JEAN PIERRE CLARIS DE FLORIAN

(1755-1794)

EAN PIERRE CLARIS DE FLORIAN was born of an impoverished family at the Château de Florian in Languedoc, 1755. His

education, conducted by the best of masters, was begun in his own home and continued under the guidance of Voltaire, who was his kinsman and who admired his intelligence and abilities. The great master obtained for the young poet a place in the household of the Duc de Penthièvre, who granted him a commission of captain in one of his own regiments. It was after several years of attention to his military duties that Florian produced

his pastoral romance ( Galatea (1782), com- TAT
posed during the leisure hours of his
service. It seems worthy of remark that
Cervantes, the author of 'Don Quixote,'
of which Florian was later on to render so
acceptable a version to his compatriots,
should have produced as an early work
(if it was not his first) a pastoral bearing
the same title.

The Galatea' was followed by two volumes of dramatic pieces, and by another of short novels of the sentimental type; his next work, called 'Estelle,' enjoyed great popularity, and together with his 'Numa Pompilius (1786) placed him in the front rank of contemporary literature. He was enrolled as a member of the Academies of Lyons, Florence, and Madrid, and on the death of the Cardinal de Luynes he was admitted into the Academy of Paris, the honor which he had most coveted.

During the tyranny of Robespierre, Florian was thrown into prison, his position with the Duc de Penthièvre and some verses in honor of Marie Antoinette serving as pretexts for his detention; and in spite of the ceaseless efforts of Boissy D'Anglas and Mercier he would doubtless have been sent to the guillotine, had not the downfall of the tyrant procured his release.

He left his prison with shattered health, and retired to the Parc de Scéaux, the estates of the Duc de Penthièvre, where he expired of a fever, September 13th, 1794.

Florian's style is typical of his times, although he showed an element of conservatism. His works were carefully written, and bear the marks of an elegant and delicate fancy without the impression of strength. His 'Numa Pompilius' seems to have been modeled on the Telemachus' of Fénelon. 'Gonzalve de Cordoue,' another of his romances, is in a more modern manner, although it opens with an invocation to the "Chaste nymphs of the Guadalquivir." Florian, in fine, is best known to-day by his fables, which have become classic side by side with those of La Fontaine.

The following translations of Florian were made for A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Thomas Walsh

A

THE CONNOISSEUR

FAT and pompous paroquet,

Free from his cage by hazard set,
Established him as connoisseur

Within a grove, when he, like those
Our critics false, began to slur
At everything with stuck-up nose:
The nightingale should trim her song-
Her cadences seemed rather poor:
The linnet he could not endure;
The thrush, perhaps, would get along
Could he but teach her for a while,-
That is, if she would aim at style.
Thus, none of all could please him—none;
And when their morning songs awoke,

The paroquet whistled, for a joke,
And kept it up till day was done.
Outraged at this unruly fate,
A deputation came in state,
Requesting him with curtsies low:-
"Good sir, who always whistle so,

How fair, oh then how fair, thy flowers
When his dear lap they rested on:
The buds that used to deck thy bowers
Are faded and forever gone.

'Twas sweet with water from the stream
To cool thy boughs with tender fears;
Now parched and dying do they seem,
For they are watered but with tears.

O rose-tree, rose-tree, thou wilt die;

And yet my heart thirsts more than thine:

I languish-would like thee could I,

Sweet rose-tree, this sad life resign!

SERENADE

ITHDRAW thy beams, thou moon unkind:

W"

Sweet night, my tender secret keep;
Bear thou my sorrows, gentle wind,

And whisper them where she doth sleep.

All else beside, who would not know

The pain her heavenly glances make, Sleep on, sleep on; for if you wake Yon must be rivals in my woe!

ANTONIO FOGAZZARO

(1842-1911)

BY ARTHUR LIVINGSTON

HE condemnation by the Church of Il Santo) and (Leila) has tended to make Fogazzaro the object of polemics better calculated to spread his fame than to elucidate his art. It has won him an eminence among radicals he was the first to disclaim. It has laid far too great emphasis upon his value as critic and thinker, for Fogazzaro as an ethicist is a mystic authoritarian. He is interested in finding divine -sanction and psychological basis for conclusions previously accepted from prejudice and social tradition. His pseudophilosophical essays ((Ascensioni umane)) attempt to square an ultraamateurish notion of Darwin with a poetic perception of Saint Augustine. He is one of the critics, so common in every age, who would adapt dogma to progress by showing that the new is really old. Fogazzaro seeks in every science materials to justify his preconceptions. This is as true of his psychology as of his science and philosophy. No one is going to deny this right to any citizen, and Fogazzaro is pre-eminently a citizen-thinker. On this point Catholics as well as liberals ought readily to agree, in order, once and for all, to ground the eminence of Fogazzaro on the solid base of his artistic merit, where his figure rises in its own distinctive grandeur.

He was

In thus denying value to the citizen's thought of Fogazzaro we in no way impugn his value as a citizen. Fogazzaro, as a character, stands out in contrast not only with another distinguished figure of Italian letters, but with the whole army of post-Romantic litterateurs whose lives shine rather for richness and variety of experience than for singleness of moral purpose. Fogazzaro was a gentleman, of considerable wealth, of aristocratic tastes. The tenderness of family relationships warmed every corner of his life, as well as of his art. a lavish contributor to the charities of Vicenza, his native city. A certain stiffness is suggested by the quality of his wider social and literary associations. It is well to recall these facts; for this aristocratic environment becomes, in Fogazzaro's work, wholly self-conscious, conscious also of its ultimate and purest ideals. Fogazzaro's art is intensely personal. His personality never detaches itself from its social class. This class has a history, which, in a very real sense, is the history of modern Italy in one aspect of life where Italy is most Italian. Carducci is representative of part of the Italian past, just