Caution. – As is well known, Alfieri32 lied very much when he told his amazed contemporaries his life story. He lied from that despotism against himself which he also revealed in the way he created his own language and tyrannized himself into becoming a poet – he had finally found a severe form of sublimity into which he pressed his life and his memory: no doubt there was much agony in all this. – I also would not believe a life story of Plato, written by himself – any more than that of Rousseau33 or the vita nuova34 of Dante.