Critical Studies

, must be due to the general inability of his English and American public to appreciate their accuracy of observation and lineation. Nearly all of them have qualities which cannot be gauge

faithful to a wonderful degree. That side of Italian life which is given in Marzio's Crucifix, for instance, is drawn with an accuracy not to be surpassed. The whole of this story indeed is admirable in its

ed that captivating courtesy and graceful animation which are so lovable in them, and which render so many of their men and women so irresistibly seductive. According to him they are a savage set of berserkers, always cutting each other's throats, and he does not in any way render that extreme politeness which so effectually conceals the real thoughts of the

many writers would neglect, are charming in his treatment; take, for instance, the old priest of Aquila in Saracinesca; with how few touches he is made to live for us. We only see him once, but

enetrated alike their interiors and their characters with that skill which is only born of sympathy, and it is therefore perhaps on

now intimately Italian character and habits; but they abound, and show so much of fine observation and deli

en treated as he treats them in To Leeward and Greifenstein and Casa Braccio they are merely coarse and inartistic. He has a leaning towards melodrama which is chiefly to be regretted because it mars and strains the style most natural to hi

uarelles and the most glaring of posters, or why one who can draw so well and finely in silver-point can descend to daub with brooms in such gross distemper. If this be the price of versatility, it were best not to be versatile. But it is not versatility, because true versatility consists in possessing a many-sided power which flashes like a jewel of which all the facets are equally well cut. True versatility, moreover, does not consist in the mere change of subject, but in th

and has merely lent himself to it from some wrong impression that the public requires it; due, perhaps, to the suggestion of some unwise publisher or friend. The coarse melodrama with which some of his novels ends is not in unison with the characters or the scope of his work. It is quite true that, as murder is, in some circumstances, justified in actual life, so in some circumstances it may be used as a dénouement in fiction with perfect accuracy; yet it is always a violent endin

he so often goes out of his way to spoil his portraits of them with the bowl

ural in good society everywhere, except in England, and no one since Charles Lever ever described them so well as Mr Crawford; but m

his tragic end neither moves us nor satisfies in us any sense of justice. What are admirably rendered and true to life in Casa Braccio are not Griggs and Gloria, or Angus Dalrymple and Maria Addorata, but the peasants of Subiaco, Stefanone, with his long-cherished vendetta, and his wife, Sora Nanna, who wears her lost daughter's shoes because it would have been a

harmony. In the latter story the conception of Rughero, though by no means new, is fine; but the frame in which this mariner is set lacks all fitness for such a figure; and the man whom he murders is not sinner enough, nor serious enough in his actions, for the reader to be moved to pardon the act as the author himself pardons it. If violent delights have violent endings, violent endings need strong provocation and clear explanation; they should appe

fault is the more vexatious because it shows that the author was never really absorbed in his own creations, was never so possessed with them that they dominated him and made him do what they chose, as Bulwer Ly

cs, in which it is conspicuous; and is startlingly and irritatingly visible in one of his latest, Adam Johnstone's Son; indeed, in the last-named story the conclusion is obviously totally different from what it was intended to be in the opening chapters. Now, a well-constructed novel may please you or not, may be attractive or offensive, but it wil

lishman (as in real life they unquestionably would have done). The whole incident, related with much spirit, is obviously only in its place, only pardonable as an episode, if the carter be destined to appear again and sate his thirst for vengeance on the hero. But he disappears from the scene for ever as the carabineers handcuff him. We neither see nor hear any more of him,

free from this defect are the Cigarette Maker, the Three Fates, and Marzio's Crucifix, and here I cannot resist (though it is not within the scope of this article, since its venue is America) pointing out how delicate, subtle, and clever is that story entitled the Three Fates. There is little movement in it, no incident of any note, its interest lies entirely in the development of character and in the evolution of feeling, but these are so treated that they suffice to hold the reader's c

uism, no deep emotion. They are unfortunately entirely lacking in any perception of those myriads of other lives not human, but as sentient as the human, such as vibrates in every line of Pierre Loti's works. We have never in his novels any profound tenderness like that with which the Frères Rosny speak of the semi-humanity of inanimate things, or show us the dog gambolling on the wayside turf in all the simple joy of its youth and its pleasure in existence. To Mr Crawford as to Peter Bell, a primrose by the river's side

ld say that the moonlight shining on the waters of Tiber, under the bridge of St Angelo, is no more to him than a flash-light illumining a grain-elevator on the Hudson. All which is still Italy, of colour, of perfume, of light, of legend, of rapture, of emotion, has wholly escaped him; he has never felt its hysterica passio; he has never known its eternal youth, he has never seen its lost

youngster of rank was never so well drawn as in this story of his début in speculation and his failure in it. His character is one very difficult to draw, that coldness, that self-reliance, that self-sufficiency, which are something at once harder and less contemptible than conceit, the qualities which will make him successful later on but will never make him lovable or tender; the instincts of race which hold him back from meanness but are not strong enough to raise him to nobility, attenuated as they have been by modern education, all

arries the speculator who has beggared Don Orsino on condition that this gentleman shall restore to Don Orsino all he has lost. Nothing more improbable or inconsistent, given the character of the woman, could possibly be conceived; nor is it more probable that the haughty and irascible young man would endure to be served by her mediation, however it might be veiled. Everything surrounding this lady promises us passion, intrigue, perhaps tragedy, certainly peril, bu

great fault in art; but it is one of which English and American writers are continually guilty. It is true we are told casually, towards the end, that her husband had hit her with this paper-knife, and that for this blow the famous fencer Spicca had killed him; but this is mentioned incidentally, and does not sufficiently account for the interest we h

