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time, but his success there was immediate and prodigious; and he spent the interval between 1871 and 1877 lecturing and teaching in that city and in Zurich. Afterwards, he became Professor of Comparative Literature in the Military Academy in Naples, served for several terms as Minister of Education, was Governor of Avellino, and Vice President of the House of Deputies. Honors were multiplied upon him at the last of his life, and his death was the occasion of a great patriotic demonstration. Few literary men have been so universally loved by their contemporaries as he, and few statesmen have been so completely-and so deservedlytrusted by the people at large. Conte Cavour, his political patron, said that De Sanctis was "the only Neapolitan in whose praise the Deputies of the South were unanimous".

De Sanctis's contribution to Italian literature must be considered in connection with the system of criticism which was prevalent in his age. In no country is the national spirit so closely interfused with specific literary ideals as in Italy, in whose literature the sentiment of patriotism finds an expression more fertile, and probably more sincere, than in that of any other nation. It follows almost necessarily that the scale of literary evaluation in such a nation and at such a crisis-when the foreign yoke had become intolerably oppressive and the ferments of rebellion had been exacerbated by a growing consciousness of national greatness should be submitted almost entirely to patriotic considerations. De Sanctis, who taught that the national literature was primarily the idealistic expression of the spirit and life of Italy, and that the greatness and progress of the nation was deeply concerned with the nobility and advancement of her literature, was an active participant in this theory. But other critics did not have De Sanctis's candid perceptions, his subtler insight, or his prophetic appreciations. They judged narrowly and shortsightedly, where he judged largely with a kindlier wisdom. Villari points out the oblivion which has fallen upon the once famous name of Vincenzo Gioberti, in whose stupendous work, Il primato, the author "with perfect good faith and great eloquence, demonstrated that in the past, present, and future, Italy had always been and should always remain the first nation in the world, with which no other could ever dare compete", and devoted "his whole

life to the construction of a politico-philosophical system which should interpret the universe and its history for the special use and benefit of Italy".

The method and sensibility of De Sanctis were too fine to betray him into so vainglorious an error. His system developed with logic and tact out of a protestant mind, an original curiosity, and an inherent disgust at meretricious pretences; which was perhaps first agitated by those artifices so esteemed in the Puoti academy, and which rendered the whole of contemporary literature lush and mawkish. His instinctive persuasions were given definite form and enlarged by the excellent influence of Hegel's Esthetics, which he surreptitiously read in a French translation while still a student at the Puoti school. From Hegel-and afterwards from Schlegel's History of Literature-De Sanctis gained the fundamental principles of his method; but these slight stimuli carried him so far, and he added so much to what he had learned, that we cannot justly assert any definite indebtedness. The most important feature of the critical system developed by De Sanctis is that, unlike the criticism current at his time, it did not attempt to assert merit or deficiency by arbitrary considerations of style, morality, or politics; but, searching more profoundly, endeavored to discover in the work the man who had produced it and his opinions, and to interpret them sympathetically to his readers or auditors. I cannot define the method of De Sanctis more felicitously than Villari has done:

The question he asked himself was, What should be the standard of an art critic? So far he had tried to explain works of art, point out their defects, and compare them with some pre-established type. But some works, though having few defects, may be of very trifling value; while others, in spite of numerous faults, may be distinctly valuable. Other critics gave their attention to the phraseology, the symbolism, the moral and political ideas, or the historic truth to be found in literary works of art. But this sort of criticism merely attempts to force works of art to conform to their own ideas and laws, instead of trying to discover the author's own ideas and the laws he obeys. A poet, being dominated by the visions of his own brain, does not write down all he has seen, felt, or thought, but merely gives the particulars required to make his conceptions visible and tangible to his readers. The critic, if endowed with a sense of art, is stirred by what he reads or has before his eyes; he enters into the artist's frame of mind, sees all that the latter saw, reconstructs the poem in his own

imagination, traces it back to its original source—that is, to the poet's innerconsciousness, of which he divines the leading idea. Accordingly, the true critic goes step by step with the author through the patient labor of preparation, watches him in the throes of artistic creation, and in following him, consciously reconstructs all that the author had unconsciously built up by divine inspiration, and, possibly, brings him to a clearer knowledge of his own powers by helping the reader to a full understanding of his work. Also, if the critic have any originality of mind, he can determine the value of the artist and of his work by not only studying them apart, but likewise by investigating their relation to their special period and to history in general. (Vide Saggi critici, pp. 358-59, 362; Storia della letteratura italiana, I, p. 179.)

