With exception of one, that on the poems of Mr Blunt, all these essayshave previously appeared in The Fortnightly Review, The NineteenthCentury Review, or the Nuova Antologia. The two published in TheNuova Antologia were written by me in Italian. I have now turned theminto English myself. The article on D'Annunzio, in the Fortnightly,was the first ever printed in English on a writer who is now well knownto all. I do not think that he has, since it was published, createdanything equal to the Trionfo. The character of his genius is notadapted to the theatre, to which he now chiefly devotes himself. It willbe interesting to see if it can be adapted to political life, which haslately tempted him. Perhaps he may become a new Rienzi. One is greatlyneeded in Italy.
OUIDA.
In the world of letters the name of Gabriele d'Annunzio is now famous.There is no cultured society which does not know something at least ofthe author of the Innocente and the Trionfo, and is not aware that,in him, one of the ablest and most delicate of living critics believesthat he has seen the personification of a renascence of Latin genius.Imprisoned as his novels were in the limits of a language which, howevergreat its beauty, is but little known except in its own land, he hasbeen extraordinarily fortunate in finding such sponsors in the outsideworld as he has obtained in M. Herelle, in René Doumic, and in theVicomte de Vogüé. Never has any romance been so admirably heralded asthe Trionfo in the Révue des Deux Mondes, and never certainly,