following lines, taken from Howells's translation of Leopardi's poem written to himself, are characteristic: "Rest thee forever! Oh, greatly, Heart, hast thou palpitated. There is nothing A heap of dust. So rest thee ! Despair for the last time. To our race Fortune Yet the note of sadness in Leopardi found an echo in the Italy of his day. "Italy," he said, "sits on the ground, neglected and uncomforted, burying her head in her lap, and weeps." He became the favorite poet of the revolutionary movement. Nor have leading literary critics failed to recognize his genius. Sainte-Beuve spoke of him as the "noblest, calmest, most austere of poets"; and Matthew Arnold, as one worthy to be "named with Milton and Dante." Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) will always be remembered as one of the greatest of nineteenth-century Italians. During most of his life he was an exile from his country. In addition to his political writings his works include a number of literary essays. Mazzini was a student of Dante and derived from him some of his convictions regarding the political unity of Italy and the power of spiritual ideas. "He is a born king and chief and leader of men," said Swinburne when he met Mazzini in London five years before the latter's death. "He is not the least bit discouraged or disheartened -and I don't know how anyone could be who had ever seen his face. It is literally full of light; he has the largest and brightest dark eyes in the world. He is clearly the man to create a nation— to bid the bones live and rise." RECENT WRITERS It is difficult to appraise the writers of our own generation. Among recent novelists Giovanni Verga has been greatly admired in Italy and elsewhere. His "House by the Medlar Tree" gives an intensely realistic picture of peasant life in Sicily. Fogazzaro has also had considerable prominence, chiefly through the religious ideas expressed in his novels. De Amicis is esteemed for his short stories. D'Annunzio has proved a spectacular figure in public life. As novelist, poet, and dramatist he has made a bid for fame, but without brilliant success. Our study of the literature of Italy must not omit reference to the latest conspicuous Italian poet, Carducci (1836-1907). He impresses us as a latter-day Humanist through his intense love and veneration for the classics. To him, indeed, the gods of ancient Greece and Rome were more vital than the Christian God. His poems are sometimes boldly pagan. "Other gods die," he sang, "but the divinities of Greece know no setting. They sleep in the trees and flowers that gave them birth, above the mountains, the rivers, and the everlasting seas." Carducci's home was in Tuscany. For forty-four years he taught in the University of Bologna. His political odes indicated his intense desire for Italian unity. Like Virgil he loved the country and the simple joys of rural life. But the chief impulse of his poetry was to glorify classicism. He was awarded in 1906 the Nobel prize. Several volumes of his poems have been published. Frank Sewall's "Poems of Giosuè Carducci" contains translations of forty-one poems. "To Satan" is the most striking of these; it is bold in conception and imagery. There are poems to Aurora, to Homer, to Virgil, to Apollo, to Dante and other poets of Italy, and also personal poems and poems of nature. Searching and beautiful is the following sonnet (Sewall's translation), which seems to sum up much of the philosophy of Carducci and also to strike a familiar modern note: "My lonely bark beneath the seagull's screaming The roar of waters and the lightning's gleaming. "And memory, down whose face the tears are streaming, "Still at the helm erect my spirit stands, Gazing at sea and sky, and bravely crying We see afar the white shores of the dying." Reference List ROBINSON. Medieval and Modern Times. Ginn and Company. TREVELYAN. A Short History of the Italian People. G. P. Putnam's Sons. SEDGWICK. Italy in the Thirteenth Century (2 vols.). Houghton Mifflin Company. WALSH. The Thirteenth the Greatest of Centuries. Catholic Summer School Press, New York. SYMONDS. The Renaissance in Italy (7 vols.). Charles Scribner's Sons. GARNETT. Italian Literature. D. Appleton and Company. COLLISON-MORLEY. Modern Italian Literature. Little, Brown and Company. GRILLO. Early Italian Literature (2 vols.). Blackie and Son, London. GRILLO. The Italian Poets. Blackie and Son, London. GRILLO. The Italian Prose Writers. Blackie and Son, London. KENNARD. Italian Romance Writers. Brentano's. ROBINSON and ROLFE. Petrarch. G. P. Putnam's Sons. KUHNS. The Great Poets of Italy. Houghton Mifflin Company. KUHNS. Dante and the English Poets from Chaucer to Tennyson. Henry Holt and Company. EVERETT. The Italian Poets since Dante. Charles Scribner's Sons. FLETCHER. Dante (Home University Library). Henry Holt and Company. DINSMORE. Aids to the Study of Dante. Houghton Mifflin Company. DINSMORE. Teachings of Dante. Houghton Mifflin Company. TOYNBEE. Dante in English Literature (2 vols.). The Macmillan Company. GRANDGENT. Dante. Duffield & Company. BROOKS. Dante: How to Know Him. The Bobbs-Merrill Company. Oxford Book of Italian Verse gives the Italian text only. Oxford University Press. Translations of Dante: Divine Comedy (Langdon) (3 vols.). In Italian and English. Harvard University Press. Divine Comedy (Norton). Houghton Mifflin Company. Divine Comedy (Longfellow). Houghton Mifflin Company. Divine Comedy (Cary). Thomas Y. Crowell Company. New Life (Rossetti). Houghton Mifflin Company. Temple Classics (5 vols.) gives the Italian and English of Dante's chief writings. E. P. Dutton & Company. Other translations: Bohn Library includes Petrarch, Ariosto, Alfieri, Manzoni. Harcourt, Brace and Company. Benvenuto Cellini (Symonds). Charles Scribner's Sons. Poems of Carducci (Sewall). Dodd, Mead & Company. Suggested Topics The thirteenth century in Italy. Life of Dante. Story of the "Divine Comedy." The allegory of the "Divine Comedy." The similes and poetic imagery of the "Divine Comedy." Dante's religious ideas. The nether world as described by Homer, Virgil, and Dante. Boccaccio as a teller of tales. Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered." Striking scenes from the autobiography of Cellini. A study of Manzoni's "I Promessi Sposi." Leopardi and Carducci. CHAPTER VII SPANISH LITERATURE Spain is the land of romance. We still talk familiarly of "castles in Spain" and "the royal king of Spain," terms which have little relation to exact reality; yet Spain is a real land with majestic mountains, rushing streams, a seagirt shore, and a blue heaven overhead. It is also the land of the Inquisition, the "land of the Blessed Virgin," the most Catholic of Catholic countries. It is the land of the Moors; they have departed, it is true, but the Alhambra remains and lives perennially in the pages of Washington Irving. It is the land of history-for who is so untutored as not to know of Ferdinand and Isabella, of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second, of the Spanish Armada and the treasure ships of the Spanish Main? It is, last of all and most of all, the land of that ingenious gentleman Don Quixote and of his faithful squire Sancho Panza. History. The Spanish peninsula occupies the southwestern portion of Europe. Including the country of Portugal it has a coast line of twenty-five hundred miles. It is shut off from France by the ridge of the Pyrenees, three hundred miles long. Thus Spain is isolated quite effectively from its neighbors, and during its entire history its people have shown marked individuality. Apart from Switzerland no European country has geographically a higher average elevation. Central Spain is the most rugged and mountainous portion. The early inhabitants were Celts and Iberians, a brave and hardy IndoEuropean stock. In the third century before Christ came the Carthaginians. The period of the Roman conquest followed, and by the time of Augustus Roman civilization was well established. With the downfall of Rome Spain became the prey of Goths and Vandals. In the early eighth century of the Christian Era the West Gothic kingdom gave way to the rule of the Saracen. Spain was invaded, but not submerged. Seven hundred years of constant warfare, dur |