The Life of Antonio Rosmini-Serbati. Translated from the Italian of
the Rev. G. B. Pag,ani. (George Rontledge and Sons. 7s. Od. net.)—There is too much of the panegyrist about the writer of this biography. We are scarcely able to recognise the real man in the superhuman being here presented to us. Father Rosmini was a man of boundless literary activity,—so much the catalogue of his books proves. His learning was doubtless great. Here we want some more detail. We gather, indeed, that when he had finished his preparation for the priesthood his knowledge of Greek was moderate. Greek classics he read, at least in his schooldays, in Latin translations, and not many of them. Then we should like to know more precisely what roused such hostility against him. Ile did not like Antonelli, it is clear; and he was accused of Jansenism. Other hints are given; but all is vague. We do not doubt that he was in the right ; successive Popes took his side. Still, the adversariet must have had something definite to allege. A man who wrote so Much, and on subjeets so various, probably gave occasittn to the enemy to blasphenle. And Rosmini had certainly at times injudicious colleagues and followers. His practical activities—for in these he was not less rematitable than in the intellectual—must have brought him into cellision with persons less zealous and less disinterested than himself. But the book, whatever its defects, has much that is valuable and instructive about it. We can but regret that there is not more. The man who at seventeen planned a work on the "great problem of the origin of ideas" must have had something very remarkable about him. But one can hardly help thinking that there was a morbid strain somewhere. The two stories of attempts to poison —one of them he himself believed to be successful—are strange in the extreme.
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