Tregento, and many a time he must, no doubt, with his own mind filled by classic memories, and knowledge of the arts, and touched to impassioned appreciation of all natural beauty, have suffered acutely from the apathy, ignorance, and unconscious self-absorption of such a domestic atmosphere. He has no doubt constantly been met with the incapacity to understand, the wonder of ignorance, the blank dulness of unopened minds, such as he suggests in the following passage:—

'We were near Rebursa. The rocky chain, with its sharp and broken peaks turned to the right following the winding Saurgo, rising tier on tier towards the massive summit of Mount Caran. On the left of the road, the soil was smooth and undulating like the large dunes of a seashore, becoming further off a succession of hills, tawny and humped like camels of the desert.

'"Look, look!" I cried, seeing another silver cloud of blossom. "Can you not see it, Antonello?"

'He did not look at the almond trees with my eyes; he looked, but with a faint smile, wondering probably at the childlike joy awakened in me at the sight of the first flowers. Yet, what fairer spectacle could this rude and stony country offer to us?

'"If my sisters only were here!" cried Oddo, to whom my pleasure communicated itself. "Oh, if they were here!"

'His voice was full of regret.

'"They need to be brought where flowers bloom," said Antonello, softly.

'"Look, look!" I cried again, giving myself up to my delight with fuller ease, now that I saw some reflection of it at least awakened in these poor shut souls. "I am glad these flowers are mine, Oddo."

'"My sisters must come to them," sighed Antonello, like one who speaks in a dream of sleep.

'It seemed as if his feverish eyes refreshed themselves with that vision of things so pure....

'They both looked at me, somewhat confused, faintly smiling, as if they had been brought unexpectedly before some extraordinary sight which stupefied them, yet filled them with delicious sensations. They had shown me their malady, had revealed to me their suffering, had spoken to me of that melancholy prison whence they had come and whither they would return; and I, on the common highway open to all, had invited them to recognise and celebrate the spring—the spring which they had both forgotten, which they seemed to see now for the first time after many years, which they gazed at with a mingling of fear and joy as at a miracle.'

Is not this delicate in expression as the sprays of the almond blossoms themselves?

An Italian scholar, in writing to me to-day, does indeed say with considerable accuracy that the affectation in the style of D'Annunzio takes from it its freedom and sincerity, that when he is writing of almond boughs and nightingales he does not give us the impression that these things are dear to him, but rather that he is endeavouring to say the most beautiful things he can think of about them. 'His style,' says my Italian correspondent, 'is the one occupation of his life, the one absorbing interest of his work; he cares but little for nature or for human nature, except as these are strings to his lyre.' This is in a great measure a correct, if a too severe, censure. There is in him nothing of that genuine emotion which wells up in the heart of Pierre Loti as he writes; D'Annunzio is always outside that which he describes; there is in him much of the virtuoso; he reminds me of a friend of mine, a London celebrity, who once invited a party of artists to see a fine work of art in his London house. When the curtain was drawn aside, the work of art was found to be a young nude woman, of singularly beautiful proportions, extended on a rug of black bear-skins to set off the ambers and ivories and blue-vein traceries of her skin. D'Annunzio stretches his subject thus bare before him in a well-adjusted light, and calls the world to see: for the subject he has no compassion. This preciosità (Anglicè, affectation) is still more apparent in his prefaces than in his works which they precede. These prefaces are long, elaborate, ornate disquisitions, with much of the euphuism of pedantic scholarship; and when in the preface to the Trionfo the author claims that this licentious romance is intended to hasten and welcome the coming of the Uebermensch, it is impossible not to smile at such a pretension, and, as even De Vogüé admits, at this point we are driven to sigh for the return of the mandolinata. He confirms the justice of a charge of preciosità himself in his introduction to Il Piacere, in which he speaks of 'the long and grave fatigue, the disgust which follows the painful and capricious artifices of style.' This is not the language of a true artist, for in the beauties and intricacies of style which should all have one aim—simplicity—the writer who is a true artist finds the same intimate satisfaction as the musician, the painter, the sculptor, each finds in the pursuit of his art. In style is the sfogo of the writer's procreative passion. It should bring with it neither fatigue nor disgust, but the serene joys of a satisfied desire.

However, apart from this fault of preciosità which De Vogüé does not appear to have perceived, but which seems to many Italians incontestable, the style of D'Annunzio is very fine; finest of all when it is spent on the portraiture of natural scenes, and of characters unhampered by conventionality. Read this brief episode of the simplest kind; how alive with actuality it is! It is taken from the earlier part of the residence of Aurispa and Ippolita at the Hermitage.

'Hearing a rattle of plates, he asked, "Are you hungry?" And the question suggested by the little homely sound, put eagerly, with childlike insistence, made Ippolita smile.

'"Yes, a little," she answered, smiling; and both of them looked at the table ready spread under the oak tree. In a few minutes more their dinner was ready.

'"You must be content with what there is," said Giorgio. "It is very humble fare."

'"Oh, I should be satisfied with herbs."

'And with a gay air she drew near the table, examined curiously the tablecloth, the silver, the glass, the plates, finding everything charming, delighted like a child with the blue flowers which ornamented the fine white pottery.

'"Everything delights me here!"

'She bent over the big, round loaf, which was still warm under its golden and crisp crust.

'"Ah! what a good smell it has!" And, as if impelled by her childlike joy in the fresh bread, she broke off a piece of its crust.

'"What good bread!"

'Her strong, white teeth shone as they bit and closed, and all the movements of her curving lip expressed the pleasure which she felt; and from her whole person there seemed to emanate a rare, fresh grace, which attracted and amazed her lover with a new and unexpected charm.

'"Oh, how good! Taste, how good it is!"'

What can be more graphic, more simple, more radiant, than this picture painted in words so few?

Take this landscape, so true to the scenery of the Veneto:—

'It was afternoon. He explored the winding paths which went, now up, now down, leading towards the point of the Penna, on the seashore. He looked before him and around him with curiosity, but, perhaps, with some forced attention, as if he wished to understand obscure meanings hidden in these simple scenes, to wrest from them some unseizable secret. Rising in the heart of these hills of the coast the water of a brook, directed by a homely aqueduct made of hollowed trees, crossed the low-lying land between the two slopes. Other little rivulets