Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: son, and if I recall the remembrance of a few, it will only be in regard to things which are either indifferent or praiseworthy. The object of this work relates chiefly to the study of man in general. And of what man can any one speak so correctly as of himseif? What other can he study more easily, know more intimately, or estimate with greater accuracy, — having for so many years penetrated into his most secret thoughts ? As to the style of these memoirs, dictated by the heart and not the head, I have undeviatingly throughout employed that spontaneous and natural simplicity which, in my opinion, is best suited to a subject of this nature. chapter{Section 4MEMOIRS VITTORIO ALFIERI FIRST EPOCH. INFANCY. INCLUDING NINE YEARS OF MY LIFE. | WAS born in the city of Asli, in Piedmont, on the 17th of January, 1749, of noble, wealthy, and respectable parents. I particularly mention these three circumstances, because I regard them as extremely fortunate, for the following reasons: my noble birth enabled me, without incurring the charge of envy or meanness, to despise those nobles who were distinguished only by their origin, and to unveil their follies, their abuses, and crimes, while at the same time its influence was sufficiently powerful to prevent me sullying the dignity of the art I professed. The affluence of my circumstances enabled me to dedicate my labors to the interests of truth; andthe probity of my parents prevented mo from blushing that I had been born a gentleman. If any one of these circumstances had been wanting, my different works must necessarily have suffered by it, and I myself might even perhaps have been either a worse philosopher or a less respectable man. The name of my father was Anthony Alfieri; that of my mother Monica Maillard de Tournon. S...