Early Italian Literature. Vol. II.: " The Dawn of Italian
Prose." Edited by E. Grillo. (Blackie. 10s. 6d. net.)—Dr. Grillo has followed up his volume of selections from the Italian poets before Dante with a similar volume of extracts from the early Italian prose-writers. Among these writers are Brunetto Latini, the unknown author of the thirteenth-century Novellino, and Marco Polo, but most of Dr. Grillo's extracts have a philo- logical rather than a literary interest. They show the modern Italian language in the process of formation in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, differentiating itself from Latin on the one hand and from Provençal, French, and Spanish on the other. A sermon of 1190 in a " Gallo-Italic " dialect might plausibly be assigned to any one of these four Romance tongues. With the thirteenth century, however, Italian asserts its marked indi- viduality. Dr. Grillo's introduction and his specimens arranged in chronological order illustrate the process very clearly. He is a scholarly writer, and his useful book is well annotated and indexed.
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