I. Literature.—The general character of the literature of the school appears as the necessary consequence of the state of affairs brought about by the fall of Greek nationality and independence. The great works of the Greek mind had formerly been the products of a fresh life of nature and perfect freedom of thought. All their hymns, epics and histories were bound up with their individuality as a free people. But the Macedonian conquest at Chaeroneia brought about a complete dissolution of this Greek life in all its relations, private and political. The full, genial spirit of Greek thought vanished when freedom, with which it was inseparably united, was lost. A substitute for this originality was found at Alexandria in learned research, extended and multifarious knowledge. Amply provided with means for acquiring information, and under the watchful care of a great monarch, the Alexandrians readily took this new direction in literature. With all the great objects removed which could excite a true spirit of poetry, they devoted themselves to minute researches in all sciences subordinate to literature proper. They studied criticism, grammar, prosody and metre, antiquities and mythology. The results of this study constantly appear in their productions. Their works are never national, never addressed to a people, but to a circle of learned men. Moreover, the very fact of being under the protection and, as it were, in the pay of an absolute monarch was damaging to the character of their literature. There was introduced into it a courtjy element, clear traces of which, with all its accompaniments, are found in the extant works of the school. One other fact, not to be forgotten in forming a general estimate of the literary value of their productions, is, that the same writer was frequently or almost always distinguished in several special sciences. The most renowned poets were at the same time men of culture and science, critics, archaeologists, astronomers or physicians. To such writers the poetical form was merely a convenient vehicle for the exposition of science.

The forms of poetical composition chiefly cultivated by the Alexandrians were epic and lyric, or elegiac. Great epics are wanting; but in their place, as might almost have been expected, are found the historical and the didactic or expository epics. The subjects of the historical epics were generally some of the well-known myths, in the exposition of which the writer could exhibit the full extent of his learning and his perfect command of verse. These poems are in a sense valuable as repertoires of antiquities; but their style is on the whole bad, and infinite patience is required to clear up their numerous and obscure allusions. The best extant specimen is the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius; the most characteristic is the Alexandra or Cassandra of Lycophron, the obscurity of which is almost proverbial.

The subjects of didactic epics were very numerous; they seem to have depended on the special knowledge possessed by the writers, who used verse as a form for unfolding their information. Some, e.g. the lost poem of Callimachus, called Ai'tia, were on the origin of myths and religious observances; others were on special sciences. Thus we have two poems of Aratus, who, though not resident at Alexandria, was so thoroughly imbued with the Alexandrian spirit as to be with reason included in the school; the one is an essay on astronomy, the other an account of the signs of the weather. Nicander of Colophon has also left us two epics, one on remedies for poisons, the other on the bites of venomous beasts. Euphorion and Rhianus wrote mythological epics. The spirit of all their productions is the same, that of learned research. They are distinguished by artistic form, purity of expression and strict attention to the laws of metre and prosody, qualities which, however good in themselves, do not compensate for want of originality, freshness and power.

In their lyric and elegiac poetry there is much worthy of admiration. The specimens we possess are not devoid of talent or of a certain happy art of expression. Yet, for the most part, they either relate to objects thoroughly incapable of poetic treatment, where the writer's endeavour is rather to expound the matter fully than to render it poetically beautiful, or else expend themselves on short isolated subjects, generally myths, and are erotic in character. The earliest of the elegiac poets was Philetas, the sweet singer of Cos. But the most distinguished was Callimachus, undoubtedly the greatest of the Alexandrian poets. Of his numerous works there remain to us only a few hymns, epigrams and fragments of elegies.1 Other lyric poets were Phanocles, Hermesianax, Alexander of Aetolla and Lycophron.

Some of the best productions of the school were their epirams. Of these we have several specimens, and the art of composing them seems to have been assiduously cultivated, as might naturally be expected from the court life of the poets, and their constant endeavours after terseness and neatness of expression. Of kindred character were the parodies and satirical poems, of which the best examples were the Silli of Timon and the Cinaedi of Sotades.

Dramatic poetry appears to have flourished to some extent. There are still extant three or four varying lists of the seven great dramatists who composed the Pleiad of Alexandria. Their works, perhaps not unfortunately, have perished. A ruder kind of drama, the amoebaean verse, or bucolic mime, developed into the only pure stream of genial poetry found in the Alexandrian School, the Idylls of Theocritus. The name of these poems preserves their original idea; they were pictures of fresh country life.

The most interesting fact connected with this Alexandrian poetry is the powerful influence it exercised on Roman literature. That literature, especially in the Augustan age, is not to be thoroughly understood without due appreciation of the character of the Alexandrian school. The historians of this period were numerous and prolific. Many of them, e.g. Cleitarchus, devoted themselves to the life and achievements of Alexander the Great. The best-known names are those of Timaeus and Polybius.

Before the Alexandrians had begun to produce original works, their researches were directed towards the masterpieces of ancient Greek literature. If that literature was to be a power in the world, it must be handed down to posterity in a form capable of being understood. This was the task begun and carried out by the Alexandrian critics. These men did not merely collect works, but sought to arrange them, to subject the texts to criticism, and to explain any allusion or reference in them which at a later date might become obscure. The complete philological examination of any work consisted, according to them, of the following processes:—-diorthosis, arrangement of the text; anagnosis, settlement of accents; tenn??, theory of forms, syntax; lxegnsis, explanation either of words or things; and finally, krisis, judgment on the author and his work, including all questions as to authenticity and integrity. To perform their task adequately required from the critics a wide circle of knowledge; and from this requirement sprang the sciences of grammar, prosody, lexicography, mythology and archaeology. The service rendered by these critics is invaluable. To them we owe not merely the possession of the greatest works of Greek intellect, but the possession of them in a readable state. The most celebrated critics were Zenodotus; Aristophanes of Byzantium, to whom we owe the theory of Greek accents; Crates of Mallus; and Aristarchus of Samothrace, confessedly the coryphaeus of criticism. Others were Lycophron, Callimachus, Eratosthenes and many of a later age, for the critical school long survived the literary. Dionysius Thrax, the author of the first scientific Greek grammar, may also be mentioned. These philological labours were of great indirect importance, for they led immediately to the study of the natural sciences, and in particular to a more accurate knowledge of geography and history. Considerable attention began to be paid to the ancient history of Greece, and to all the myths relating to the foundation of states and cities. A large collection of such curious information is contained in the Bibliotheca of Apollodorus, a pupil of Aristarchus who flourished in the 2nd century B.C. Eratosthenes was the first to write on mathematical and physical geography; he also first attempted to draw up a chronological table of the Egyptian kings and of the historical events of Greece. The sciences of mathematics, astronomy and medicine were also cultivated with assiduity and success at Alexandria, but they can scarcely be said to have their origin there, or in any strict sense to form a part of the peculiarly Alexandrian literature. The founder of the mathematical school was the celebrated Euclid (Eucleides); among its scholars were Archimedes; Apollonius of Perga, author of a treatise on Conic Sections; Eratosthenes, to whom we owe the first measurement of the earth; and Hipparchus, the founder of the epicyclical theory of the heavens, afterwards called the Ptolemaic system, from its most famous expositor, Claudius Ptolemaeus. Alexandria continued to be celebrated as a school of mathematics and science long after the Christian era. The science of medicine had distinguished representatives in Herophilus and Erasistratus, the two first great anatomists.

AUTHORITIES.—Muller and Donaldson, History of the Literature of Ancient Greece; W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur; Mahaffy, Greek Life and Thought from the Age of Alexander to the Roman Empire; Couat, La Poesie alexandrine; and especially Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandninerzeit. Nicolai's Gricchische Literaturgeschichte, though somewhat out of date, is useful for bibliography.

II. Philosophy.—Although it is not possible to divide literatures with absolute rigidity by centuries, and although the intellectual life of Alexandria, particularly as applied to science, long survived the Roman conquest, yet at that period the school, which for some time had been gradually breaking up, seems finally to have succumbed. The later productions in the field of pure literature bear the stamp of Rome rather than of Alexandria. But in that city for some time past there had been various forces secretly working, and these, coming in contact with great spiritual changes in the world around, produced a second outburst of intellectual activity, which is generally known as the Alexandrian school of philosophy. The doctrines of this school were a fusion of Eastern and Western thought, and combined in varying proportions the elements of Hellenistic and Jewish philosophy. Traces of this eclectic tendency are discoverable as far back as 280 B.C., but for practical purposes the dates of the school may be given as from about 30 B.C. to A.D. 529. The city of Alexandria had gradually become the neutral ground of Europe, Asia and Africa. Its population, then as at the present day, was a heterogeneous collection of all races. Alexander had planted a colony of Jews who had increased in number until at the beginning of the Christian era they occupied two-fifths of the city and held some of the highest offices. The contact of Jewish theology with Greek speculation became the great problem of thought. The Jewish ideas of divine authority and their transcendental theories of conduct were peculiarly attractive to the Greek thinkers who found no inspiration in the dry intellectualism into which they had fallen (see NEO-PYTHAGOREANISM). At the same time the Jews of the Dispersion had to some extent shaken off the exclusiveness of their old political relations and were prepared to compare and contrast their old territorial theology with cosmopolitan culture. Further, when the two sides came to consider the results of their intellectual inheritance they found that they had sufficient common ground for the initial compromise. Thus the Hellenistic doctrine of personal revelation could be combined with the Jewish tradition of a complete theology revealed to a special people. The result was the application of a purely philosophical system to the somewhat vague and unorganized corpus of Jewish theology. The matter was Jewish, the arrangement Greek. According to the relative predominance of these two elements arose Gnosticism, the Patristic theology, and the philosophical schools of Neo-Pythagoreanism, Neo-Platonism and eclectic Platonism.

