NOVEL writing may be said to be still in its infancy in Italy. Novels there are, it is true, generally of bad or indifferent quality, but novelists, in the true sense of the word, there are few or none. Now and then, a writer, distinguished in some other path, a poet, say, a politician, or a scientist, will sit down and write a tale as a means of popularising some favourite theory; but he does not cultivate fiction as one of the fine arts. On the surface of things, the chief reason would seem to be that the reading public of Italy is too small to create a real demand for light literature. For among the upper classes, those who read for amusement fly to French and English novels, which are more than sufficient for their needs. There is no intelligent reading public as in England or America, ready to devour every new work, whether of history, fiction, or social economy, with no special object in view beyond the mere delight of perusing new books.

Studious men of learning abound here, but these are generally students rather than men of the world; they keep to their own special grooves in science or literature, and when in search of relaxation, seldom seek it in books, for these are their daily bread.

But when one notices how many bad translations of sensational French novels are everywhere on sale, in the cheapest of cheap editions, one perceives that there is some demand for literary food of a coarse sort. Poetry also has a fair sale. Indeed, whenever among the lower classes you happen to meet with men or women who read at all, you will generally find that it is poetry that they love. They will eagerly con Dante's Inferno, the Gerusalemme Liberata, or any stray volume of modern verse that falls in

their way, while their pure instinct keeps them aloof from the vicious class of translated trash that is hawked about the country. New comers in Italy are often startled by hearing quotations from Dante from the lips of servants and peasant folk.

And when you come to inquire how it is that so few good writers try to supply wholesome fiction of home manufacture, you find that there exists a stronger reason for its absence than mere scarcity of readers. That reason is, in our opinion, the unsettled state of the language, and, above all, the difference between the spoken and the written tongue. Until the latter be freed from the thousand Della Cruscan and other pedantic trammels impeding its progress, no real school of national fiction can be formed. How, for instance, can tales of everyday life be composed in a language owning no universally recognised terms for every-day objects? Putting dialects out of the question, it would be easy to fill pages with lists of the different names used by educated persons in different parts of Italy for articles of common use. To give one or two examples: in Tuscany a washing-basin is known as a catinella, while in Lombardy it is bacino, and in Naples bacile. A thimble is here called an anello, while ditale is the term employed in North Italy and elsewhere. Any traveller who will take the trouble to preserve washing bills, received in the various cities of Italy will soon find himself possessed of a perfect dictionary of synonyms. Directly a writer ventures into the domain of domestic life, he is hampered by the reflection that, within fifty miles of his native town, many of the terms he uses will be almost unintelligible, or— and worse still-misunderstood.

For

however carefully he may have kept to dictionary words, he knows that these have not everywhere an identical meaning. He has a well-founded fear that the purists will accuse him of writing bad Italian, and he cannot prove his case by precedent, for the classic stylists did not condescend to the trivial details with which he has occupied his pen. So, if he shrinks from running the gauntlet in this fashion, the young writer takes refuge in the realms of poetry, and limiting himself to the prescribed vocabulary of verse, carefully eschews descriptions of domestic things too lowly for poetic diction. Thanks to the flexibility of their language, Italians have a natural gift for verse-making, and find that noble thoughts and pretty fancies flow more readily in poetry than prose.

The growing interest in German and English literature is dealing heavy blows at the purists' creed of vague generalities, and greatly helping to vivify the literary language. Guerrieri Gonzaga, Carducci, and Maffei have all done good work in this respect, and given to the Italian public vigorous renderings of Goethe's, Heine's, and Schiller's masterpieces. But a chapter might be written on the "delicate distresses" of minor translators. For instance, Signor Rotondi, in the preface to his version of Longfellow's Evangeline, begs the indulgence of his readers for venturing on a poetical rendering of domestic scenes of "so homely a character," and hopes that his anxiety to be faithful to the original will gain him forgiveness for sometimes descending beneath the dignity of the poetic style. Yet the effort to cling to this dignity shackles the translator at every step; he seldom has the courage to use common terms for common things, and has perpetual recourse to periphrasis, in order to avoid simplicity. He renders "a sunny farm" (of Grandpré) by the antiquated and classical colti aprici, and the local colouring and special charm of the whole poem alike dis

appear beneath a load of stilted, Latinised words.

Foreign students of Italian literature are apt to feel exasperated when, in answer to their inquiries for Italian novels, they are offered that timeworn chef d'œuvre, Manzoni's Promessi Sposi, which was probably one of their first Italian text-books, and to wonder why the author was content with that one success in the field of romance, why he never followed it up by other tales. Yet that wonderful novel called such a hornet's nest about Manzoni's Lombard ears, that, after long contest with his critics, he thought it necessary to bring out a new edition with numerous verbal alterations. The purists had fallen foul of him for putting Lombard words and turns of speech in the mouths of his Lombard dramatis persona; and then when he made his Como peasants express themselves in Tuscan, the same critics accused him of pedantry. The consequence was, that ever after, Manzoni devoted much of the energy that might have been better employed in the composition of other masterpieces, to an interminable correspondence on the niceties of the Italian tongue, and fruitless endeavours to define where dialect ended and la lingua began.

