forms as the poet may, he is essentially the man of the nineteenth century: his variety of mood and theme is great; his orchestra has a place for every instrument; but in nine cases out of ten the direction to the performer is _con brio_. By this dashing vigour Carducci has poured new blood into the exhausted veins of Italian poetry, and administered an antidote to her besetting maladies by the example of a style condensed, nervous, and terse to a fault. Epic or dramatic power he does not claim: his genius is entirely lyrical. Carducci’s first volume appeared in 1857, and the events of the following years called forth a number of occasional poems, clearly indicating the representative poet of the people and the time. In 1865, the vigorous “Hymn to Satan” provoked the controversy which the poet had no doubt designed. His Satan, it hardly need be said, is not the monarch of the fallen seraphim, but the spirit of revolt against social and ecclesiastical tyranny, more of a Luther than a Lucifer. _Levia Gravia_ (1867) greatly extended the poet’s reputation. _Odi Barbare_ (1877) excited a literary controversy almost as virulent as the theological. The splendour of the diction was beyond question, but what was to be said to the novel or exotic forms in which the poet had thought fit to clothe it? To us, the naturalisation of the Alcaic and Sapphic metres appears most successful, although in the former the writer has permitted himself some deviation from the Horatian model, and the form is perhaps too deeply impressed with his own personality to become frequent in Italian literature. Most of the other forms, including the hexameters and pentameters, seem to us either too stiff or too intricate to be quite satisfactorily manipulated even by Carducci himself; but the study of them must be a valuable training for practitioners in more facile metres. If the form be sometimes too elaborate, there can be no dispute as to the weight and massive majesty of the sense. Carducci has solved the problem which baffled the Renaissance, of linking strength of thought to artifice of form. The _Rime Nuove_ brought him new laurels, and his poetical career has paused for the present with a noble ode on the tercentenary of Tasso in 1895. The jubilee of his connection with the University of Bologna was celebrated by a great demonstration in 1896, and, reconciled with the monarchy which he once opposed, he enjoys the honour of a Senator of the Kingdom. A Liberal but a Royalist, a freethinker but a theist, he is happily placed to exert a reconciling and moderating influence alike in the political and the intellectual sphere.