At such a contrast between the ideal and the real (what seems to him at that moment to be the real but is itself an incubus due to his anxiety and to his immense love for his country), at so crude and unexpected a delusion, the returned exile is as it were stupefied, and sorrow and contempt rise to his lips, as he murmurs bitterly to himself: "Son questi? E questo il popolo per cui con affannosa As a contrast, in another vision, the image of a foreign country becomes united to the idolized image of the Italian people: the landscape is that which recalls the peace celebrated at Constance, the peace that sealed the Italian victory over the Germans of Barbarossa. We feel, in the touches with which the little German city is depicted, that the poet has received it into his soul, has penetrated it with his sympathy. It is a landscape all shining with snow and purest water, a dear little city to be venerated for its antiquity and its suave domestic intimacy. Here the recognition of Italy's rights against the barbaric rule of the German will shine brightly, the little city will always recall in its name that austere triumph: "Dinanzi una cerulea laguna, un prorompente 1 "Are they such as these? Is this the people for sake of whom he sought out danger with eager breath, and abandoned all he loved? Is this the longing of the restless exile? Is this the people of which he told his hosts that it was enduring its sufferings with nobility?" fiume che da quell'onde There is a great crowd in that city now, as though it were a feast day, a tramping, a waiting, and armed barons preceded by heralds pass through its streets, trumpets peal and glad news is declared. Silence falls in a moment upon all: the crowd opens dividing itself into two wings; a small and modest company arrives and advances: "Not escorted by soldiers, nor by splendour of heraldry, they are few in number and only notable for their black and prudent eyebrows, they move with slow foot amid the blond folk. They walk two and two, wrapped in their simple cloaks of dark hue." He regards them with passion and insatiable admiration: What frank and discreet gestures! What dignity of countenance! They intone among themselves a spiritual song, which they alternate joyfully." And all of a sudden he perceives the words of that song, and utters an almost childlike cry of 1 "Facing us is a blue lagoon and a rushing river that draws its current from the waters of the lake. A city is mirrored above those many waters its spires are grey with age, its houses have pointed roofs upon which the snow must weigh very heavily during the long winters, and poor little windows which the homebred maiden decorates with flowers on sunny days.” jubilation : Oh, 'tis the dear tongue of dear Italy." In this part of his work, Berchet surpasses popular oratory and didactics, he caresses his feelings with his imagination and contemplates his own soul as a spectacle, an act proper to the poets. XIV GIUSTI AMONG the many kinds and varieties of literature is one which would be well defined by means of a verbal paradox, as prosaic poetry. It is not, as might be supposed, poetry that is a failure, but a thing of itself, having its own value, and called poetry solely because it assumes metrical form, whereas in reality it is prose. Metrical form is indeed suitable and natural to it, but here it does not fulfil the same office as in true and proper poetry, affording a new proof that the presence or absence of the verse (as indeed of every other characteristic taken in a material sense) does not give a sure indication of the presence or absence of poetry. I should like to add that the majority of jocose, gnomic, satiric and such like poets whom we meet with, especially in French and Italian literature, are to be included among prosaic poets, were I not restrained by the warning just uttered concerning the impossibility of judging from without and by means of material elements. And indeed there are joke and joke, satire and satire, didactics and didactics, the one poetical the other prosaic, because there is always le ton qui fait la chanson, and the material that appears to be identical in the abstract belongs to the one or the other class according to the spirit which breathes within. How does prosaic poetry come to be? It does not give an impression or an emotion which rises at once and directly to the sphere of contemplation, but it gives an impression or an emotion, which is quickly converted into a reflection, into an observation, into an oratorical proposition fit to impart this or that tendency to the mind of him who makes it or to another mind. Metrical form offers itself spontaneously as a means to this end, being efficacious in providing such a discourse or warning or invective with rhythm, in attracting attention to it, making it easy of communication and easily remembered. The composer of qualities, which have been obtained from poetry or rather from literature, works upon them, if he is an artist, and obtains very pleasing effects, although he never obtains that effect which is proper to beauty, and which further is excluded from his particular purpose. Almost all men of good taste and culture are able to make some elegant contribution to prosaic poetry, and at one time, when verse-making was taught in schools and this acquired virtuosity was among the duties of social intercourse, the output was copious indeed: even to-day anyone accustomed to literary production finds little difficulty in turning out an epigram or a few jesting verses, whereas he might perhaps find it impossible to write a single line of poetry. Giuseppe Giusti is to be broadly included in this class as among its most eminent votaries. He was the author of comic poems and satires, which enjoyed great success in Italy between 1830 and 1848, and continued to echo through the succeeding decades, growing gradually, however, weaker and more weak. He often seemed annoyed at his reputation as a comic and satiric poet, discontented with himself and with |