His mode of writing his tragedies shows, indeed, how spontaneous was his conception of the action of a piece, how mechanical the effort by which he clothed it in verse. He was accustomed to throw off the design of the intended action in a sketch of a few pages, and then to lay it by: after an interval, he read this sketch, and, if it pleased him, he arranged the plot into acts, and scenes, and speeches, putting down every idea that presented itself, and the whole in prose; and again he put aside his labour for future consideration. If, on reading it over, he felt his imagination warmed and excited, and the ideas renew themselves in his mind vividly and forcibly, then he completed his work by versifying it. This is not the routine which a genuine poet follows: something of the improvisatore's art is inherent in him, and he writes "in numbers, for the numbers come."
"Philip" was the first of Alfieri's tragedies: it was originally written in French prose; and he was so well pleased with its conduct, that he was never weary of composing and recomposing it in Italian verse, till he was satisfied that the language was equal in vigour to the ideas it expressed. The subject of "Philip" is the death of don Carlos, prince of Spain; and the contrast of character in the three principal persons is finely conceived and well executed. There is the obdurate, deceitful, cruel tyrant. His son, educated near him, in perpetual fear and suspicion, is never his dupe: he sees through all his subterfuges, and perceives the snares laid for him in his pretended mercies; and love, while it causes him to expose himself to his father's vengeance, only renders him doubly watchful and cautious. Isabella, on the contrary, a daughter of France, at the same time that, from feminine delicacy, she is more restrained in her feelings, yet is unsuspicious, unguarded, and ready to give credit to the professions of those around. Her heart opens itself readily to hope; while that of her lover is impassive to every delusion, and he regards with terror and grief the peril to which, in her generous trustingness of nature, she heedlessly exposes herself.
As the genius of Alfieri led him to depict the passions in their simplest though most energetic form, unaccompanied by the influence of manners, the metaphysical subtleties of Shakspeare, or the wild, but deeply interesting intricacy of plot of Calderon and our old dramatists, so classical subjects were treated by him with peculiar felicity. "Agamemnon" and "Orestes" are among his best dramas: the dignity and tenderness of Electra, the remorse and struggles of Clytemnestra, and the haughty, rash disposition of Orestes, have more of truth, of nature, and grace than is to be found among any modern tragedies on similar subjects: but this very simplicity becomes, to a certain degree, baldness in modern subjects; and though the conspiracy of the "Pazzi" was written, he says, with a delirious enthusiasm for liberty, there is a want of developement and relief that renders it more like the sketch of a tragedy, than one filled out in all its parts. "Virginia," equally pregnant with the spirit of liberty, has more grace and more pathos.