In those days, a Neapolitan, Marquis Basilio Puoti, one of Manzoni's fiercest opponents, was a chief among the purists, and had founded a school of pure literature, which was much frequented by the studious youth of Naples, and was a pendant to the school of Padre Cesari in Lombardy. Its fundamental rule was that students should confine themselves almost exclusively to the study of the Trecentisti, and adopt these writers' phraseology in their own compositions; he who used most "phrases" being considered the best writer. The true art of Italian composition was supposed to consist in strict avoidance of all modes of expression used in every-day life, and as a necessary consequence, all every-day events were banished themes.

The severest blame that the marquis

could find for a promising pupil, who had betrayed his master's expectations by writing a modern tale in a natural, unaffected style, was to exclaim with bitterness that the hero appeared to be drawn from life. "He might be any young man about Naples! I seem to see him, to hear his voice!" And he repeated: "I seem to see him," in a tone of the strongest indignation.

The young student, now-a-days a famous man, and remarkable for the directness and limpidity of his style, took a witty revenge for the failure of his first tale, by reading another the following week, which was a perfect mosaic of fourteenth century phraseology, and obtained the full approbation of his pedantic instructor.

His

The works of Domenico Guerrazzi afford us another exemplification of the difficulties of la lingua. powerful novels L'Assedio di Firenze, &c.-which, being vehicles for the outpouring of patriotic aspirations, were so widely popular some twenty or thirty years ago-are very difficult reading, without the help of a glossary, to all Italians save Tuscans; for Guerrazzi's pages are crammed with little-used idioms, and he is akin to our own Browning in his delight in quaint concision and jagged contortion of phrase. So, now that Italy is free, Guerrazzi has but few readers. Groaning under no yoke save that of over-taxation, Italians of the present day decline to crack the patriot-novelist's hard nuts, and cannot share in the last generation's enthusiasm for him.

Of living writers of light literature, Edmondo di Amicis is one of the few who successfully combine ease of style with elegance of diction. He, however, is not a novelist, for, with the exception of a single volume of tales and a few short sketches, he has devoted himself to descriptive writing, and produced many sparkling and popular books of travel, which are beginning to be known beyond the Alps.

Among men distinguished in other

careers who now and then dash off a work of fiction is Paolo Mantegazza, the well-known professor of anthropology and physiology and member of the Italian Senate. His is undoubtedly one of the keenest intellects of the day, if also somewhat too versatile. As one of his contemporaries has neatly expressed it: Mantegazza is a literary man of science and a scientific man of letters. A very brilliant lecturer, he has done much to popularise science with general audiences; indeed he makes it almost too popular, by assuming too great ignorance on the part of his hearers, and elaborately explaining many things that should be obvious to the meanest capacity. A sterling patriot, who in his boyhood played an active part in the glorious Five Days of Milan, he has since used his precious faculty of combativeness in warfare against preventible disease, by means of yearly almanacs or handbooks on various branches of hygiene. In this he has done good work, none the less perhaps because he preaches the mens sana in corpore sano doctrine in the plainest of plain language, and with a seasoning of coarse pleasantry which makes his wholesome truths of easier relish to palates accustomed to plenty of garlic with their food. An apostle of soap and water, if all who read Mantegazza's almanacs would follow out his precepts, the "Great Unwashed" of Italy would speedily diminish in number. An eclectic philosopher and ardent lover of nature, besides works bearing on his special studies, he occasionally produces a volume of travels or a romance, and, untroubled by linguistic subtleties, writes in a witty and dashing style that disarms the criticisms of purists. His South American travels achieved great popularity, but it is chiefly with his tales that we have to do at present. The first of these, entitled A Day at Madeira, now in its sixth edition, is a touching love-story, illustrative of the sinfulness of marriage for persons with any taint of consumption in their

blood. The heroine, an English girl, the child of consumptive parents and last survivor of a family of twelve, has promised her father upon his death-bed that she will never transmit the hereditary disease to another generation. Chastened by her mournful childhood in a home from which, one by one, all her playmates have disappeared, and by a girlhood passed in wandering with her invalid father from one health resort to another, Emma is over twenty before she has any temptation to break her vow. Then, however, she meets her fate in the shape of a certain William (the Professor has wisely shrunk from inventing English surnames), described as an Adonis, rich in all manly qualities, and who, in virtue of an Italian mother, owns a temperament "uniting the volcanoes of Italy with the fogs of England." And when, after a few months of friendly intercourse, poor Emma realises the nature of her feelings towards the fascinating hero, and he has confessed his love for her, she first drives him to desperation by her sudden coldness, and then disappears from London with the old aunt who has brought her up. William discovers her retreat on the Gulf of Spezia, forces an explanation from her, and induces her to return to England and consult the best London physicians before finally dismissing him and condemning herself to a life of loneliness.

This episode gives the author scope for a pungent satire, bordering on caricature, upon the opposing systems of treating lung-disease. The result of all the consultations is that Emma goes to pass two years in Madeira. Her oldest friend, the medical adviser and confidant of her deceased father, tells her that if that probation should build up her constitution sufficiently to resist a couple of English winters, she might then become a wife and mother without infringing the spirit of her vow.

