We do not mean to say that the _Journals_ have nothing Latin about them, or that they are written in pure Italian or Sicilian. Latin words, even phrases, which recall the customs of a dead language, are frequently found in the midst of a speech in all other respects purely Italian; but these souvenirs are always isolated, and do not alter the general character of the tongue, which is essentially Sicilian. But what distinguishes the style of this delightful teller of stories is not only the sweetness characteristic of the dialect he employed, but also a certain carelessness, a certain freedom in the construction of his sentences. In the first prose writer of a language one certainly does not expect Ciceronian periods; it appears perfectly natural that all his sentences should be co-ordinate, instead of being subordinate to one another, and that he should simply join his propositions by copulative conjunctions, instead of arranging them in incidental phrases; but with Spinelli, we simply find conversational language, and nothing more; that is to say, his style is wanting in clearness. He writes as he would have spoken to an attentive audience, with all the assistance to be derived from gesture, intonation, and expressive glance. This conversational style, applied to written works of great length, is often unintelligible unless interpreted by a clever reader, who recites it as an actor recites his rôle in a comedy. In the end it becomes wearisome by the very fact that the necessary explanation, which recitation would give, is wanting. But, on the other hand, there is an animation which the finest art could not produce--each word, each expression creates a picture. One might be listening to a loquacious barber, on the lookout for the gossip of the day, serving up hot the talk of the town. This is Spinelli’s specialty; he must not be looked on as a historian, not even a political chronicler, but as a teller of stories, often amusing, nearly always animated. The events of contemporary history are only mentioned incidentally in the midst of town and country gossip. But apart from the style and light shade of irony which form one of the charms of Boccaccio, Spinelli’s stories are not less wanting in interest than the stories of the _Decameron_. This is the great merit of the _Journals_; their historic value is almost worthless, and, on account of serious errors (chiefly those of chronology), they become dangerous guides for the reader who takes them seriously and refers to them for information on the period and country in which Spinelli lived. There is a great difference to be seen when one passes from this expansive and unpretentious gossip to professional men of letters, to the somewhat pedantic orators of Florence, from the neglected Sicilian dialect to the already majestic and developed language of Tuscany.