GIOVANNI VERGA (b. 1840) rivals the European reputation of D’Annunzio, and is, like him, the head of a realistic school; but his realism is of quite another sort, owing nothing to Zola or Maupassant. He is the most eminent European representative of the local novel, dealing with the manners, humours, and peculiar circumstances of some special locality. The vogue of this style was perhaps originally due to George Sand’s idyllic pictures of Berri. Verga has found a yet more interesting corner of the world to delineate. A Sicilian, though residing at Milan, he has made his native island the scene of his fiction. Centuries of misgovernment have unhappily accumulated stores of tragic material in the people’s misery and oppression, and the ferocity and vindictiveness these have engendered. Verga depicts these circumstances with the fidelity of a dispassionate observer and the skill of an artist. His books not only attract in their own day, but will be treasured in the future among the most valuable documents for the social history of Sicily. Any one of even the minor poets whom we have enumerated has a chance of reaching posterity, for their work is at all events individual, and expressive of the personality of the author. If this is sufficiently interesting, the work may live, though it be far from inaugurating a new literary era like Carducci’s. It is otherwise with the contemporary prose literature of Italy. A history, a biography, philology like Ascoli’s or D’Ancona’s, a work on social science like Sella’s or Morselli’s may possess great value as the work of an expert, even though devoid of individuality; but in this case it must sooner or later lapse into the category of books of reference. Such appears to be the case with most of the excellent work now being done in Italy in these and other departments: the statue is carved, but no name is inscribed upon the pedestal, for the sculpture is the work of a craftsman, not of an artist. Exceptions may be made in favour of a few writers recently deceased--Ruggiero Bonghi, translator of Plato and historian of Rome, one of the soundest heads in Italy; Giuseppe Chiarini, champion of Carducci; Enrico Nencioni, lately lost to his country, a high authority upon English literature; Angelo de Gubernatis, a brilliant and almost too versatile critic and philologist; and Giuseppe Guerzoni, raised above himself by his theme when he wrote the life of Garibaldi. Among living men, two at least have won an abiding reputation as writers, apart from the utilitarian worth of their work--Pascale Villari, biographer of Savonarola and Machiavelli, and writer on the social conditions of the South; and Domenico Comparetti, author of _Virgilio nel Medio Evo_. In general, however, the chief distinction of contemporary writers on serious subjects seems to be their general diligence and good sense. Admirable writers have gained European renown for themselves, and exalted the