That Alfieri, a strange mixture of the passionate man of spontaneous action, and of the self-manipulating, idealising poseur, should have fallen short of his own ideals, is perhaps the one pathetic circumstance of his life; the one dash of suffering and failure which makes this heroic man a hero.
"The Countess of Albany"
Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
Nevertheless Alfieri had a distinct dramatic sense: an intense poseur himself, enjoying nothing so much as working himself up to produce a given effect upon his own mind or upon others, he had an extraordinary instinct for the theatrical, for the moral attitude which may be struck so as to be effective, and for the arrangement of subordinate parts so that this attitude surprise and move the audience.
"The Countess of Albany"
Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
But he was also, what seems almost incompatible with this ferocious truthfulness, excessively self-conscious and morally attitudinising, a thin-skinned poseur.
"The Countess of Albany"
Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)