to believe what he gives us no data for believing. Even in the Trionfo he constantly introduces persons and incidents having no connection with the narrative. The whole family of Giorgio, the whole action passing at Guardiagrele, so elaborately painted, lead to nothing; we neither see nor hear of them again; neither they nor Guardiagrele ever enter his pages any more; and the momentous scene with Giorgio's father leads to nothing, but ends in a blind alley. Now this is a great fault in composition, and one which disappoints and irritates the reader. Of Demetrius Aurispa, again, much is made, but nothing is explained or continued; and his long exposition of one of Tennyson's poems is as unnecessary as the long disquisition upon Wagner further on in the book.

D'Annunzio is so profoundly engrossed in the psychology of his characters, that he frequently forgets to make their antecedents and actions consistent or credible. For instance, few women have been drawn in fiction more lovable, more real, more refined, more profoundly interesting, or more truly feminine, than Giuliana Hermil, in the Innocente. There is nothing in her character or in her circumstances which can render it the least probable to us that such a woman as she is described to be, would have been led into the half-unconscious sensual impulse which makes her unfaithful to her conjugal vows without the smallest excuse of passion or temptation. Nor is it conceivable for an instant that Tullio Hermil, on hearing her confession of this inconsapevole adultery, would serenely submit to remain in ignorance of the name of this lover of an hour, merely suspecting who it was from an inscription found in a novel, and would merely answer with gentle irony to her apology that the soul had had no share in her undoing! 'Povera anima!' he murmurs with an indulgent smile!

I will not say that this is impossible, for nothing is so in the relations of the sexes; but it is certainly improbable and incongruous, since Giuliana is throughout described as the gentlest, most timid, and, despite the infidelity in which we are asked to believe, the purest of her sex, submissive to desertion as Griselda, and incapable of an impure thought. It is contrary to all truth to human nature to make such a woman err in so common, stupid, and unintelligible a manner, and to make Tullio Hermil continue under such circumstances to live in the same house with her until the time of her delivery.

D'Annunzio has also a total lack of perception when the ridiculous mars the pathetic. This is a very common defect in his countrymen, and is one frequently traceable to a want of the humorous faculty. There is something ridiculous, which goes far to spoil all which is intended to be tragic in the motive or action of the Innocente, in the details accompanying and explaining its culminating act. The idea of this act is fine, and the hatred of the man for the child is natural, whilst the conception and carrying out of the semi-crime are subtle and original. But the filthy description of the infant (almost identical with that of the new-born babe in Zola's Joie de Vivre) and the perpetual references to its swaddling clothes, and the tedious profusion of details with which the subject is elaborated, destroy in the mind of the reader all sense of pity for the victim, and all blame for the act which sends it to its grave. One feels that the little squalling, dribbling, shapeless creature, with its scabby head and cat-like miawling, is much better destroyed, and this is not the sensation which the author desires to arouse; he would wish us to feel at once horror at, and compassion for, Tullio Hermil, but we can feel nothing except a vague contempt for this helpless young man. Had the semi-murder of it followed immediately on its birth, or had it been found by him after absence a fair two-year-old child, with all the rosebud loveliness of that age, this bathos would have been avoided; and the stealthy sin of its effacement would have carried in it the force of a powerful tragedy undiminished, as it actually is, by gross and comic images, which may be realism but are none the less bathos. It is perfectly natural that Tullio Hermil's abhorrence of this spurious offspring should grow with every day until the desire to destroy it becomes at last an over-mastering impulse; but to make this act tragic, and to awaken that sympathy for the victim which all true tragedy excites, the latter should be so described that the heart of the reader should bleed for it when exposed to the icy air which kills it, and that its martyred infancy should seem fitly lamented by those echoes of the distant Novena, which at the supreme moment float through all the silent house.

The Innocente has many passages in its pages of perfect beauty like this episode of the Novena; its defects are due to its author's incapacity to perceive where the ludicrous damages the pathetic and destroys the terrible. The writer's artistic instinct moved him to create a situation unique, and full of the keenest interest, abounding in opportunity for the analysis of temptations and emotions; and of such analysis he is a master, if too prolix in his expositions of it. But a want of the perception which warns us off the line of demarcation dividing the dramatic from the grotesque, has allowed him to pass this line, and merge the dramatic in a flood of trivial and commonplace minutiæ. Nor is it natural that, loathing this new-born bastard as Tullio Hermil does, he should accompany his brother to invite an old peasant to be its sponsor. The beauty and simplicity of this passage are great, but they cannot reconcile us to the improbability of such an errand.

'As we drew near the place where Giovanni de Scordio dwelt, my brother saw in the field the tall figure of the old man.

'"Look! There he is. He is sowing. We bring our invitation in a solemn hour."

'We approached. I trembled within myself as though I were about to commit a profanation. I did indeed profane a thing in itself sacred and beautiful. I went to solicit the spiritual paternity of a venerable life for an adulterous creature.

'"Look at his height," exclaimed Frederigo, pointing to the sower. "He is no taller than other men, and yet he looks a giant."

'We paused under a tree, and watched the labourer from a distance. Giovanni had not perceived us.

'He came straightway towards us up the field with measured slowness. He wore a woollen cap, black and green, with two wings which covered his ears in the ancient fashion. A white sack hung by a leathern strap from throat to waist, the sack being full of grain. With his left hand he held the sack open, with the right he took the grain and scattered it. His gesture was large, easy, sweeping, moderated to a serene rhythm. The corn, flying from his hand, shone in the sun like gold dust, falling with regularity upon the wet furrows. He advanced slowly, his feet sinking in the moist soil, his head sometimes lifted to the holiness of the light; all his attitude was simple, noble, grand.

---

'We entered the glebe.

'"Good health, Giovanni," said Frederigo, going up to the old man. "Be your seed blessed. Be blessed your bread of the future."

'"Good health to you," I repeated.

'The peasant left off work; he uncovered his head.

'"Cover yourself, Giovanni, or we also must stand with bare heads in the sun," said my brother.

'The old man put on his cap, confused, almost shy, smiling.

'He asked humbly, "Why so much honour?"

'I said with a voice which vainly strove to be steady, "I am come to beg you to hold my son at the baptismal font."

'The peasant looked at me astounded, then