Produced by David Edwards, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) CRITICAL STUDIES BY OUIDA _SECOND IMPRESSION_ LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1900 [_All Rights reserved_] PREFATORY NOTE With exception of one, that on the poems of Mr Blunt, all these essays have previously appeared in _The Fortnightly Review_, _The Nineteenth Century Review_, or the _Nuova Antologia_. The two published in _The Nuova Antologia_ were written by me in Italian. I have now turned them into English myself. The article on D'Annunzio, in the _Fortnightly_, was the first ever printed in English on a writer who is now well known to all. I do not think that he has, since it was published, created anything equal to the _Trionfo_. The character of his genius is not adapted to the theatre, to which he now chiefly devotes himself. It will be interesting to see if it can be adapted to political life, which has lately tempted him. Perhaps he may become a new Rienzi. One is greatly needed in Italy. OUIDA. CONTENTS I. GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO II. GEORGES DARIEN III. THE ITALIAN NOVELS OF MARION CRAWFORD IV. LE SECRET DU PRÉCEPTEUR V. L'IMPÉRIEUSE BONTÉ VI. WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT VII. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN VIII. UNWRITTEN LITERARY LAWS IX. AUBERON HERBERT X. THE UGLINESS OF MODERN LIFE XI. THE QUALITY OF MERCY XII. THE DECADENCE OF LATIN RACES XIII. ALMA VENIESIA CRITICAL STUDIES I GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO 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 of the author of the _Innocente_ and the _Trionfo_, and is not aware that, in him, one of the ablest and most delicate of living critics believes that he has seen the personification of a renascence of Latin genius. Imprisoned as his novels were in the limits of a language which, however great its beauty, is but little known except in its own land, he has been extraordinarily fortunate in finding such sponsors in the outside world as he has obtained in M. Herelle, in René Doumic, and in the Vicomte de Vogüé. Never has any romance been so admirably heralded as the _Trionfo_ in the _Révue des Deux Mondes_, and never certainly, since lyre was strung or laurels were woven, was any praise ever heard so dulcet and so lavish as that with which he, who has been called the second Chateaubriand, has welcomed and introduced the new Boccaccio.