In all this, of course, Miss Bowen receives some assistance, some inspiration, as it were, from that particular phase of the past with which she deals. It would be difficult for anyone to write of Italy as it emerges from the Middle Ages without catching something in the narrative itself of that swift play of passion and impulse, of that tense, highly-wrought tendency to dramatic climax, which starts into life from the pages of the barest records of the period. And what a period it was! At the moment which Miss Bowen has chosen, Visconti, that sinister embodiment of the Lombard blend of Gothic vigor and Latin cruelty, holds the stage in Northern Italy. He has just vanquished Verona, seized Isotta d'Este and driven her husband, Della Scala, into exile. From that point we are shown in a series of swift scenes the coalition of the d'Estes under Della Scala against Visconti, the rapid triumph of this reaction up to a certain point, and then its equally rapid wasting under the assaults less of Milanese prowess than of Milanese treachery. The final isolation of Della Scala from his allies, and the supreme test to which his fidelity is subjected by the almost diabolic genius of Visconti, make one of the most superb climaxes with which we are familiar in romantic drama or in historical fiction. Nor does the author seem to fall short of the opportunity offered her for the vivid and moving portrayal of the great passions involved in so high an action. For many it will constitute the prime marvel of an extraordinary book that its author, a young girl of fifteen or sixteen, who knew nothing of Italy, or of the Italian character, save, through books, could have conceived and written it. But if we grant the extraordinary precocity of talent implied in the mere writing of such a book as _The Viper of Milan_, it is, perhaps, less remarkable than it at first appears that Miss Bowen should have been so successful in grasping the purely Italian side of her subject, in rendering the Italian psychology. For is not youth the Italian age of life? Is there not something in the ardent dreams and in the swift, uncontrollable impulses of young natures, that finds _itself_ in the spirit of that race which though the eldest is still the youngest race of Europe? The Italian soul, complex as it may appear upon the surface, is in essence simple. It is the soul of desire, of desire for the dream realized. Such is the desire even of a Visconti, and the soul of such a man makes him as simple to seize upon as the ogre of a fairy tale.