BOOKS.

ITALIAN BYWAYS.* Mn. SYMONDS'S candle is set upon a candlestick, and his light shines before men, BO that it invites a closer criticism than would the brilliance of less confessed masters of prose, while the praise we should award to a new writer of his power is super- fluous. But in closing his last volume, we feel that we are given a halfpennyworth of bread to an intolerable deal of sack, while we are reminded in every page how admirable is the provender offered to us. His own excellent words in one of these essays supply the text for our observations, at least in part :— "The logical criticism of art demands that we should not only estimate the technical skill of artists and their faculty for presenting beauty to the (esthetic sense, but that we also ask ourselves what portion of the human spirit he (the artist) has chosen to invest with form, and how he has conceived his subject."

Though the slightest of his hitherto published prose works, this volume shows at once the extent and the limit of the author's power as it has not yet been shown. It proves him a suggestive critic, a keen-witted-bat near-sighted student of Italian annals, dwelling too lingeringly on their seamy side, and listening chiefly to the obscenities and the blasphemies which were the wild reply, as of fallen angels, to the serene sanctities of mediwval Italy. Admirable is his sketch of Webster's heroine, the "White Devil," Vittoria Accoramboni. The English play- wright had, like Mr. Symonds,— " Gazed long and earnestly into the mirror held up by Italy—that enchantress of the nations. Aghast and fascinated by the sins he saw there flaunting in the light of day—sins on whose pernicious glamour Ascham Greene and Howell have insisted with impressive vehemence — Webster discerned in them the stuff he needed for philosophy and art. Withdrawing from that contemplation, he was like a spirit 'loosed out of Hell to speak of horrors.'"

But the author of Italian Byways can hardly claim to give his readers, as he says Webster does, ".the moral impression made by the condition of Italy on a northern imagination," rather he treats the revolting stories of Vittoria and of Lorenzino de' Medici, the " cinque-cento Brutus," as subjects for somewhat diletantte art, likely to interest certain curiosities of our society, and for which he can paint as background, landscapes ostentatiously pagan in sentiment. His is hardly Webster's spirit, when he reiterates examples of crime, selecting with deliberation the ileum; du mal whereof to wezve his garland of beautiful phrases. We do not trace in his work the moral revolt of a "northern imagination," though of revolt there is enough. The last sonnet of his latest book of poems is, indeed, in praise of Prometheus. The last sentence in Italian Byways winds up a dream of the Titan with the sentence, "This is Prometheus,' I whisper to myself, 'and I am alone on Caucasus.'" Yet Mr. Symonds frequently, though unconsciously, reminds us how little he has to do with the agony of Prometheus ; rather does he sit as high as he may on Parnassus to be worshipped, determined that we should observe the sunshine on his brow.

In dealing with the mgmoires pour servir of Italian personages, Mr. Symonds excels all contemporary artists. His literary appreciations are precious, but he is less agreeable when he condescends to personal narrative. His experiences of gondolier society and Davos amusements are disappointing, but it is when he mounts his Pegasus, and goes forth in ostentatious search of the picturesque and the romantic in landscape, that he is least admirable. What he sees is wonderful, but what he fails to see is yet more wonderful His former works prepare us for much "invincible ignorance" of the better aspects of Italian

• Italian Byways. By John Addington Symonds, London: Smith, Elder, sad Co.

history, but we feel a certain shock of surprise that in the very presence of Monte Cassino, St. Benedict's home, he should say :—

"Monasteries are almost invariably disappointing, to one who goes in search of what gives virtue and solidity to human life, and even Monte Cassino was no exception The atmosphere of operose indolence, prolonged through centuries and centuries, stifles ; nor can antiquity and influence impose upon a mind which resents monkery itself as an essential evil.'

Yet, that Mr. Symonds feels that his judgment is narrow, we observe, when, immediately after, he exclaims :—

" I longed for the spirit of Kontalembert. I longed for what is called historical imagination, for the indiscriminate voracity of those men to whom world-famous sites are in themselves soul-stirring."

When, however, it is a question of gorgeous crime gorgeously housed and of the iridescence of corruption, Mr. Symonds shows no lack of the "historical imagination." Can it be that, great as is his sympathy with beautiful form, his criticism of spiritual phenomena, the medireval monastic life, for instance, is narrowed by that besetting modern envy described by Theophile Gautier as essentially bourgeois, which decries all splendour not our own, and all judgment that is not" private " ? The thoughts that for most men are suggested by many an Italian shrine are as dis- tasteful to Mr. Symonds as to a Puritan would be the Venus of the Louvre, and it would be as wise to take a Puritan's account of the treasures of the Belvedere, as Mr. Symonds's opinion of Benedict or Francis, Philip Neri, or Carlo Borromeo, and the world they created alongside of the world he vividly portrays.