The members of the school may be enumerated under three heads. (1) The beginnings of the eclectic spirit are, according to some authorities, discernible in the Septuagint (280 B.C.) (see Frankel, Historisch-kritische Studien zur Septuaginta, 1841), but the first concrete exemplification is found in Aristobulus (e. 160 B.C.). So far as the Jewish succession is concerned, the great name is that of Philo in the first century of our era. He took Greek metaphysical theories, and, by the allegorical method, interpreted them in accordance with the Jewish Revelation. He dealt with (a) human life as explained by the relative nature of Man and God, (b) the Divine nature and the existence of God, and, (c) the great Logos doctrine as the explanation of the relation between God and the material universe. From these three arguments he developed an elaborate theosophy which was a syncretism of oriental mysticism and pure Greek metaphysic, and may be regarded as representing the climax of Jewish philosophy. (2) The first purely philosophical phenomenon of the Alexandrian school was Neo-Pythagoreanism, the second and last Neo-Platonism. Leaving all detailed descriptions of these schools to special articles devoted to them, it is sufficient here to say that their doctrines were a synthesis of Platonism, Stoicism and the later Aristotelianism with a leaven of oriental mysticism which gradually became more and more important. The world to which they spoke had begun to demand a doctrine of salvation to satisfy the human soul. They endeavoured to deal with the problem of good and evil. They therefore devoted themselves to examining the nature of the soul, and taught that its freedom consists in communion with God, to be achieved by absorption in a sort of ecstatic trance. This doctrine reaches its height in Plotinus, after whom it degenerated into magic and theurgy in its unsuccessful combat with the victorious Christianity. Finally this pagan theosophy was driven from Alexandria back to Athens under Plutarch and Proclus, and occupied itself largely in purely historical work based mainly on the attempt to re-organize ancient philosophy in conformity with the system of Plotinus. This school ended under Damascius when Justinian closed the Athenian schools (A.D. 529). (3) The eddies of Neo-Platonism had a considerable effect on certain Christian thinkers about the beginning of the 3rd century. Among these the most important were Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Clement, as a scholar and a theologian, proposed to unite the mysticism of Neo- Platonism with the practical spirit of Christianity. He combined the principle of pure living with that of free thinking, and held that instruction must have regard to the mental capacity of the hearer. The compatibility of Christian and later Neo-Platonic ideas is evidenced by the writings of Synesius, bishop of Ptolemais, and though Neo-Platonism eventually succumbed to Christianity, it had the effect, through the writings of Clement and Origen, of modifying the tyrannical fanaticism and ultra- dogmatism of the early Christian writers.

AUTHORITIES.—Matter, Histoire de l'ecole d'Alexandrie, 2nd ed. (3 vols., 1840-1844); Simon, Histoire de L'ecole d'Ajexandrie (2 vols., 1844-1845); Vacherot, Histoire critique de l'ecole d'Ajexandrie (3 vols., 1846-1851); Kingsley, Alexandria and her Schools (1854); Gfrorer, Philo und die Alexandrinische Theosophie (1835) Dahne, Geschict. Darstellung der Judisch-Alexandrinischen Religionsphilosophie (1834); Histories of Philosophy by Zeller, Uberweg, Windelband, &c., and Bibliography of CHURCH HISTORY, &c.

1 A considerable fragment of his epic Hecale has been discovered in the Rainer papyrus.

ALEXANDRIA TROAS (mod. Eski Stambul), an ancient Greek city of the Troad, situated on the west coast at nearly its middle point, a little south of Tenedos. It was built by Antigonus, perhaps about 310 B.C., and was called by him Antigonia Troas. Early in the next century the name was changed by Lysimachus to Alexandria Troas, in honour of Alexander's memory. As the chief port of north-west Asia Minor, the place prospered greatly in Roman times, and the existing remains sufficiently attest its former importance. Thence St Paul sailed for Europe for the first time, and there occurred later the episode of the raising of Eutychus (Acts xx. 5-12). The site is now covered with valonia oaks, and has been much plundered, e.g by Mahommed IV., who took columns to adorn his new Valideh mosque in Stambul; but the circuit of the old walls can be traced, and in several places they are fairly well preserved. They had a circumference of about six English miles, and were fortified with towers at regular intervals. Remains of some ancient buildings, including a bath and gymnasium, can be traced within this area. Trajan built an aqueduct which can still be traced. The harbour had two large basins, now almost choked with sand. A Roman colony was sent to the place, as Strabo mentions, in the reign of Augustus. The abridged name "Troas'' (Acts xvi. 8) was probably the current one in later Roman times. (D. G. H.)

ALEXANDRINE VERSE, a name given to the leading measure in French poetry. It is the heroic French verse, used in epic narrative, in tragedy and in the higher comedy. There is some doubt as to the origin of the name; but most probably it is derived from a collection of romances, collected in the 12th century, of which Alexander of Macedon was the hero, and in which he was represented, somewhat like the British Arthur, as the pride and crown of chivalry. Before the publication of this work most of the trouvere romances appeared in octosyllabic verse. There is also a theory that the form was invented by a poet named Alexander. The new work, which was henceforth to set the fashion to French literature, was written in lines of twelve syllables, but with a freedom of pause which was afterwards greatly curtailed. The new fashion, however, was not adopted all at once. The metre fell into disuse until the reign of Francis I., when it was revived by Jean Antoine de Baif, one of the seven poets known as the Pleiades. Jodelle mingled episodical Alexandrines with the vers communs of his tragedies and so introduced them into drama. It was Ronsard, however, who made the verse popular, and gave it vogue in France. From his time it became the recognized vehicle for all great poetry, and the regulation of its pauses became more and more strict. The following is an example of the verse as used by Racine Ou suis-je? qu'ai-je fait? que dois-je faire encore? Quel transport me saisit? quel chagrin me devore? Two inexorable laws came to be established with regard to the pauses. The first is, that each line should be divided into two equal parts, the sixth syllable always ending with a word. In the earlier use of this metre, on the contrary, it frequently happened that the sixth and seventh syllables belonged to the same word. The other is that, except under the most stringent conditions, there should be none of what the French critics call enjambement, that is, the overlapping of the sense from one line on to the next. Ronsard completely ignored this rule, which was after his time settled by the authority of Malherbe. The latest school of French prosody has given great attention to the breaking up of the Alexandrine, which no longer possesses the rigidity of authoritative form which it held until about 1880, but is often used with a licence no less than when Ronsard wrote.

Michael Drayton, who was twenty-two years of age when Ronsard died, seemed to think that the Alexandrine might be as pleasing to English as it was to French ears, and in this metre he wrote a long poem in twenty-four books called the Polyolbion. The metre, however, failed to catch the English ear. The principal English measure is a line of ten syllables, and the Alexandrine is used only occasionally to give it variety and weight. In ordinary English heroic verse it is but rarely introduced; but in the favourite narrative metre, known as the Spenserian, it comes in regularly as the concluding line of each stanza. In English usage, moreover, it is to be observed that there is no fixed rule as to the position of the pause, though it is true that most commonly the pause occurs at the end of the sixth syllable. Spenser is very free in shifting the pause about; and though the later poets who have used this stanza are not so free, yet, with the exception of Shenstone and of Byron, they do not scruple to obliterate all pause between the sixth and seventh syllables. Thus Thomson (Castle of Indolenee, i. 42):—

And music lent new gladness to the morning air.

The danger in the use of the Alexandrine is that, in attempting to give dignity to his line, the poet may only produce heaviness, incurring the sneer of Pope—

A needless Alexandrine ends the song. That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. The Alexandrine was the dominant metre in Dutch poetry from the 16th to the middle of the 19th century, and about the time of its introduction to Holland it was accepted in Germany by the school of Opitz. In the course of the 17th century, after being used without rhyme by Seckendorf and others, it formed a transitional station on the route to German blank verse, and has since then been rarely employed, except occasionally in rhymed comedy.

ALEXANDRISTS, the name given to those philosophers of the Renaissance, who, in the great controversy on the subject of personal immortality, adopted the explanation of the De Anima given by Alexander of Aphrodisias. According to the orthodox Thomism of the Roman Catholic Church, Aristotle rightly regarded reason as a facility of the individual soul. Against this, the Averroists, led by Agostino Nito (q.v.), introduced the modifying theory that universal reason in a sense individualizes itself in each soul and then absorbs the active reason into itself again. These two theories respectively evolved the doctrine of individual and universal immortality, or the absorption of the individual into the eternal One. The Alexandrists, led by Pietro Pomponazzi, boldly assailed these beliefs and denied that either was rightly attributed to Aristotle. They held that Aristotle considered the soul as a material and therefore a mortal entity which operates during life only under the authority of universal reason. Hence the Alexandrists denied the possibillty of immortality in every shape or form. Since the soul is organically connected with the body, the dissolution of the latter involves the extinction of the former.