But the true merit of De Sanctis depends less on the precepts he enounced than on his power of putting them into practice. He had an unrivalled gift of discovering at first sight the animating principle and absolute value of any work of art; the faculty of reducing it to its primary elements and then reconstructing it in eloquent words and with much force of imagination. He would do this, not only when examining some great masterpiece as an organic whole, but also in discussing some episode, sonnet, or personage. Even in discussing some work of slighter value, the comparisons he drew and his original remarks as to why it missed being a masterpiece gave special distinction to all that he said. And, thanks to his true feeling for art, his words generally hit the mark. He was the first to teach the youth of Naples to appreciate Leopardi's poetry at its true worth, so that it was enormously popular at Naples while as yet hardly known to the rest of Italy. Under De Sanctis, therefore, the study of literature became a study of mankind and human thought, that taught us to understand ourselves and helped to emancipate our minds. Is it surprising that we should have so dearly loved and worshipped the man to whom we owed these blessings? He had freed us from bondage, as it were; he had struck off our fetters; he had made us yearn for future days of virtue and freedom!

De Sanctis has left us few considerable works to argue his just place in Italian literary criticism, but these few are in the best sense exemplary. His collected lectures on the Divina Commedia bring to us something of the spirit that must have breathed fire into his lectures; and his monograph on Leopardi (1885) is as sympathetic a consideration as any poet might hope to receive at the hand of a critic of the succeeding generation. Few monographs on Petrarch which have inquired with diligent vigor into the influence of the great humanist upon the learning of the Fifteenth Century have so clearly and intimately revealed the poet himself as does De Sanctis in his book (1869), which disregards all his antecedents and all his works save only the Can

zoniere. His Nuovi saggi critici (1873), Saggi critici (1889), and Storia della letteratura italiana nel secolo XIX (1898) are hardly to be considered works of erudition, and sometimes disclose almost painfully the limits of the Master's knowledge; but they are great books nevertheless, if for no better reason than because they are the expression of a vast and fertile human spirit.

"As the artist reproduces nature, but with other means and for another end, so the critic reproduces art with its processes and for its own ends; and, which is more important, with that full consciousness of art which the artist lacks." Thus De Sanctis (Saggi critici, p. 310) once summarized his method of æsthetic criticism. It is unfortunate for De Sanctis's fame that he did not know enough to be enabled to carry this ideal of criticism to its perfect expression. The point is harsh, but it is explicit. By 1860 the scientific-historical school of criticism, headed by Carducci, Alessandro d'Ancona, and Adolfo Bartoli, had been firmly established in Italy; and already the works of the De Sanctis school were being discarded. The works of the Master were still, and will always be, read; but from the first rise of scientific criticism, the inadequacy of his method was immediately apparent. Perhaps the reason of this swift forgetfulness is, as has been elsewhere explained, that the æsthetic criticism of De Sanctis is possible only in the hands of one as sensitive and perceiving as he; and that it was the spiritual deficiencies of his immediate followers which brought the whole method into disrepute, even more than the demonstration of a better method. But it is not just to say that the ideals of De Sanctis have passed from us, and that his teachings have become only a chapter in Italian literary history. Without De Sanctis, there would have been no Carducci, no D'Ancona, no Bacci, no Croce, no noteworthy Italian literary criticism. In the Saggi critici are the beginnings of all Italian criticism; and those who have come after the Master have only applied to his processes of spiritual inquiry the knowledge and curiosity of the modern world.

WILLIAM A. DRAKE.

SUNDAY RACES

BY STARK YOUNG

In the midst of the flowers and graces of Heaven Trees, my uncle's house, its scented garden walks and affable ways, there stood an element of character nevertheless, certain obligations, certain codes, certain points of conscience and honor. In the same way exactly among the figures of us stood Parson Bates, our county preacher and my Uncle George's friend. In the midst of the Sunday pleasures, the reunion of friends and families and the merriment of cousins and neighbors, with bright mornings and smiles and news of the week, in the midst of such a Sunday, he stood firm and hot. He had character, thunder, conscience, and every form of fiery strength.

Parson Bates was a sight you could look at a long time without guessing who he was or what he did. He had a red face, big red hands, tousled hair, and a more tousled stock about his neck. He dressed in black, with a greenish gloss about the knees and elbows. He looked violent, looked to be made up of very human flesh that had been battered into sanctity; the air of him was strong and aggressive, full of tamed lions and flapping wings. In sum, he might have been a sort of apostolic prizefighter or a champion wrestler of the church militant, boxing about like a divine Castor and Pollux in a new religion. On week days he preached in Senatobia or Longtown, on Saturdays nearly always in Sardis. At Cistern Hill, the church my uncle had built for the colored people three miles away, Parson Bates preached twice a year; at which times he gave them hell fire, heavenly harmony and brimstone enough to last them the rest of the season. They could rise to heaven and wash their feet in milk before the Saviour and eat honey, if they behaved themselves, or could roast in torment everlasting; they could take their choice.

On Sundays he preached at our own Fredonia Church. He had preached all over North Mississippi and was known in every

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