servant persuades him to eat 'a little mixed fry' with a fresh salad, 'the salad is very good to-day'; and Spicca, touched and refreshed, examines his meagre purse and takes out a ten-franc note which he give

nerring accuracy, is one very hard to make sympathetic to the general reader, and especially to the English reader, by whom duelling is abhorred. But Spicca is so perfect a gentleman, so sad and simple and calm, so natural and unass

on's second. All this is quite true to life in Italy, where duels with the sabre or rapier are still of daily o

brilliant. Some have indeed the dramatic effect of inconsistency of which I have spoken, but all are full of fine suggestions for the theatre. Saracinesca, or Sant' Ilario, for instance, would be transferable to the

eatre. There are scenes in nearly all his works which might be put upon the boards with scarcely any alteration, such as the duel between Don Giovanni and Del Ferice in Saracinesca, and the death

quently infelicitous in names. In Casa Braccio, the American lover of Gloria, a stagey sort of person, but one whom we are invited to regard with admiration and sympathy, is weighted with the shocking name of Griggs. Mr Crawford does not see that were Othello or Hamlet called Griggs, either would try to move the souls of men in vain. If a name does not matter to a rose, it does matter immensely to a character in a book; and there are so many euphonious names in use in the world that it is wholly un

of his great qualities we hear no more and certainly see nothing. And where we still farther follow his fortunes in the subsequent sequel of Don Orsino, he has sunk into complete self-effacement, so complete that he allows his son to be the associate and the debtor of that very Del Ferice whose utter baseness and vileness he knows so well, and who tried in the famous duel to murder him by foul play. Sequels are always ill-advised trials of the author's consistency and the reader's memory, and it would have been unquestionably bett

e made it the fact it is. When the two young people who wish to marry in Marzio's Crucifix discuss what their house shall be like, and what colour the walls and furniture, their biographer adds, 'Italians have lost all sense of colour.' This is true, bu

bling especially the vice of our generation. But I do not believe this is possible.' That is to say, he does not care to be at the trouble of such an investigation, even though he adds the acute sentence that most of the men and w

ives, one's youth is never quite gone, for there is always somebody for whom one is young.' A rough, rude man, a day labourer, who knew not a letter, and spent all his life bent over his spade or plough, said to me once, one lovely night in spring, as he looked up at the full moon, 'How beautiful she is! But she has no heart. She sees us toiling and groaning and suffering down here, and she is always fair and calm, and never weeps!' Another said once, wh

ard the ringing stanzas of Cavallotti which sound like a clarion through the land? Has he never studied the exquisite if too erotic odes of D'Annunzio, or the touching verse of Stecchetti? There are others besides these who are true and fine poets also; and ev

so wildly, and kill themselves so madly for affection's sake, as the Italian people do. The other day, because a young soldier was sent to Africa, his brother killed himself in despair, and the father of the two youths then killed himself also. It is an inflammable imagination which makes the nation so easily led away by the promises and the phantasmagoria of glory with w

d with the estate a title, which, by the payment of a large sum to a complaisant Government, he is allowed to adopt; he is decorated by the king for his munificent 'charities' in the land of his adoption; he marries an English woman, and their children masquerade as Italian nobility with not a single drop of Italian blood in their veins. Such 'Italian nobles' are numerous, unhappily, in modern Italy, and do immeasurable discredit to the nationality which they

he sent fifteen francs to the municipality to be divided among the poor, and everyone applauded his liberality! This love of money, acquisitiveness, niggardliness, or whatever we call it, is too general not to be injurious to the Italian character; and it enters into all daily life and personal acts, and is frequently the chief motor power of marriage, of career, of education. And then added to this injurious power there is another which is more deleterious still, which weakens, debases, and falsifies the character from infancy: it is the direful influence of the Church. But to treat of

e should possess that liberality of thought which is the chief, perhaps the only, virtue of his generation; and if he had possessed it he would undoubtedly have reached a much higher level, a much finer ideal, than he has actually done. It would seem as if he distrusted and checked t

at he calls believers and unbelievers; and he looks forward with joy to the coming conflict when men shall again fly at each other's throat for the glory of God. This kind of mental cecity has its inevitable results: it makes him step lamely where he would otherwise walk with manly alacrity, and it makes him afraid to face the light of facts which his true

fatally exists in all Italian life, and one could wish that he would make a more complete exposure of it. Take this

e wanted, the fellow would doubtless apply to someone of the opposite party, would receive the coveted honour, and w

rests in his district under the existing Ministry, and he even went so far as to compose and send some notes on the subject. These notes proved to be so voluminous and complete, that when the mayor had copied them he could not find a pretext for adding a single word

ew resist the pressure of a social atmosphere. His book called With the Immortals, marred as it is by the incongruity and impossibility of its setting, shows that he can reflect if he likes, and can express his reflections. If this work had been cast in such a form as Mr Mallock's New Republic, or Sir Arthur Helps' Friends in Council, or Christopher North's Noctes Ambrosian? it would have been remarkable for the arguments and dialogues contained in it. But the ghost-element, the supernatural scenic effects, kill its excellence. Dr Johnson, Heine, Pascal, Bayard, Fran?ois de Valois and C?sar are too ill-assorted for us to accept them in each other

ies of studying its machinery and its intrigues. He can dissect with so much subtlety and correctness the brain and the temper of such a man as Del Ferice, that there can be no doubt a political novel from him, placed in Rome, would have alike accuracy and interest and irony. But he must clear his mind of some of its cobwebs, and he

ks to him for the pleasant hours he has often given me, and the gallery of interest