ALEXANDRITE, a variety of chrysoberyl (q.v.) discovered in the Urals in 1833, on the day set apart for celebrating the majority of the cesarevich, afterwards the tsar, Alexander II., in whose honour the stone was named by Nils Gustaf Nordenskiold, of Helsingfors. It is remarkable for being strongly dichroic, generally appearing dark green by daylight and raspberry-red by candle-light, or by daylight transmitted through the stone. As red and green are the military colours of Russia, the mineral became highly popular as a gem-stone. The dark green crystals are usually cloudy and cracked, and grouped in triplets presenting a pseudo-hexagonal form. Alexandrite was found originally in the emerald- mine of Takovaya, east of Ekaterinburg in the Urals, and afterwards in the gold-bearing sands of the Sanarka in the southern Urals. Subsequently it was discovered in greater abundance in the gem-gravels of Ceylon. It has been found also in Tasmania. Some of the Ceylon alexandrite exhibits, when suitably cut, the Cat's-eye chatoyance, whence it has been called alexandrite cat's-eye. (F. W. R.*)

ALEXANDROPOL, or ALEXANDRAPOL. (Turk. Gumri), a Russian town and fortified camp in Transcaucasia, government of Erivan, near the junction of the Arpa-chai with the Aras, 48 m. by rail E.N.E. of Kars. Altitude 5080 ft. It has a trade in silk. Here the Russians defeated the Turks in 1853. Pop. (1885) 22,670; (1897) 32,735.

ALEXANDROVSK. (1) A town of N. Russia, in the government of Archangel, on the harbour of Catherine (Ekaterininsk), on the Murman coast, 5 m. from the mouth of Kola Bay. It was opened in 1899 and is a naval station, being free from ice all the year round. It is also called Port Catherine. Pop. (1901) 300. (2) A town of S. Russia, 83 m. S. of Ekaterinoslav, on the railway to the Crimea, near the left bank of the Dnieper, below its rapids. Pop. (1897) 16,393. Opposite it is the island of Khortitsa, upon which was the sich (or syech) or camp of the Zaporozhian cossacks. All its neighbouthood is strewn with kurgans (tumuli).

ALEXIS, Greek comic poet of the Middle Comedy, was born about 394 B.C. at Thurii and taken early to Athens, where he became a citizen. Plutarch says that he lived to the age of 106, and that he died on the stage while being crowned. According to Suidas, who calls him Monander's uncle, he wrote 245 comedies, of which some 130 titles are preserved. The fragments (about 1000 lines) attest the wit and refinement of the author (Koch, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta).

ALEXIS, WILLIBALD, the pseudonym of GEORG WILHELM HEINRICH HARING (1798—1871), German historical novelist. He was born on the 29th of June 1798 at Breslau, where his father, who came of a French refugee family, named Hareng, held a high position in the war department. He attended the Werdersche Gymnasium in Berlin, and then, serving as a volunteer in the campaign of 1815, took part in the siege of the Ardenne fortresses. On his return he studied law at the universities of Berlin and Breslau and entered the legal profession, but he soon abandoned this career and devoted himself to literature. Settling in Berlin he edited, 1827-1835, the Berliner Konversationsblatt, in which for the first two years he was assisted by Friedrich Christoph Forster (1791—1868); and in 1828 was created a doctor of philosophy by the university of Halle. In 1852 he retired to Arnstadt in Thuringia, where after many years of broken health he died on the 16th of December 1871.

Haring made his name first known as a writer by an idyll in hexameters, Die Treibjagd (1820), and several short stories in which the influence of Tieck is observable; but his literary reputation was first established by the historical romance Walladmor (1823), which, published as being "freely translated from the English of Sir Walter Scott, with a preface by Willibald Alexis,'' so closely imitated the style of the famous Scotsman as really to deceive even Scott's admirers. The work became immediately popular and was translated into several languages, including English. It was followed by Schloss Avalon (1827), with regard to which the author adopted the same tactics and with equal success. These historical novels, however, were of considerable literary merit, and would doubtless have achieved popularity even without the borrowed plumage. Soon afterwards Haring published a number of successful short stories (Gesammelte Novellen, 4 vols., 1830-1831), some books of travel, and in the novels Das Haus Dusterweg (1835) and Zwolf Nachte (1838) showed for a while a leaning towards the "Young German'' school. In Cabanis (1832), however, a story of the time of Frederick the Great, he entered the field of patriotic- historical romance, in which he so far excelled as to have earned the name of "der Markische Walter Scott'' (Walter Scott of the Mark). From 1840 onwards he published at short intervals a series of romances, each dealing with some epoch in the history of Brandenburg. Among them may be especially noted Der Roland von Berlin (1840), Der falsche Woldemar (1842), Die Hosen des Herrn von Bredow (1846-1848), Ruhe ist die erste Burgerpflicht (1852), Isegrimm (1854) and Dorothe (1856). In all these the author shows himself as a keen observer of men and things; the characters, situations and natural surroundings are excellently delineated, and the patriotic feeling which pervades them is not overdone. Haring also made a name for himself in the field of criminology by commencing in 1842, in conjunction with the publicist, Julius Eduard Hitzig (1780- 1849), the publication of Der neue Pitaval (continued by A. Vollert, 36 vols., Leipzig, 1842-1865; new edition, 24 vols., Leipzig, 1866-1891), a, collection of criminal anecdotes culled from all nations and all times. This publication attained great popularity, and is to-day of psychological interest and value.

His Gesammelte Werke were published in 20 volumes (Berlin, 1874); the Vaterlandische Romane separately in 8 volumes (Berlin, 1881, 1884), and, since the expiry of the copyright in 1901, in many cheap reprints. Cp. W. Alexis' Erinnerungen, edited by M. Ewert (1900), and essays by Julian Schmidt (Neue Bilaer aus dere geistigen Leben unsrer Zeit, 1873), G. Freytag (Werke, vols. 16 and 23), A. Stern Zur Literatur der Gegenwart, 1880) and T. Fontane (in Bayreuther Blatter, vi., 1883).

ALEXISBAD, a spa of Germany, in the duchy of Anhalt, lying under the Harz mountains, 1000 ft. above the sea, on the railway from Gernrode to Harzgerode. Pop. 1000. It is celebrated for its medicinal waters, of which the Abexisbrunnen, a ferruginous spring, is used for drinking, while the Selkebrunnen supplies the baths, which are of use in feminine disorders. The place was founded in 1810 by Duke Alexius of Anhalt-Bernburg.

ALEXIUS I. (1048-1118), emperor of the East, was the third son of John Comnenus, nephew of Isaac Comnenus, emperor 1057-1059. His father declined the throne on the abdication of Isaac, who was accordingly succeeded by four emperors of other families between that date and 1081. Under one of these emperors, Romanus Diogenes (1067-1071), he served with distinction against the Seljuk Turks. Under Michael Parapinaces (1071-1078) and Nicephorus Botaniates (1078-1081) he was also employed, along with his elder brother Isaac, against rebels in Asia Minor, Thrace and in Epirus (1071). The success of the Comneni roused the jealousy of Botaniates and his ministers, and the Comneni were almost compelled to take up arms in self- defence. Botaniates was forced to abdicate and retire to a monastery, and Isaac declined the crown in favour of his younger brother Alexius, who then became emperor in the 33rd year of his age. His long reign of nearly 37 years was full of difficulties (see ROMAN EMPIRE, LATER). At the very outset he had to meet the formidable attack of the Normans (Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemund), who took Dyrrhachium and Corfu, and laid siege to Larissa in Thessaly. The Norman danger ended for the time with Robert Guiscard's death (1085) and the conquests were recovered. He had next to repel the invasions of Patzinaks (Petchenegs) and Kumans in Thrace, with whom the Manichaean sects of the Paulicians and Bogomilians made Common cause; and thirdly, he had to cope with the fast-growing power of the Turks in Asia Minor. Above all he had to meet the difficulties caused by the arrival of the warriors of the First Crusade, which had been in a great degree initiated owing to the representations of his own ambassadors, though the help which he wanted from the West was simply mercenary forces and not the immense hosts which arrived to his consternation and embarrassment. The first part, under Peter the Hermit, he got rid of by sending them on to Asia Minor, where they were massacred by the Turks (1096). The second and much more serious host of warriors, led by Godfrey of Bouillon, he conducted also into Asia, promising to supply them with provisions in return for an oath of homage, and by their victories recovered for the Empire a number of important cities and islands—Nicaea, Chics, Rhodes, Smyrna, Ephesus, Philadelphia, Sardis, and in fact most of Asia Minor (1097-1099). This is ascribed as a credit to his policy and diplomacy by his daughter, by the Latin historians of the crusade to his treachery and falseness, but during the last twenty years of his life he lost much of his popularity. They were marked by persecution of the followers of the Paulician and Bogomilian heresies (one of his last acts was to burn Basilius, a Bogomilian leader, with whom he had engaged in a theological controversy), by renewed struggles with the Turks (1110-1117), by anxieties as to the succession, which his wife Irene wished to alter in favour of her daughter Anne's husband, Nicephorus Bryennius for whose benefit the special title panhypersebastos (i.e. as it were dugustissimus si quis ahus) was created. This intrigue disturbed even his dying hours. He deserves the credit of having raised the Empire from a condition of anarchy and decay at a time when it was threatened on all sides by new dangers. No emperor devoted himself more laboriously or with a greater sense of duty to the task of ruling.

