affair wears too divine an aspect to admit of human interference -for the present.'

So the abbess said nothing. But how the Cardinal set a scholar to work in various libraries, and how the scholar discovered that a certain Roman soldier called Expeditus, who lived in the third century of our era, became a Christian and died a martyr in the Colosseum, being slain of lions, and how an expert osteologist recognised the marks of lions' teeth on the bones which had accomplished so many miracles -are not these things written in the official account of the saint's canonisation? He was established on such a Definitely Historical Basis that even the abbess ceased to have any doubt that Veronica's misreading of

the label was divinely prompted, and Veronica is quite convinced that mystic fire burnt all about the word when she first beheld it. She gives herself tremendous airs over the whole business. But if the abbess had not been a very fat woman, and therefore, as we proved at the outset of this history, extremely holy and given to charitable works, who shall say if the contadini would have ever conquered their epidemic, if the noses of the other saints would have been put so sadly out of joint, or if Saint Pedito or Spedito would have ever been rescued from the limbo of forgotten virtue in order to send prayers to heaven so expeditiously that they overtook others which had started long before? Palmam quæ meruit ferat.

MOST lovers of English poetry now possess the 'Oxford Book of English Verse.' A great many are fortunate enough to have also the 'Oxford Book of French Verse.' How many readers will be found, we wonder, for the 'Oxford Book of Italian Verse,' now chosen and edited by Mr St John Lucas?

One hopes the answer will be, "A great many, and of the most intelligent kind"; for, indeed, the collection deserves such. But English people, though lovers of poetry, are not so commonly lovers of foreign languages. Most of

them have some conscientious knowledge of French, but comparatively few have more than a travelling acquaintance with Italian. They think it a beautiful language-a point on which all but the deaf must agree; but they usually prefer listening to it to reading it.

Perhaps a change for the better is beginning in this direction. During the last few years it has seemed to me that interest in Italian poetry is growing and spreading in England. The Dante societies are numerous, and if people care to read Dante they will

probably care to read other poets, his compatriots. We have heard it asserted lately that the Dante societies are content to read their poet in translations. It is a dark accusation, and one should not be too ready to believe the worst. I certainly know three Dante societies of which the members are diligent students of Italian. As one of them remarked, translations were so difficult it was simpler to learn the language. I suspect that this member had been struggling with Cary; but it would be easy to give the remark a wider application.

The new "Oxford Book" should prove a great encouragement to those sensible people who think it natural to learn a language. Here they will find five hundred pages of Italian poems ranging from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century, long and short, religious and profane, sweet and sensitive, grave and gay.

The Anthology begins fitly with St Francis of Assisi's well-known Psalm of Praise, that noble and childlike thanksgiving for all the fair Creation of God

for sister water

for brother fire

There is nothing like the "Laudes Creaturarum" in the rest of the book; but that perhaps is saying no more than that there was never another St Francis of Assisi.

The poem by Ciullo d'Alcamo which follows it is one of the kind called a Contrasto, a dialogue between an ardent and very plain-spoken lover and a lady of the too-muchprotesting order. It is no doubt given by Mr Lucas because of its interest, being, as was once supposed, the oldest piece of Italian poetry extant. There is only half of it before us here, with no intimation of the existence of the other half. A few notes might have been mercifully granted, as it is quite the most difficult piece of Italian in the book, with words of Sicilian and Provençal origin, such abento, perperi, and aritonno. What would the average reader make of this verse?

"Se i tuoi parenti trovanmi
E che mi pozon fari?
Una difesa mettoci
Di dumilia agostari;
Non mi tocarà patreto
Per quanto avere ha' in Bari.
Viva lo 'mperadore, graz' a Deo !
Intendi, bella, questo ti dico eo."

Could he be expected to know that certain coins called "Augustals" were struck in the year 1231, and that in the same year the Emperor Frederick II. instituted the system of the Defensa, which provided that an inferior unjustly attacked by a superior was allowed to invoke the SOVereign's name, and this was called a Defensa?

