A writer who dyes his products in Bracco's vat, then for contrast colors them with Sardou and Dumas, which, exposed for sale in the market-place, find avid purchasers and bring high prices, is Dario Niccodemi, whose comedies, especially "Scampolo" ("The Remnant") and "L'Ombra" ("The Shadow"), have had great success. In his last two books, "Il Titano" ("The Titan") and "Prete Pero" ("Priest Pero"), he gives evidence that he is keenly discerning of the new social consciousness that has developed in Italy apparently as the result of the war. "Prete Pero," while depicting the subterfuges of the church to accomplish its ends and the arguments that it uses to convince that the ends justify the means, portrays one of those simple, faithful, honest, transparent souls, in the shape of Father Bragio, who have been the pillars of the Roman church which no Samson has ever been able to tear down. "I wrote 'Prete Pero,'" he says, "as a journalist writes a series of articles or as a speaker makes a series of conferences--for a general idea; but I have had two, the first æsthetic, to sustain the principle that in Italy, as in France and in England, and, indeed, in every country agonized by this terrible war, one might make and make acceptably war comedies; second, moral, to prove that it is permitted to say from the stage in verse or in prose that which in the past four years has been said in journals, in speeches, in conferences, in parliament and in committees, which is: in the disorder of the social organization produced by the phenomena of war there have been sublime heroes and brazen-faced cheats and swindlers." "Prete Pero" showed that Signor Niccodemi has a nose for the favorite perfume of the modern reader, just as his "L'Ombra" showed it when he afflicted his heroine with hysterical paralysis and then cured her by the method which Freud originally called the cathartic method. Dario Niccodemi has not added materially to the dignity of Italian letters, but he has amused and diverted his countrymen and ourselves, and for that we are grateful. Sem Benelli, who has recently had political life thrust upon him is, in common with many literary Jews in Italy, inclined to give himself a certain mystery of origin by concealing his antecedents. In reality he was born in 1877. Not only is he well known in Italy but in this country, where one of his early plays, "La Cena delle Beffe" ("The Supper of the Jests"), has had great success. He began his literary career as a journalist on a Florentine review, _Marzocco_. His first play was published when he was twenty-five years old. Although "La Tignola" ("The Moth") showed unusual quality of construction and contrasted with great force the artistic temperament with the world of the big business, it was not until "La Cena delle Beffe" that he arrived.