Excerpt from The Autobiography of Vittorio Alfieri, the Tragic Poet: Born at Asti, 1749 Died at Florence, 1803 Thought has always been free, even under despotisms. More burning is the shame, that we, who boast of our political independence, still drag the chain of British criticism. Who will deny it, when our writers dread the British Journalists more than our own, and the vulgarity of a Trollope, and the puerile carping of a Dickens, cut us to the quick? Our Statesmen of the Revolution broke away from the political systems of the Old World, and established one of their own: they made good their Declaration by a system of warfare Alexander and Caesar would have laughed at. Our Artists have abandoned the schools, and the precedents of ages, and are leading the way to brighter and higher fields of Art. Our Authors, too, are beginning to turn aside from stereotyped formulas, and leap the deep channels where thought has been forced for ages to flow; and a single generation will not pass before they will have severed the last link in the foul chain that has bound us. This is the spirit that has already given us a National Literature, and when an American Congress can be got together, who consider Bancroft's History, and Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, worth as much as the filthy dreams of Eugene Sue and Paul de Kock, then it will become an object for Americans to write such books. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."