AUTHORITIES.—Zonaras xviii. 27-29; Anna Comnena's Life; see also Du Cange, Familiae Byzantinae; Friedrich Wilken, Rerum ab Alexio I., Joanne, Manuele et Alexio II. Comnenis Romanorum, Byzantinorum imperatoribus gestarum, tibri iv. Commentatio (Heidelberg, 1811); Finlay, History of Greece (vol. iii., Oxford, 1877); Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, edited with notes, &c., by Prof. J. B. Bury (London, 1898), where further authorities are cited; F. Chalandon, Essai sur le regne d'Alexis Ier, Comnene (1900). (J. B. B.)

ALEXIUS II. (COMNENUS) (1167-1183), emperor of the East, was the son of Manuel Comnenus and Maria, daughter of Kaymund, prince of Antioch, and was born at Constantinople on the 10th of September 1167. On Manuel's death, Maria, who hid been immured in a convent under the name of Xene, had herself proclaimed regent (1179-1180), and handing over her son to evil counsellors, who encouraged him in every vice, supported the government of Alexius the protosebastos (nephew of Manuel), who was supposed to be her lover. The young Alexius and his friends now tried to form a party against the empress mother and the protosebastos; and his sister Maria, wife of Caesar John, stirred up riots in the streets of the capital. Their party was defeated (May 2, 1182), but Andronicus Comnenus took advantage of these disorders to aim at the crown, entered Constantinople, where he was received with almost divine honours, and overthrew the regents. His arrival was celebrated by a barbarous massacre of the Latins in Constantinople, which he made no attempt to stop. He allowed Alexius to be crowned, but forced him to consent to the death of all his friends, including his mother, his sister and the Caesar, and refused to allow him the smallest voice in public affairs. The betrothal in 1180 of Alexius with Agnes, daughter of Louis VII. of France, a child of nine, was quashed, and he was married to Irene, daughter of Andronicus. The latter was now formally proclaimed as co-emperor, and not long afterwards, on the pretext that divided rule was injurious to the Empire, he caused Alexius to be strangled with a bow-string (October 1183). (J. B. B.)

ALEXIUS III. (ANGELUS), emperor of the East, was the second son of Andronicus Angelus, nephew of Alexius I. In 1195, while his brother Isaac II. was away hunting in Thrace, he was proclaimed emperor by the troops; he captured Isaac at Stagira in Macedonia, put out his eyes, and kept him henceforth a close prisoner, though he had been redeemed by him from captivity at Antioch and loaded with honours. To compensate for this crime and to confirm his position as emperor, he had to scatter money so lavishly as to empty his treasury, and to allow such licence to the officers of the army as to leave the Empire practically defenceless. He consummated the financial ruin of the state. The empress Euphrosyne tried in vain to sustain his credit and his court; Vatatzes, the favourite instrument of her attempts at reform, was assassinated by the emperor's orders. Eastward the Empire was overrun by the Turks; from the north Bulgarians and Vlachs descended unchecked to ravage the plains of Macedonia and Thrace; while Alexius squandered the public treasure on his palaces and gardens. Soon he was threatened by a new and yet more formidable danger. In 1202 the Western princes assembled at Venice, bent on a new crusade. To them Alexius, son of the deposed Isaac, made appeal, promising as a crowning bribe to heal the schism of East and West if they would help him to depose his uncle. The crusaders, whose objective had been Egypt, were persuaded to set their course for Constantinople, before which they appeared in June 1203, proclaiming the emperor Alexius IV. and summoning the capital to depose his uncle. Alexius III., sunk in debauchery, took no efficient measures to resist. His son-in-law, Lascaris, who was the only one to do anything, was defeated at Scutari, and the siege of Constantinople began. On the 17th of July the crusaders, the aged doge Dandolo at their head, scaled the walls and took the city by storm. During the fighting and carnage that followed Alexius hid in the palace, and finally, with one of his daughters, Irene, and such treasures as he could collect, got into a boat and escaped to Develton in Thrace, leaving his wife, his other daughters and his Empire to the victors. Isaac, drawn from his prison and robed once more in the imperial purple, received hs son in state.

Shortly afterwards Alexius made an effort in conjunction with Murtzuphlos (Alexius V.) to recover the throne. The attempt was unsuccessful and, after wandering about Greece, he surrendered with Euphrosyne, who had meanwhile joined him, to Boniface of Montferrat, then master of a great part of the Balkan peninsula. Leaving his protection he sought shelter with Michael, despot of Epirus, and then repaired to Asia Minor,where his son-in-law Lascaris was holding his own against the Latins. Alexius, joined by the sultan of Iconium (Konieh), now demanded the crown of Lascaris, and on his refusal marched against him. Lascaris, however, defeated and took him prisoner. Alexius was relegated to a monastery at Nicaea, where he died on some date unknown.

AUTHORITIES.—Nicetas Acominatus, George Acropolites, Nicephorus Gregoras; and the sources for the Fourth Crusade (see CRUSADES). (J. B. B.)

ALEXIUS V., eastern Roman emperor, was proclaimed emperor on the 5th of February 1204, during the siege of Constantinople by the Latins (Fourth Crusade). His name was Alexius Ducas Murtzuphlos, and he was a connexion of the imperial house of the Angell. His elevation was the result of a revolution in the city against Isaac II. and Alexius IV. He conducted the defence with great bravery till it became hopeless (April 12), whereupon he fled. He would then have made common cause with Alexius III. against the Latins, but was blinded by that ex-monarch and fell into the hands of the crusaders, who put him to death by casting him from the top of the Pillar of Theodosius as the murderer of Alexius IV.

ALEXIUS MIKHAILOVICH (1624-1676), tsar of Muscovy, the son of Tsar Michael Romanov and Eudoxia Stryeshnevaya, was born on the 9th of March 1629. A youth at his father's death (1645), he was committed to the care of the boyarin Boris Ivanovich Morozov, a shrewd and sensible guardian, sufficiently enlightened to recognize the needs of his country, and by no means inaccessible to Western ideas. Morozov's foreign policy was pacificatory. He secured the truce with Poland and carefully avoided complications with the Porte. His domestic policy was severely equitable, and aimed at relieving the public burdens by limiting the privileges of foreign traders and abolishing a great many useless and expensive court offices. On the 17th of January 1648 he procured the marriage of the tsar with Maria Miloslavshaya, himself marrying her sister, Anna, ten days later. The Miloslavskis were typical self-seeking 17th century boyars, whose extortions made them generally detested. In May 1648 the people of Moscow rose against them, and the young tsar was compelled to dismiss both them and their patron Morozov. The successful issue of the Moscow riots was the occasion of disquieting disturbances all over the tsardom culminating in dangerous rebellions at Pskov and Great Novgorod, with which the government was so unable to cope that they surrendered, practically granting the malcontents their own terms. One man only had displayed equal tact and courage at Great Novgorod, the metropolitan Nikon (q.v.), who in consequence became in 1651 the tsar's chief minister. In 1653 the weakness and disorder of Poland, which had just emerged, bleeding at every pore, from the savage Cossack war, encouraged Alexius to attempt to recover from her secular rival the old Russian lands. On the 1st of October 1653 a national assembly met at Moscow to sanction the war and find the means of carrying it on, and in April 1654 the army was blessed by Nikon (now patriarch). The campaign of 1654 was an uninterrupted triumph, and scores of towns, including the important fortress of Smolensk, fell into the hands of the Muscovites. In January 1655 the rout of Ochmatov arrested their progress; but in the summer of the same year, the sudden invasion by Charles X. of Sweden for the moment swept the Polish state out of existence; the Muscovites, unopposed, quickly appropriated nearly everything which was not already occupied by the Swedes, and when at last the Poles offered to negotiate, the whole grand-duchy of Lithuania was the least of the demands of Alexius. Fortunately for Poland, the tsar and the king of Sweden now quarrelled over the apportionment of the spoil, and at the end of May 1656 Alexius, stimulated by the emperor and the other enemies of Sweden, declared war against her. Great things were expected of the Swedish war, but nothing came of it. Dorpat was taken, but countless multitudes were lost in vain before Riga. In the meantime Poland had so far recovered herself as to become a much more dangerous foe than Sweden, and, as it was impossible to wage war with both simultaneously, the tsar resolved to rid himself of the Swedes first. This he did by the peace of Kardis (July 2, 1661), whereby Muscovy retroceded all her conquests. The Polish war dragged on for six years longer and was then concluded by a truce, nominally for thirteen years, which proved the most durable of treaties. By the truce of Andrussowo (February 11, 1667) Vitebsk, Polotsk and Polish Livonia were restored to Poland, but the infinitely more important Smolensk and Kiev remained in the hands of the Muscovite together with the whole eastern bank of the Dnieper. This truce was the achievement of Athanasy Orduin-Nashchokin, the first Russian chancellor and diplomatist in the modern sense, who after the disgrace of Nikon became the tsar's first minister till 1670, when he was superseded by the equally able Artamon Matvyeev, whose beneficent influence prevailed to the end of the reign. It is the crowning merit of the ever amiable and courteous tsar Alexius that he discovered so many great men (like Nikon, Orduin, Matvyeev, the best of Peter's precursors) and suitably employed them. He was not a man of superior strength of character, or he would never have submitted to the dictation of Nikon. But, on the other hand, he was naturally, if timorously, progressive, or he would never have encouraged the great reforming boyarin Matvyeev. His education was necessarily narrow; yet he was learned in his way, wrote verses, and even began a history of his own times. His last years, notwithstanding the terrible rebellion of Stenka Razin, were deservedly tranquil. By his first consort he had thirteen children, of whom two sickly sons and eight healthy daughters survived him. By his second consort, Natalia Naruishkina, he had two children, the tsarevich Peter and the tsarevna Natalia.

