In reading Andersen's collected works one is particularly impressed with the fact that what he did outside of his chosen field is of inferior quality--inferior, I mean, judged by his own high standard, though in itself often highly valuable and interesting. "The Improvisatore," upon which, next to "The Wonder-Tales," his fame rests, is a kind of disguised autobiography which exhibits the author's morbid sensibility and what I should call the unmasculine character of his mind,[19] To appeal to the reader's pity in your hero's behalf is a daring experiment, and it cannot, except in brief scenes, be successful. A prolonged strain of compassion soon becomes wearisome, and not the worthiest object in the world can keep one's charity interested through four hundred pages. Antonio, in "The Improvisatore," is a milksop whom the author, with a lavish expenditure of sympathy, parades as a hero. He is positively ludicrous in his pitiful softness, vanity, and humility. That the book nevertheless remains unfailingly popular, and is even yet found in the satchel of every Roman tourist, is chiefly due to the poetic intensity with which the author absorbed and portrayed every Roman sight and sound. Italy throbs and glows in the pages of "The Improvisatore"--the old vagabond Italy of pre-Garibaldian days, when priests and bandits and pretty women divided the power of Church and State. Story's "Roba di Roma," Augustus Hare's "Walks in Rome," and all the other descriptions of the Eternal City, are but disguised guide-books, feeble and pale performances, when compared with Andersen's beautiful romance. [19] R. L. Stevenson in speaking of the "Character of Dogs" makes the following cruel observation: "Hans Christian Andersen, as we behold him in his startling memoirs, thrilling from top to toe with an excruciating vanity and scouting even along the streets for the shadows of offence--here was the talking dog."--Memories and Portraits, p. 196.