_The victor and vanquished, in amity knitted, Have doubled the yoke to your shoulders refitted; One tyrant had quelled you, and now ye have twain. They cast forth the lot for the serf and the cattle, They throne on the sods that yet bleed from their battle, And the soil and the hind are their servants again._ If Manzoni was surpassed as a dramatist and equalled as a lyrist by others among his countrymen, he has hitherto found no competitor as a novelist. _I Promessi Sposi_ (1825) was the first great Italian romance, and it remains the greatest. It would be difficult to transcend its capital merits, the beauty and truth of description, the interest of its leading characters, and its perfect fidelity to life, if not in every respect to the place and period where and when the scene is laid--Milan under the dreary Spanish rule of the seventeenth century--yet to the universal feelings and instincts of humanity. As a picture of human nature the book is above criticism; it is just the fact, neither more nor less. “It satisfies us,” said Goethe, “like perfectly ripe fruit.” It has, notwithstanding, a weak side, which Goethe did not fail to point out--the prominence of the historical element, and the dryness with which the writer exhibits his authorities, instead of dissolving them in the flow of his narrative. “The German translator,” said Goethe, “must get rid of a great part of the war and the famine, and two-thirds of the plague.” Other objections to Manzoni’s romance refer to its real or supposed tendencies, which leave its artistic merits unaffected. It may be granted that panegyrics upon Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, however just, were hardly seasonable when the Pope was the fast ally of the Austrian; and Manzoni did still worse by his country when (1819) he wrote a treatise on Catholic Morals, unexceptionable when there should be no more question of the Temporal Power. But he then cherished generous illusions which he was ultimately obliged to renounce; though never parting with one of the leading and most remarkable features of _I Promessi Sposi_, its sympathy with the poor and lowly. It is a remarkable proof of the difficulties of style which beset the Italian author, that Manzoni found it necessary to give his romance a thorough revision to bring its diction nearer to the Tuscan standard. His other prose works comprise, the _Column of Infamy_, an historical appendix to _I Promessi Sposi_, _Letters on Romanticism_, an able polemic on behalf of the romantic school, and _Letters on the Unities of Time and Place_, demonstrating that the unity of action is the only unity which need be regarded by the dramatist.