See Robert Nisbet Bain, The First Romanovs (London, 1905). (R. N. B.)

ALEXIUS PETROVICH (1600-1718), Russian tsarevich, the sole surviving son of Peter I. and Eudoxia Lopukhina, was horn on the 19th of February 1690. The young tsar married the boyarinya Lopukhina at his mother's command. We know nothing of the bride except that she was beautiful, modest and "brought up in the fear of the Lord.'' She would, doubtless, have made a model tsaritsa of the pre-Petrine period, but, unfortunately, she was no fit wife for such a vagabond of genius as Peter the Great. From the first her society bored Peter unspeakably, and, after the birth of their second short-lived son Alexander, on the 3rd of October 1691, he practically deserted her. The young Alexius was ignored by his father till he was nine years old. Peter was a rare and unwelcome guest in his own family, and a son who loved his mother could have little affection for a father who had ever been that mother's worst persecutor. From his sixth to his ninth year Alexius was educated by the diffuse and pedantic Vyazemsky, but after the removal of his mother to the Suzdal Prokovsky Monastery he was confided to the care of learned foreigners, who taught him history, geography, mathematics and French. In 1703 Alexius was ordered to follow the army to the field as a private in a bombardier regiment. In 1704 he was present at the capture of Narva. At this period the preceptors of the tsarevich had the highest opinion of his ability; but, unfortunately, it was not the sort of ability that his father could make use of. He was essentially a student, with strong leanings towards archaeology and ecclesiology. A monastic library was the proper place for this gentle emotional dreamer, who clung so fondly to the ancient traditions. To a prince of his temperament the vehement activity of his abnormally energetic father was very offensive. He liked neither the labour itself nor its object. Yet Peter, not unnaturally, wished his heir to dedicate himself to the service of new Russia, and demanded from him unceasing labour in order to maintain the brand-new state at the high level of greatness to which it had been raised. Painful relations between father and son, quite apart from the personal antipathies already existing, were therefore inevitable. It was an additional misfortune for Alexius that his father should have been too busy to attend to him just as he was growing up from boyhood to manhood. He was left in the hands of reactionary boyars and priests, who encouraged him to hate his father and wish for the death of the tsar-antichrist. His confessor, Yakov Ignatiev, whom he promised to obey as "an angel and apostle of God,'' was his chief counsellor in these days.

In 1708 Peter sent Alexius to Smolensk to collect provender and recruits, and thence to Moscow to fortify it against Charles XII. At the end of 1709 he went to Dresden for twelve months for finishing lessons in French and German, mathematics and fortification, and, his education completed, he was married, greatly against his will, to the princess Charlotte of Brunswick- Wolfenbuttel, whose sister espoused, almost simultaneously, the heir to the Austrian throne, the archduke Charles. The wedding was celebrated at Torgau on the 14th of October 1711, in the house of the queen of Poland, and three weeks later the bridegroom was hurried away by his father to Thorn to superintend the provisioning of the Russian troops in Poland. For the next twelve months Alexius was kept constantly on the move. His wife joined him at Thorn in December, but in April 1712 a peremptory ukaz ordered him off to the army in Pomerania, and in the autumn of the same year he was forced to accompany his father on a tour of inspection through Finland. Evidently Peter was determined to tear his son away from a life of indolent ease. Immediately on his return from Finland Alexius was despatched by his father to Staraya Rusya and Ladoga to see to the building of new ships. This was the last commission entrusted to him. On his return to the capital Peter, in order to see what progress his son had made in mechanics and mathematics, asked him to draw something of a technical nature for his inspection. Alexius, in order to escape such an ordeal, resorted to the abject expedient of disabling his right hand by a pistol-shot. In no other way could the tsarevich have offended his father so deeply. He had behaved like a cowardly recruit who mutilates himself to escape military service. After this, Peter seemed for a time to take no further interest in Alexius. He left him entirely to himself. He employed him no more. He no longer pressed him to attend public functions. Alexius rejoiced at this welcome change, but he had cause rather to fear it. It marked the deepening of a hatred which might have been overcome. Alexius was evidently consoling himself with the reflexion that the future belonged to him. He was well aware that the mass of the Russian nation was on his side. Nearly all the prelates were devoted to him. Equally friendly were the great boyar families. All Alexius had to do was to sit still, keep out of his father's way as much as possible and await the natural course of events. But with Peter the present was everything. He could not afford to leave anything to chance. All his life long he had been working incessantly with a single object —the regeneration of Russia. What if his successor refused to tread in his father's footsteps or, still worse, tried to destroy his father's work? By some such process of reasoning as this must the idea of changing the succession to the throne, by setting aside Alexius, have first occurred to the mind of Peter the Great. Nevertheless he made one last effort to reclaim his son. On the 22nd of October 1715 Alexius' consort, the princess Charlotte, died, after giving birth to a son, the grand-duke Peter, afterwards Peter II. On the day of the funeral Peter addressed to Alexius a stern letter of warning and remonstrance, urging him no longer to resemble the slothful servant in the parable, and threatening to cut him off, as though he were a gangrenous swelling, if he did not acquiesce in his father's plans. But it was now that Alexius showed what a poor creature he really was. He wrote a pitiful reply to his father, offering to renounce the succession in favour of his baby half-brother Peter, who had been born the day after the princess Charlotte's funeral. As if this were not enough, in January 1716 he wrote to his father for permission to become a monk. Still Peter did not despair. On the 26th of August 1716 he wrote to Alexius from abroad urging him, if he desired to remain tsarevich, to join him and the army without delay. Rather than face this ordeal Alexius fled to Vienna and placed himself under the protection of his brother-in-law, the emperor Charles VI., who sent him for safety first to the Tirolean fortress of Ahrenberg, and finally to the castle of San Elmo at Naples. He was accompanied throughout his journey by his mistress, the Finnish girl Afrosina. That the emperor sincerely sympathized with Alexius, and suspected Peter of harbouring murderous designs against his son, is plain from his confidential letter to George I. of England, whom he consulted on this delicate affair. Peter's agitation was extreme. The flight of the tsarevich to a foreign potentate was a reproach and a scandal. He must be recovered and brought back to Russia at all hazards. This difficult task was accomplished by Count Peter Tolstoi, the most subtle and unscrupulous of Peter's servants; but terrorized though he was, Alexius would only consent to return on his father solemnly swearing, "before God and His judgment seat,'' that if he came back he should not be punished in the least, but cherished as a son and allowed to live quietly on his estates and marry Afrosina. On the 31st of January 1718 the tsarevich reached Moscow. Peter had already determined to institute a most searching inquisition in order to get at the bottom of the mystery of the flight. On the 18th of February a "confession'' was extorted from Alexius which implicated most of his friends, and he then publicly renounced the succession to the throne in favour of the baby grand-duke Peter Petrovich. A horrible reign of terror ensued, in the course of which the ex-tsaritsa Eudoxia was dragged from her monastery and publicly tried for alleged adultery, while all who had in any way befriended Alexius were impaled, broken on the wheel and otherwise lingeringly done to death. All this was done to terrorize the reactionaries and isolate the tsarevich. In April 1718 fresh confessions were extorted from Alexius, now utterly broken and half idiotic with fright. Yet even now there were no actual facts to go upon. Alexius' "evil designs'' were still in foro conscientiae, and had not been, perhaps never would be, translated into practice. The worst that could be brought against him was that he had wished his father's death. In the eyes of Peter, his son was now a self-convicted and most dangerous traitor, whose life was forfeit. But there was no getting over the fact that his father had sworn "before the Almighty and His judgment seat'' to pardon him and let him live in peace if he returned to Russia. From Peter's point of view the question was, did the enormity of the tsarevich's crime absolve the tsar from the oath which he had taken to spare the life of this prodigal son? This question was solemnly submitted to a grand council of prelates, senators, ministers and other dignitaries on the 13th of June 1718. The clergy left the matter to the tsar's own decision. The temporal dignitaries declared the evidence to be insufficient and suggested that Alexius should be examined by torture. Accordingly, on the 19th of June, the weak and ailing tsarevich received twenty-five strokes with the knout (as then administered nobody ever survived thirty), and on the 24th fifteen more. It was hardly possible that he could survive such treatment; the natural inference is that he was not intended to survive it. Anyway, he expired two days later in the guardhouse of the citadel of St Petersburg, two days after the senate had condemned him to death for imagining rebellion against his father, and for hoping for the co-operation of the common people and the armed intervention of his brother-in-law, the emperor. This shameful sentence was the outcome of mingled terror and obsequiousness. Abominable, unnatural as Peter's conduct to his unhappy and innocent son undoubtedly was, there is no reason to suppose that he ever regretted it. He argued that a single worthless life stood in the way of the regeneration of Russia, and he therefore deliberately removed it.

