuosity of character which stood in the way of my ever, except with reluctance, acknowledging, investigating, or giving ear to truth."
The first thing he found he had to do, was to apply himself to a spelling-book and grammar: this necessity was not admitted without a struggle; but the ardour of his enthusiasm enabled him to triumph over these petty but perplexing and irritating obstacles; and he gave himself up to the study of language with a mixture of impatience and perseverance that kept his mind in a perpetual tumult. He was under the necessity of driving away all French words and forms of speech from his mind, and of imbuing his thoughts in the idiom of Tuscany,--a work of unspeakable labour, uniting the studies of a man with those of a child, and sufficient to have overcome the resolution of any temper less ardent and ambitious than his own. After all, it must be acknowledged that it was to a great degree an insuperable difficulty; and, though overcome, in appearance, by Alfieri, yet in composition he had always two labours,--that of giving birth to ideas, and that of examining with the attention and scepticism of a foreigner the words in which he clothed them. This, perhaps, is the cause, that although, in process of time, his prose style became unexceptionable, and that of his tragedies full of fire and strength, his lyrics are such lamentable failures.
For nearly a year he was given up to the ungrateful task of clearing away the rubbish of another language, and placing the foundation stones of a pure and classic Italian. He retired to a village near Turin, that his attention might not be called off; and there, with a literary friend, he laboured at all that nauseates a schoolboy, with the still greater disgust of mere verbal difficulties which is felt by a man. After a year of much industry, he began to be aware that he should never attain his object as long as he merely translated himself from the French, which had become the language of his thoughts; and he resolved to pass six months in Tuscany, to learn, to hear, speak, think, and feel Tuscan only.