Accordingly the lovers are parted, but William cannot resign himself to

four years of total separation, and after a few months makes a voyage to the island in order to spend a few hours at his beloved one's feet. The end of the tale is sad enough. Emma succumbs to the first trial year in England, and dies pining for her absent lover, comforted only by the reflection that her promise to her father is still unbroken.

Such is the briefest sketch of the plot of this novel, which contains many glowing descriptions of natural scenery and some tender passages tenderly touched in, but has the, in our eyes, capital defect of being almost entirely told in letters. Then too the circumstance of having had an Italian mother would hardly justify any Englishman in writing such extremely "high-falutin" epistles. Evidently the fogs had not much influence over the volcanoes. If Professor Mantegazza had ever read Henrietta Temple, he would perhaps have hesitated before relating his lovetale by means of love-letters. With all reverence to the memory of Richardson, and not forgetting George Sand's incomparable Marquis de Villemer, and other five or six of her best works, we cannot help thinking that the epistolary form of romance has had its day. Now and then, of course, it may be effectively employed-witness Gustave Droz's miniature masterpiece, Un Paquet de Lettres; but where love is the sole subject-matter, it should, we think, be used with exceeding parsimony. Certainly in no other form of composition is the boundary between the sublime and the ridiculous so easily overstepped. Why, would even the lovers of Verona be as near to our hearts as they are had Shakespeare only given us their clandestine correspondence, concluding with a letter from the Friar in explanation of the final catastrophe ?

Nevertheless A Day at Madeira is so pathetic a story, and so full of exquisite descriptions, that had Mantegazza taken the trouble to cast it in more artistic shape, its popularity

would long ere this have passed the Italian frontier, and rivalled that of Heyse's Ein Mädchen's Tagebuch. This too in spite of its being a novel with a purpose, which purpose is, as usual, insisted upon somewhat too strongly. No one can doubt the soundness of the author's physical doctrine; but surely, even without a consumptive tendency, her debility of constitution, added to the heart-weariness of prolonged separation from her lover, would have been quite enough to kill the luckless heroine. Do not all physicians tell us that mental suffering is one of the principal causes of decline? Brokenheartedness does not always attack what Mantegazza is pleased to call our 66 sponge." It is the weakest organ that gives way.

Also, the Professor would have done better to give his characters a different nationality. If it is always difficult to enlist the sympathies of Anglo-Saxon readers for a hero who frequently bursts into tears, it becomes impossible when that hero is supposed to be an Englishman. Indeed, to enjoy any Indeed, to enjoy any Italian novel the first thing to be done is to dismiss all insular prejudice against tears, and be prepared for heroes who weep as unrestrainedly as the most hysteric of females.

Il Dio Ignoto (The Unknown God), Mantegazza's last novel, is no exception to this rule. It is a work upon a larger scale and of more ambitious aim than the love-story we have just noticed, and has had an enormous success. Only published last year, its fourth edition is already exhausted. The greatest problems of the daymaterialism, rationalism, deism, immortality, &c.—are all brilliantly discussed in its pages, and all with the usual unsatisfactory result. It is a book with two heroes, bosom friends of contrasting characters: Giovanni, a quiet, stay-at-home youth, and Attilio, who is full of restless energy. Both desire to attain to the "unknown god," the ideal; but while one determines to seek it in his daily life and goes to study medicine at Milan, the

other dashes off to South America, which to his untravelled mind appears “a virgin soil, unspoiled by gods and men."

The tale is now carried on by the usual machinery of letters and extracts from the friends' diaries. Attilio goes through a series of wonderful South American adventures, and rivals the exploits of Captain Mayne Reid's most noted heroes. But after many romantic vicissitudes he settles down as the tame husband of a clever English girl of artistic tastes, who teaches him to seek his unknown god in the worship of the beautiful.

Meanwhile home-staying Giovanni has been slowly working his way in his profession at Milan. He writes a prize essay on the Intestinal Glands, falls desperately in love with a heartless coquette, and then, on discovering her real nature, turns misanthrope for a season, devotes himself to microscopic researches, and refines his sensations by means of asceticism, until he can find his ideal "in the scent of a flower, the song of a bird." But in spite of his disgust for womankind he soon meets a fresh ideal in the form of a beautiful girl, as simple and pureminded as his former love was the reverse. This second heart episode is greatly assisted by a scientific sympathy in the study of the microscope; but Giovanni drifts from friendship into love only when the object of his passion is forced to marry a worn-out rake in order to save her father from bankruptcy.

And here, notwithstanding Professor Mantegazza's power of psychological analysis, we cannot consider him successful in his delineation of a woman supposed to have all the virtues, none of the failings, of her sex. Fast coquettes he paints admirably, and he gives us a very attractive sketch of an impulsive Lima maiden, but his high-souled Maria conducts herself very much like the married heroines we meet with in the worst class of French novels. There is a scene at a ball which trenches upon very delicate