See Robert Nisbet Bain, The First Romanovs (London, 1905). (R. N. B.)

ALFANI, DOMENICO, italian painter, was born at Perugia towards the close of the 15th century. He was a contemporary of Raphael, with whom he studied in the school of Perugino. The two artists lived on terms of intimate friendship, and the influence of the more distinguished of the two is so clearly traceable in the works of the other, that these have frequently been attributed to Raphael. Towards the close of his life Alfani gradually changed his style and approximated to that of the later Florentine school. The date of his death, according to some, was 1540, while others say he was alive in 1553. Pictures by Alfani may be seen in collections at Florence and in several churches in Perugia.

ALFELD, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover, 10 m. W. of Hildesheim, on the river Leine and the Hanover-Cassel main line of railway. Pop. (1900) 4900. It has a handsome church with twin spires, and training colleges for schoolmasters and theological candidates. Its industries are flourishing, and embrace paper-making, agricultural machine- works, iron-founding and flax-spinning.

ALFIERI, VITTORIO, COUNT (1749-1803), Italian dramatist, was born on the 17th of January 1749 at Asti in Piedmont. He lost his father in early infancy; but he continued to reside with his mother, who married a second time, till his tenth year, when he was placed at the academy of Turin. After he had passed a twelvemonth at the academy, he went on a short visit to a relation who dwelt at Coni; and during his stay there he made his first poetical attempt in a sonnet chiefly borrowed from lines in Ariosto and Metastasio, the only poets he had at that time read. When thirteen years of age he was induced to begin the study of civil and canonical law; but the attempt only served to disgust him with every species of application and to increase his relish for the perusal of French romances. By the death of his uncle, who had hitherto taken some charge of his education and conduct, he was left, at the age of fourteen, to enjoy without control his vast paternal inheritance, augmented by the recent accession of his uncle's fortune. He now began to attend the riding-school, where he acquired that rage for horses and equestrian exercise which continued to be one of his strongest passions till the close of his existence.

After some time spent in alternate fits of extravagant dissipation and ill-directed study, he was seized with a desire of travelling; and having obtained permission from the king, he departed in 1766, under the care of an English preceptor. Restless and unquiet, he posted with the utmost rapidity through the towns of Italy; and his improvement was such as was to be expected from his mode of travelling and his previous habits. Hoping to find in foreign countries some relief from the tedium and ennui with which he was oppressed, and being anxious to become acquainted with the French theatre, he proceeded to Paris. But he appears to have been completely dissatisfied with everything he witnessed in France and contracted a dislike to its people, which his intercourse in future years rather contributed to augment than diminish. In Holland he became deeply enamoured of a married lady, who returned his attachment, but who was soon obliged to accompany her husband to Switzerland. Alfieri, whose feelings were of the most impetuous description, was in despair at this separation, and returned to his own country in the utmost anguish and despondency of mind. While under this depression of spirits he was induced to seek alleviation from works of literature; and the perusal of Plutarch's Lives, which he read with profound emotion, inspired him with an enthusiastic passion for freedom and independence. Under the influence of this rage for liberty he recommenced his travels; and his only gratification, in the absence of freedom among the continental states, appears to have been derived from contemplating the wild and sterile regions of the north of Sweden, where gloomy forests, lakes and precipices conspired to excite those sublime and melancholy ideas which were congenial to his disposition. Everywhere his soul felt as if confined by the bonds of society; he panted for something more free in government, more elevated in sentiment, more devoted in love and more perfect in friendship. In search of this ideal world he posted through various countries more with the rapidity of a courier than of one who travels for amusement or instruction. During a journey to London he engaged in an intrigue with a married lady of high rank; and having been detected, the publicity of a rencounter with the injured husband, and of a divorce which followed, rendered it expedient and desirable for him to quit England. He then visited Spain and Portugal, where he became acquainted with the Abbe Caluso, who remained through life the most attached and estimable friend he ever possessed. In 1772 Alfieri returned to Turin. This time he became enamoured of the Marchesa Turinetti di Prie, whom he loved with his usual ardour, and who seems to have been as undeserving of a sincere attachment as those he had hitherto adored. In the course of a long attendance on his mistress, during a malady with which she was afflicted, he one day wrote a dialogue or scene of a drama, which he left at her house. On a difference taking place between them the piece was returned to him, and being retouched and extended to five acts, it was performed at Turin in 1775, under the title of Cleopatra.

From this moment Alfieri was seized with an insatiable thirst for theatrical fame, and the remainder of his life was devoted to its attainment. His first two tragedies, Filippo and Polinice were originally written in French prose; and when he came to versify them in Italian, he found that, from his Lombard origin and long intercourse with foreigners, he expressed himself with feebleness and inaccuracy. Accordingly, with the view of improving his Italian style, he went to Tuscany and, during an alternate residence at Florence and Siena, he completed his Filippo and Polinice, and conceived the plan of various other dramas. While thus employed he became acquainted with the countess of Albany, who then resided with her husband at Florence. For her he formed an attachment which, if less violent than his former loves, appears to have been more permanent. With this motive to remain at Florence, he could not endure the chains by which his vast possessions bound him to Piedmont. He therefore resigned his whole property to his sister, the countess Cumiana, reserving an annuity which scarcely amounted to a half of his original revenues. At this period the countess of Albany, urged by the ill-treatment she received from her husband, sought refuge in Rome, where she at length received permission from the pope to live apart from her tormentor. Alfieri followed the countess to that capital, where he completed fourteen tragedies, four of which were now for the first time printed at Sienna.

At length, however, it was thought proper that, by leaving Rome, he should remove the aspersions which had been thrown on the object of his affections. During the year 1783 he therefore travelled through different states of Italy, and published six additional tragedies. The interests of his love and literary glory had not diminished his rage for horses, which seems to have been at least the third passion of his soul. He came to England solely for the purpose of purchasing a number of these animals, which he carried with him to Italy. On his return he learned that the countess of Albany had gone to Colmar in Alsace, where he joined her, and resided with her under the same roof during the rest of his life. They chiefly passed their time between Alsace and Paris, but at length took up their abode entirely in that metropolis. While here, Alfieri made arrangements with Didot for an edition of his tragedies, but was soon after forced to quit Paris by the storms of the Revolution. He recrossed the Alps with the countess, and finally settled at Florence. The last ten years of his life, which he spent in that city, seem to have been the happiest of his existence. During that long period his tranquillity was only interrupted by the entrance of the Revolutionary armies into Florence in 1799. Though an enemy of kings, the aristocratic feeling of Alfieri rendered him also a decided foe to the principles and leaders of the French Revolution; and he rejected with the utmost contempt those advances which were made with a view to bring him over to their cause. The concluding years of his life were laudably employed in the study of the Greek literature and in perfecting a series of comedies. His assiduous labour on this subject, which he pursued with his characteristic impetuosity, exhausted his strength, and brought on a malady for which he would not adopt the prescriptions of his physicians, but obstinately persisted in employing remedies of his own. His disorder rapidly increased, and he died on the 8th of October 1803.

The character of Alfieri may be best appreciated from the portrait which he has drawn of himself in his own Memoirs of his Life. He was evidently of an irritable, impetuous and almost ungovernable temper. Pride, which seems to have been a ruling sentiment, may account for many apparent inconsistencies of his character. But his less amiable qualities were greatly softened by the cultivation of literature. His application to study gradually tranquillized his temper and softened his manners, leaving him at the same time in perfect possession of those good qualities which he had inherited from nature—a warm and disinterested attachment to his family and friends, united to a generosity, vigour and elevation of character, which rendered him not unworthy to embody in his dramas the actions and sentiments of Grecian heroes.