Meantime, he is an unsurpassed guide in the palace of Urbino, and to follow him in Umbria, and by the Adriatic and Tyrrhene sea, is to feel somewhat of the Italian spell. Quite lovely pas- sages of rhythmic prose translate adequately the emotions which arise in presence of almost any wide prospect of the Circean land, as, for instance, when he writes of the view from Monte Pulciano :—

"The charm of this view is composed of so Many different ele- ments, so subtly blent, appealing to so many separate sensibilities, the sense of grandeur, the sense of space, the sense of natural beauty, and the sense of human pathos, that deep internal faculty we call historic sense, that it cannot be defined. First comes the im- mense surrounding space,—a space measured in each arc of the circum ference by sections of at least fifty miles, limited by points of exquisitely picturesque beauty, including distant, cloud-like moun- tain ranges, and crystals of sky-blue Apennines, circumscribing land- scapes of refined loveliness in detail, always varied, always marked by objects of peculiar interest where the eye or memory may linger. Next in importance to this immensity of space, so powerfully affect- ing the imagination by its mere extent, and by the breadth of atmo- sphere attuning all varieties of form and colour to one harmony beneath illimitable heaven, may be reckoned the episodes of rivers, lakes, hills, cities, with old historic names."

We have not space to give his brilliant catalogue of the towns and castles he saw from thence, but our readers will recognise the beauty of what we have quoted, and in it there is not that excessive luxuriance and almost confusion of colour which are not infrequent in Mr. Symonds's descriptions of landscape. We

feel that to many it will seem a literary heresy to question the perfection of his style, but no man may dash his palette full of colours into his reader's face with too impetuous a disregard to the due limitations of prose. By so doing, Mr. Symonds disturbs our enjoyment of his work, and he provokes us to compare his descriptions with those, let us say, by Mr. Ruskin. He obliges us to say that brandish his brushes as be may, strike what Olympian attitude he chooses, he fails when he should not fail to affect us. In this book, at least, his dainty essays appeal to an artificial taste. Critic, but not creator, he does not rouse our sympathy, and we remain unimpressed, as we measure his efforts to remain at the highest level of style. To rank with the monarchs of the pen needs larger knowledge

of a healthier humanity than is apparent in Italian Byways. Though to compare prose with poetry is scarcely fair, we imagine that Mr. Symonds would not shrink from com-

parison with Wordsworth or Shelley, and even Byron ; if we did so compare him, we should note a difference amply justifying severer criticism than ours. We could but regret the airs of superior information which he assumes as he goes to and fro on the spiritual battlefields of Italy, and announces himself as the mouthpiece of the pseudo-Pagan Renascence, which has just now a certain vogue. We are fascinated by his historical narratives, but when he would gain our friendliness by his records of travel, he should attach us to him by some touch of nature which should make us feel akin, before he startles us by such rhythmic confidences as "we rested well in large, hard beds, with dry, rough sheets," an nnocent sentence, but to which is given a touch of bathos by its imme- diately following the description of a sunset which was " conflagration of celestial rose upon the saddest purples and cavernous recesses of intensest azure." We do not follow him with any sympathy when, at a table d'hôte, he tells us that he "felt as though he had got into the cabin of the 'Flying Dutch- man,' and that all these people had been sitting there at meat a. hundred years, through storm and shine, for ever driving on- wards over immense waves in an enchanted calm." We cannot think the description of a Duke of Urbino happily expressed :— "He drew a second consort from the convent, and raised up seed unto his line by forethought, but beheld his princeling fade untimely in the bloom of boyhood." Granting the admiration many feel for Mr. Symonds, we hardly think that for the public- he should pose as Dante when he begins a chapter of his travels :—" About three in the morning which divides the month of May into two equal parts, I woke and saw the waning moon- right opposite my window, stayed in her descent upon th& slope of Epomeo."

Shade of Puff, are we to approve such sentences as, "When it was over, he shrugged his shoulders, wrote his magnificent apology with a style of adamant upon a plate of steel?" Are we to think of a boatman as an "animate splendour," and rise. with the author into rapture about another, who had been drinking and eating from a dish of fried fish set upon the coarse, white, linen cloth." "Here for me, at least, the mytho- poem of the Lagoons was humanised ; the spirit of the salt- water lakes had appeared to me; the final touch of life emergent from nature had been given. I was satisfied, for I had' seen a poem." It is scarcely necessary to observe that Mr.. Symonds has little, if any, sense of humour ; and to read travels by an eloquent writer without that gift is disappointing,

but still his literary instinct might have suggested that only- when the reader's emotions are deeply stirred, and hardly even then, could he accept such phrases as the "road plunges at a. break-neck pace," or" careering in our sledges down perpendicu- lar snow-fields." We might not have cared, to point out the- exaggerations which mar that artistic perfection of which, Mr. Symonds writes so well, but for the prevalent tendency

to admire mannerisms and affectations as such. We are glad to turn from his less good work, and quote an excellent answer to the vexed question of what Art is and should be, when he analyses Chernbino's part at the Scala Theatre, and explains why that pretty page is "the dear, glad angel of the May of love,. the nightingale of orient emotion." We entirely agree with and admire the passage with which we conclude :—

"When we think of the really great statues, pictures, poems, music of the world, we find that these are really great because of something more,—and that more is their theme, their presentation of a noble portion of the human soul. Artists and art-students may be satisfied with perfect specimens of a craftsman's skill, independent of his theme, but the mass of men will not be satisfied ; and it is- as wrong to suppose that art exists for artists and art-students as to- talk of art for art's sake. Art exists for humanity. Art transmutea thought and feeling into terms of beautiful form. Art is great and lasting in proportion as it appeals to the human consciousness at large, presenting to it portions of itself in adequate and lovely form.'

Mr. Symonds here supplies a canon of taste whereby to judge his Italian Byway&