Author of "The Dawn of Italian Independence"

ANTONIO FOGAZZARO AND HIS MASTERPIECE


I

Senator Fogazzaro, in _The Saint_, has confirmed the impression of
his five and twenty years' career as a novelist, and now, through
the extraordinary power and pertinence of this crowning work, he has
suddenly become an international celebrity. The myopic censors of the
_Index_ have assured the widest circulation of his book by condemning it
as heretical. In the few months since its publication, it has been
read by hundreds of thousands of Italians; it has appeared in French
translation in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ and in German in the
_Hochland_; and it has been the storm centre of religious and literary
debate. Now it will be sought by a still wider circle, eager to see what
the doctrines are, written by the leading Catholic layman in Italy, at
which the Papal advisers have taken fright. Time was when it was the
books of the avowed enemies of the Church--of some mocking Voltaire,
some learned Renan, some impassioned Michelet--which they thrust on the
_Index_; now they pillory the Catholic layman with the largest following
in Italy, one who has never wavered in his devotion to the Church.
Whatever the political result of their action may be, they have made the
fortune of the book they hoped to suppress; and this is good, for _The
Saint_ is a real addition to literature.

Lovers of Italy have regretted that foreigners should judge her
contemporary ideals and literary achievements by the brilliant, but