It is to his dramas that Alfieri is chiefly indebted for the high reputation he has attained. Before his time the Italian language, so harmonious in the Sonnets of Petrarch and so energetic in the Commedia of Dante, had been invariably languid and prosaic in dramatic dialogue. The pedantic and inanimate tragedies of the 16th century were followed, during the iron age of Italian literature, by dramas of which extravagance in the sentiments and improbability in the action were the chief characteristics. The prodigious success of the Merope of Maffei, which appeared in the commencement of the 18th century, may be attributed more to a comparison with such productions than to intrinsic merit. In this degradation of tragic taste the appearance of the tragedies of Alfieri was perhaps the most important literary event that had occurred in Italy during the 18th century. On these tragedies it is difficult to pronounce a judgment, as the taste and system of the author underwent considerable change and modification during the intervals which elapsed between the three periods of their publication. An excessive harshness of style, an asperity of sentiment and total want of Poetical ornament are the characteristics of his first four tragedies, Filippo, Polinice, Antigone and Virginia. These faults were in some measure corrected in the six tragedies which he gave to the world some years after, and in those which he published along with Saul, the drama which enjoyed the greatest success of all his productions—a popularity which may be partly attributed to the severe and unadorned manner of Alfieri being well adapted to the patriarchal simplicity of the age in which the scene of the tragedy is placed. But though there be a considerable difference in his dramas, there are certain observations applicable to them all. None of the plots are of his own invention. They are founded either on mythological fable or history; most of them had been previously treated by the Greek dramatists or by Seneca. Rosmunda, the only one which could be supposed of his own contrivance, and which is certainly the least happy effusion of his genius, is partly founded on the eighteenth novel of the third part of Bandello and partly on Prevost's Memoires d'un homme de qualite. But whatever subject he chooses, his dramas are always formed on the Grecian model and breathe a freedom and independence worthy of an Athenian poet. Indeed, his Agide and Bruto may rather be considered oratorical declamations and dialogues on liberty than tragedies. The unities of time and place are not so scrupulously observed in his as in the ancient dramas; but he has rigidly adhered to a unity of action and interest. He occupies his scene with one great action and one ruling passion, and removes from it every accessory event or feeling. In this excessive zeal for the observance of unity he seems to have forgotten that its charm consists in producing a common relation between multiplied feelings, and not in the bare exhibition of one, divested of those various accompaniments which give harmony to the whole. Consistently with that austere and simple manner which he considered the chief excellence of dramatic composition, he excluded from his scene all coups de theatre, all philosophical reflexions, and that highly ornamented Versification which had been so assiduously cultivated by his predecessors. In his anxiety, however, to avoid all superfluous ornament, he has stripped his dramas of the embellishments of imagination; and for the harmony and flow of poetical language he has substituted, even in his best performances, a style which, though correct and pure, is generally harsh, elaborate and abrupt; often strained into unnatural energy or condensed into factitious conciseness. The chief excellence of Alfieri consists in powerful delineation of dramatic character. In his Filippo he has represented, almost with the masterly touches of Tacitus, the sombre character, the dark mysterious counsels, the suspensa semper et obscura verba, of the modern Tiberius. In Polinice, the characters of the rival brothers are beautifully contrasted; in Maria Stuarda, that unfortunate queen is represented unsuspicious, impatient of contradiction and violent in her attachments. In Mirra, the character of Ciniro is perfect as a father and king, and Cecri is a model of a wife and mother. In the representation of that species of mental alienation where the judgment has perished but traces of character still remain, he is peculiarly happy. The insanity of Saul is skilfully managed; and the horrid joy of Orestes in killing Aegisthus rises finely and naturally to madness in finding that, at the same time, he had inadvertently slain his mother.

Whatever may be the merits or defects of Alfieri, he may be considered as the founder of a new school in the Italian drama. His country hailed him as her sole tragic poet; and his successors in the same path of literature have regarded his bold, austere and rapid manner as the genuine model of tragic composition.

Besides his tragedies, Alfieri published during his life many sonnets, five odes on American independence and the poem of Etruria, founded on the assassination of Alexander I., duke of Florence. Of his prose works the most distinguished for animation and eloquence is the Panegyric on Trajan, composed in a transport of indignation at the supposed feebleness of Pliny's eulogium. The two books entitled La Tirannide and the Essays on Literature and Government are remarkable for elegance and vigour of style, but are too evidently imitations of the manner of Machiavel. His Antigallican, which was written at the same time with his Defence of Louis XVI., comprehends an historical and satirical view of the French Revolution. The posthumous works of Alfieri consist of satires, six political comedies and the Memoirs of his Life—a work which will always be read with interest, in spite of the cold and languid gravity with which he delineates the most interesting adventures and the strongest passions of his agitated life.

See Mem. di Vit. Alfieri; Sismondi, De la lit. du midi de l'Europe; Walker's Memoir on Italian Tragedy; Giorn. de Pisa, tom. lviii.; Life of Alfieri, by Centofanti (Florence, 1842); Vita, Giornuli, Lettere di Alfieri, by Teza (Florence, 1861); Vittorio Alfieri, by Antonini and Cognetti (Turin, 1898).

ALFORD, HENRY (1810-1871), English divine and scholar, was born in London on the 7th of October 1810. He came of a Somersetshire family, which had given five consecutive generations of clergymen to the Anglican church. Alford's early years were passed with his widowed father, who was curate of Steeple Ashton in Wiltshire. He was an extremely precocious lad, and before he was ten had written several Latin odes, a history of the Jews and a series of homiletic outlines. After a peripatetic school course he went up to Cambridge in 1827 as a scholar of Trinity. In 1832 he was 34th wrangler and 8th classic, and in 1834 was made fellow of Trinity. He had already taken orders, and in 1835 began his eighteen years' tenure of the vicarage of Wymeswold in Leicestershire, from which seclusion the twice-repeated offer of a colonial bishopric failed to draw him. He was Hulsean lecturer at Cambridge in 1841-1842, and steadily built up a reputation as scholar and preacher, which would have been enhanced but for his discursive ramblings in the fields of minor poetry and magazine editing. In September 1853 Alford removed to Quebec Chapel, London, where he had a large and cultured congregation. In March 1857 Viscount Palmerston advanced him to the deanery of Canterbury, where, till his death on the 12th of January 1871, he lived the same strenuous and diversified life that had always characterized him. The inscription on his tomb, chosen by himself, is "Diversorium Viatoris Hierosolymam Proficiscentis.''

Alford was a not inconsiderable artist, as his picture-book, The Riviera (1870), shows, and he had abundant musical and mechanical talent. Besides editing the works of John Donne, he published several volumes of his own verse, The School of the Heart (1835), The Abbot of Muchelnaye (1841), and a number of hymns, the best-known of which are "Forward! be our watch-word,'' "Come, ye thankful people, come,'' and "Ten thousand times ten thousand.'' He translated the Odyssey, wrote a well-known manual of idiom, A Plea for the Queen's English (1863), and was the first editor of the Contemporary Review (1866—1870). His chief fame, however, rests upon his monumental edition of the New Testament in Greek (4 vols.), which occupied him from 1841 to 1861. In this work he first brought before English students a careful collation of the readings of the chief MSS. and the researches of the ripest continental scholarship of his day. Philological rather than theological in character, it marked an epochal change from the old homiletic commentary, and though more recent research, patristic and papyral, has largely changed the method of New Testament exegesis, Alford's work is still a quarry where the student can dig with a good deal of profit.

His Life, written by his widow, appeared in 1873 (Rivington). (A. J. G.)