We would refer the inquiring reader, who is perhaps not exactly the same person as the average reader, to 'The Forerunners of Dante,' a perfect little book by that perfect scholar, Mr A. J. Butler, the loss of whom we still deplore. His editing of the early Italian poets is an example of what such a thing should be, for it combines the knowledge of the expert with the fine taste and sympathy of the born man of letters. The editing of Mr Lucas leaves something to be desired. It may be that he is a little deficient in the love of perfection; it may be that he does not interest himself in the complicated and scientific versification of Dante's forerunners and contemporaries. But for whatever reason, it is a pity that he should have given a faulty version of the most beautiful thing written before the 'Vita Nuova,' and not even by that surpassed.

The lovely elegy of Giacomino Pugliese (No. 8),

"Morte, perchè m' hai fatto sì gran guerra,"

is one of the wonders of literature. Comment is helpless; it is too exquisitely simple and sweet. One might as well comment on the lament of the nightingale.

One other poem of the same period, though not equal, may be compared with it-Rinaldo d'Aquino's song of the forsaken girl whose lover has "taken the Cross" for his own salvation and to her very pitiful loss. It is a song of sorrow, naïve and pathetic.

"Gia mai non mi conforto,

Nè mi vo' rallegrare :
Le nave sono al porto,
E vogliono collare.
Vassene la più gente

In terra d'oltra mare:
Ed io, lassa dolente,
Como deg' io fare?

La croce salva la gente,
E me face disviare :
La croce mi fa dolente,

Non mi val Dio pregare.
Oi croce pellegrina,

Perchè m' hai si distrutta? Oi me, lassa Tapina

Ch'i' ardo e 'ncendo tutta!"

Never can I forget my woe,

And comfort naught avails. The ships are in the port below, Waiting to hoist their sails. The men are all for sailing

To lands beyond the sea: And I alone am wailing

What will become of me?

The cross that saves all living

Has set my steps astray:
The cross such grief is giving,

To God I cannot pray.
Oh, cross of pilgrims faring,

What of my lonely strife!
The grief my heart is bearing
Will waste away my life.

Many such a song went sighing down the wind that filled the sails of Crusaders' ships.

We do not often hear the maiden's own voice in these early poems. But it sounds again clearly in the two sonnets (Nos. 16 and 17) in which a gentle girl refuses to rejoice with the rejoicing spring, because of the evil apparently so triumphant around her, and because her father resolves to wed her to some unknown and probably villainous person, while she is bent on entering the cloister. That maiden has lived in all centuries and is living yet, though the world

has lately grown incredulous of her. And the fierce and cruel spirit in men that made life terrible to her, breathes with savage eloquence in the two sonnets of Cecco Angiolieri (Nos. 30 and 31):—

"S'i fosse foco, arderei 'l mondo;
S'i fosse vento, lo tempesterei ;
S'i fosse acqua, io l' annegherei ;
S'i fosse Dio, mandereil in profondo."

If I were fire, this world I'd make a burning heap;

If I were wind, I'd blow it down;
If I were water, it should drown;
If I were God, I'd hurl it to the
deep.

Mr Lucas places these two sonnets with dramatic effect between the stately amenities of Guido Cavalcante and other lesser singers of his century. And then we come to the 'Vita Nuova' itself.

Eleven of the lovely sonnets and six canzoni are given from it, breathing the wonderful young love of Dante for Beatrice, the most famous passion known to poetry. With their pure flame of adoration and the mystic quality that lifts them always just above the level of earthly love, even when the young heart's beating is felt along the lines, as in the incomparable (No. 49),

"Negli occhi porta la mia donna Amore,"

Anthology of English poems which should include a dozen of Shakespeare's sonnets, his "Venus and Adonis " and "The Rape of Lucrece," would give an idea of Shakespeare about as adequate.

Another great poet and glory of Italian literature is hardly represented at all. Mr Lucas gives us just ten pages of Ariosto's trifling, ending with a sonnet of perfect and simple sincerity. But how, indeed, in a collection of lyrics, is the wonderful story-teller to find justice and a place? Ariosto is a poet of the rank of Chaucer, wide of vision, gay and musical of tongue, amused, sympa