ALFRED, or AELFRED, known as THE GREAT (848-? 900), king of England, was born in 848 at Wantage, and was the fourth son of King AEthelwulf and his first wife (Osburh). He seems to have been a child of singular attractiveness and promise, and stories of his boyhood were remembered. At the age of five (853) he was sent to Rome, where he was confirmed by Leo IV., who is also stated to have "hallowed him as king.'' Later writers interpreted this as an anticipatory crowning in preparation for his ultimate succession to the throne of Wessex. That, however, could not have been foreseen in 853, as Alfred had three elder brothers living. It is probably to be understood either of investiture with the consular insignia, or possibly with some titular royalty such as that of the under-kingdom of Kent. In 855 Alfred again went to Rome with his father AEthelwulf, returning towards the end of 856. About two years later his father died. During the short reigns of his two eldest brothers, AEthelbald and AEthelberht, nothing is heard of Alfred. But with the accession of the third brother AEthelred (866) the public life of Alfred begins, and he enters on his great work of delivering England from the Danes. It is in this reign that Asser applies to Alfred the unique title of secundarius, which seems to indicate a position analogous to that of the Celtic tanist, a recognized successor, closely associated with the reigning prince. It is probable that this arrangement was definitely sanctioned by the witenagemot, to guard against the danger of a disputed succession should AEthelred fall in battle. In 868 Alfred married Ealhswith, daughter of AEthelred Mucill, who is called ealdorman of the Gaini, an unidentified district. The same year the two brothers made an unsuccessful attempt to relieve Mercia from the pressure of the Danes. For nearly two years Wessex had a respite. But at the end of 870 the storm burst; and the year which followed has been rightly called "Alfred's year of battles.'' Nine general engagements were fought with varying fortunes, though the place and date of two of them have not been recorded. A successful skirmish at Englefield, Berks (December 31, 870), was followed by a severe defeat at Reading (January 4, 871), and this, four days later, by the brilliant victory of Ashdown, near Compton Beauchamp in Shrivenham Hundred. On the 22nd of January the English were again defeated at Basing, and on the 22nd of March at Marton, Wilts, the two unidentified battles having perhaps occurred in the interval. In April AEthelred died, and Alfred succeeded to the whole burden of the contest. While he was busied with his brother's exequies, the Danes defeated the English in his absence at an unnamed spot, and once more in his presence at Wilton in May. After this peace was made, and for the next five years the Danes were occupied in other parts of England, Alfred merely keeping a force of observation on the frontier. But in 876 part of the Danes managed to slip past him and occupied Wareham; whence, early in 877, under cover of treacherous negotiations, they made a dash westwards and seized Exeter. Here Alfred blockaded them, and a relieving fleet having been scattered by a storm, the Danes had to submit and withdrew to Mercia. But in January 878 they made a sudden swoop on Chippenham, a royal vill in which Alfred had been keeping his Christmas, "and most of the people they reduced, except the King Alfred, and he with a little band made his way . . . by wood and swamp, and after Easter he . . . made a fort at Athelney, and from that fort kept fighting against the foe'' (Chron..) The idea that Alfred, during his retreat at Athelney, was a helpless fugitive rests upon the foolish legend of the cakes. In reality he was organizing victory. By the middle of May his preparations were complete and he moved out of Athelney, being joined on the way by the levies of Somerset, Wilts and Hants. The Danes on their side moved out of Chippenham, and the two armies met at Edington in Wiltshire. The result was a decisive victory for Alfred. The Danes submitted. Guthrum, the Danish king, and twenty-nine of his chief men accepted baptism. By the next year (879) not only Wessex, but Mercia, west of Watling Street, was cleared of the invader. This is the arrangement known as the peace of Wedmore (878), though no document embodying its provisions is in existence. And though for the present the north-eastern half of England, including London, remained in the hands of the Danes, in reality the tide had turned, and western Europe was saved from the danger of becoming a heathen Scandinavian power. For the next few years there was peace, the Danes being kept busy on the continent. A landing in Kent in 884 or 885,1 though successfully repelled, encouraged the East Anglian Danes to revolt. The measures taken by Alfred to repress this revolt culminated in the capture of London in 885 or 886, and the treaty known as Alfred and Guthrum's peace, whereby the boundaries of the treaty of Wedmore (with which this is often confused) were materially modified in Alfred's favour. Once more for a time there was a lull; but in the autumn of 892 (893) the final storm burst. The Danes, finding their position on the continent becoming more and more precarious, crossed to England in two divisions, amounting in the aggregate to 330 sail, and entrenched themselves, the larger body at Appledore and the lesser under Haesten at Milton in Kent. The fact that the new invaders brought their wives and children with them shows that this was no mere raid, but a deliberate attempt, in concert with the Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes, to conquer England. Alfred, 893 (894), took up a position whence he could observe both forces. While he was negotiating with Haesten the Danes at Appledore broke out and struck north-westwards, but were overtaken by Alfred's eldest son, Edward, and defeated in a general engagement at Farnham, and driven to take refuge in Thorney Island in the Hertfordshire Colne, where they were blockaded and ultimately compelled to submit. They then fell back on Essex, and after suffering another defeat at Benfleet coalesced with Haesten's force at Shoebury. Alfred had been on his way to relieve his son at Thorney when he heard that the Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes were besieging Exeter and an unnamed fort on the coast of North Devon. Alfred at once hurried westwards and raised the siege of Exeter; the fate of the other place is not recorded. Meanwhile the force under Haesten set out to march up the Thames valley, possibly with the idea of assisting their friends in the west. But they were met by a large force under the three great ealdormen of Mercia, Wilts and Somerset, and forced to head off to the north-west, being finally overtaken and blockaded at Buttington, which some identify with Buttington Tump at the mouth of the Wye, others with Buttington near Welshpool. An attempt to break through the English lines was defeated with loss; those who escaped retreated to Shoebury. Then after collecting reinforcements they made a sudden dash across England and occupied the ruined Roman walls of Chester. The English did not attempt a winter blockade, but contented themselves with destroying all the supplies in the neighbourhood. And early in 894 (895) want of food obliged the Danes to retire once more to Essex. At the end of this year and early in 895 (896) the Danes drew their ships up the Thames and Lea and fortified themselves twenty miles above London. A direct attack on the Danish lines failed, but later in the year Alfred saw a means of obstructing the river so as to prevent the egress of the Danish ships. The Danes realized that they were out-manoeuvred. They struck off north-westwards and wintered at Bridgenorth. The next year, 896 (897), they abandoned the struggle. Some retired to Northumbria, some to East Anglia; those who had no connexions in England withdrew to the continent. The long campaign was over. The result testifies to the confidence inspired by Alfred's character and generalship, and to the efficacy of the military reforms initiated by him. These were (1) the division of the fyrd or national militia into two parts, relieving each other at fixed intervals, so as to ensure continuity in military operations; (2) the establishment of fortified posts (burgs) and garrisons at certain points; (3) the enforcement of the obligations of thanehood on all owners of five hides of land, thus giving the king a nucleus of highly equipped troops. After the final dispersal of the Danish invaders Alfred turned his attention to the increase of the navy, and ships were built according to the king's own designs, partly to repress the ravages of the Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes on the coasts of Wessex, partly to prevent the landing of fresh hordes. This is not, as often asserted, the beginning of the English navy. There had been earlier naval operations under Alfred. One naval engagement was certainly fought under AEthelwulf (851), and earlier ones, possibly in 833 and 840. Nor were the new ships a great success, as we hear of them grounding in action and foundering in a storm. Much, too, was needed in the way of civil re-organization, especially in the districts ravaged by the Danes. In the parts of Mercia acquired by Alfred, the shire system seems now to have been introduced for the first time. This is the one grain of truth in the legend that Alfred was the inventor of shires, hundreds and tithings. The finances also would need careful attention; but the subject is obscure, and we cannot accept Asser's description of Alfred's appropriation of his revenue as more than an ideal sketch. Alfred's care for the administration of justice is testified both by history and legend; and the title "protector of the poor'' was his by unquestioned right. Of the action of the witenagemot we do not hear very much under Alfred. That he was anxious to respect its rights is conclusively proved, but both the circumstances of the time and the character of the king would tend to throw more power into his hands. The legislation of Alfred probably belongs to the later part of the reign, after the pressure of the Danes had relaxed. The details of it cannot be discussed here. Asser speaks grandiosely of Alfred's relations with foreign powers, but little definite information is available. He certainly corresponded with Elias III., the patriarch of Jerusalem, and probably sent a mission to India. Embassies to Rome conveying the English alms to the pope were fairly frequent; while Alfred's interest in foreign countries is shown by the insertions which he made in his translation of Orosius. His relations to the Celtic princes in the southern half of the island are clearer. Comparatively early in his reign the South Welsh princes, owing to the pressure on them of North Wales and Mercia, commended themselves to Alfred. Later in the reign the North Welsh followed their example, and the latter co-operated with the English in the campaign of 893 (894). The Celtic principality in Cornwall, which seems to have survived at least till 926, must long have been practically dependent on Wessex. That Alfred sent alms to Irish as well as to continental monasteries may be accepted on Asser's authority; the visit of the three pilgrim "Scots'' (i.e. Irish) to Alfred in 891 is undoubtedly authentic; the story that he himself in his childhood was sent to Ireland to be healed by St Modwenna, though mythical, may point to Alfred's interest in that island. The history of the church under Alfred is most obscure. The Danish inroads had told heavily upon it; the monasteries had been special points of attack, and though Alfred founded two or three monasteries and imported foreign monks, there was no general revival of monasticism under him. To the ruin of learning and education wrought by the Danes, and the practical extinction of the knowledge of Latin even among the clergy, the preface to Alfred's translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care bears eloquent testimony. It was to remedy these evils that he established a court school, after the example of Charles the Great; for this he imported scholars like Grimbald and John the Saxon from the continent and Asser from South Wales; for this, above all, he put himself to school, and made the series of translations for the instruction of his clergy and people, most of which still survive. These belong unquestionably to the later part of his reign, not improbably to the last four years of it, during which the chronicles are almost silent. Apart from the lost Handboc or Encheiridion, which seems to have been merely a commonplace-book kept by the king, the earliest work to be translated was the Dialogues of Gregory, a book enormously popular in the middle ages. In this case the translation was made by Alfred's great friend Werferth, bishop of Worcester, the king merely furnishing a preface. The next work to be undertaken was Gregory's Pastoral Care, especially for the benefit of the clergy. In this Alfred keeps very close to his original; but the introduction which he prefixed to it is one of the most interesting documents of the reign, or indeed of English history. The next two works taken in hand were historical, the Universal History of Orosius and Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The priority should probably be assigned to the Orosius, but the point has been much debated. In the Orosius, by omissions and additions, Alfred so remodels his original as to produce an almost new work; in the Bede the author's text is closely adhered to, no additions being made, though most of the documents and some other less interesting matters are omitted. Of late years doubts have been raised as to Alfred's authorship of the Bede translation. But the sceptics cannot be regarded as having proved their point. We come now to what is in many ways the most interesting of Alfred's works, his translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, the most popular philosophical manual of the middle ages. Here again Alfred deals very freely with his original and though the late Dr G. Schepss showed that many of the additions to the text are to be traced not to Alfred himself, but to the glosses and commentaries which he used, still there is much in the work which is solely Alfred's and highly characteristic of his genius. It is in the Boethius that the oft-quoted sentence occurs: "My will was to live worthily as long as I lived, and after my life to leave to them that should come after, my memory in good works.'' The book has come down to us in two MSS. only. In one of these the poems with which the original is interspersed are rendered into prose, in the other into alliterating verse. The authorship of the latter has been much disputed; but probably they also are by Alfred. Of the authenticity of the work as a whole there has never been any doubt. The last of Alfred's works is one to which he gave the title Blostman, i. e. "Blooms'' or Anthology. The first half is based mainly on the Soliloquies of St Augustine, the remainder is drawn from various sources, and contains much that is Alfred's own and highly characteristic of him. The last words of it may be quoted; they form a fitting epitaph for the noblest of English kings. "Therefore he seems to me a very foolish man, and very wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear.'' Besides these works of Alfred's, the Saxon Chronicle almost certainly, and a Saxon Martyrology, of which fragments only exist, probably owe their inspiration to him. A prose version of the first fifty Psalms has been attributed to him; and the attribution, though not proved, is perfectly possible. How Alfred passed to "the life where all things are made clear'' we do not know. The very year is uncertain. The arguments on the whole are in favour of 900. The day was the 26th of October. Alike for what he did and for what he was, there is none to equal Alfred in the whole line of English sovereigns; and no monarch in history ever deserved more truly the epithet of Great.