mediated an easy belief in his inspiration. The son of a country doctor, he was born in a little village in Tuscany in 1836. Thus his childhood and early youth coincided with those years in which king, pope, and emperor seemed to vie with one another in crushing independent thought in Italy; those years in which men dared not write, fearing their words might be misconstrued, or, writing, were obliged to publish clandestinely. During these years Carducci's thirst for liberty and freedom, political, social, and religious, developed, and for a third of a century after he had reached the age of man he externalized it in moving, majestic, musical verse, which made known Italy's rights and aspirations, and encouraged her loyal sons to continue their struggles.

After teaching a few years in the high schools of San Miniato and Pistoia, during which time he published a selection of religious, moral, and patriotic juvenile poems entitled "Juvenilia," he went to Bologna. In 1860 he was called to the chair of Italian literature in the University of Bologna and soon published "Giambi ed Epodi" ("Iambs and Epodes"). In this he preached republican doctrines so openly that he gave offense to the crown and was suspended from his position, which, however, he soon regained.

Soon after this he published, under the pseudonym of "Enotrio Romano," an irreligious or materialistic poem entitled "Inno a Satana" ("A Hymn to Satan"), which gave him great popularity. It is an invective against the church, which through its mysticism and asceticism seeks to suppress natural impulses and which through its intellectual censorship aims to stifle scientific investigation. It breathed a spirit of revolt against tyranny and privilege, especially clerical privilege, which had made such profound growth in Italy. It inveighed against the efforts of suppression of human rights and bespoke the culture of human reason. It is quite impossible to read understandingly the "Hymn to Satan" without a knowledge of mythology and Greek history. Indeed, one of the most characteristic features of his poem is the wealth of classic allusion. Agramiania, Adonis, Astarte, Venus, Anadyomene, Cyprus, Heloise, Maro, Flaccus, Lycoris, Glycera are some of the names that are encountered. It was not until the publication of his "Odi barbare" ("Barbaric Odes") that his stride as an original poet began to be recognized. They called forth the most vicious criticism and at first sight it would seem that they must sink beneath the avalanche of disapproval, but in reality Italy was ready to listen to a message couched in new form. Conventional rhymes, easily read, easily remembered, were now to give way to rough, sonorous lines in which rhythm took the place of rhyme and straight-from-the-shoulder blows took the place of feints and passes.

Carducci met his critics with the "Ça ira." It is the apology of the French Revolution and especially of the Convention. The title of the sonnets comes from the famous revolutionary song of the reign of terror. Within a brief time, namely, from 1883 to 1887, when his books entitled "New Barbaric Odes" and "New Rhymes" were published, there were few competent to express an opinion who did not realize that he was Italy's most learned poet, potent in the art of appreciation, felicitous in conveying noble sentiments and inspiring thoughts, human in his sympathies with the simple and the oppressed, a tower of strength, a pillar of fire. From that period until to-day Carducci's fame as a poet has steadily gained ground in Italy, so that it is no exaggeration to say that many accord him the crown worn by Petrarch and Tasso. Those who fulsomely praise his memory see in him not only a poet but a learned man who was able to strain classic erudition through his understanding mind to such effect that the average individual could avail himself of it to satisfaction and to advantage. They also see in him the noblest work of God, an honest man.

His students idolized him. When they left the university and returned to their various spheres of activity they carried his image in their hearts and sounded his praises with tongue or pen. They made propaganda con amore. No one is ever approved of universally in any country, probably least of any in Italy. When Carducci published his "Alla Regina d'Italia" ("Ode to the Queen of Italy"), one of his best—simple, musical, redolent of reverence and affection—he aroused the fury of the republicans, who called him traitor, and the scorn of the envious, who called him snob.

In 1891, when he accepted a senatorship of the realm, the students of the University of Bologna howled and jeered at him, and many of the former students plucked or tore his image from their hearts. They had apotheosized the Great Commoner, and they saw in this truckling to royalty and honors weakness and vanity which they could not believe that he possessed. Yet in 1896, when he completed thirty-five years of service at the university, the event was celebrated for three successive days, and the outpouring of expressions of admiration and gratitude from colleagues and students, and from heads crowned with laurel and gold, has scarcely ever been paralleled.

In an autobiographical sketch in the volume of "Poesie," of 1871, he relates with great detail the way in which he broke from his early parental teachings and acquired his new literary, political, and religious feelings. Following his Hellenic instincts, the religious trend in him was toward the paganism of the ancient Latin forefathers rather than toward the spirituality that had come in with the infusion of foreign blood. He rebelled against the passive dependence on the fame of her great writers, in which Italy had lived in the apathy of a long-abandoned hope of political independence and achievement. The livery of the slave and the mask of the courtesan disgusted him. His was the hope and joy of a nation waking to a new life. He was the poet of the national mood.

Carducci is little known as a poet in this country. There are many reasons why his fame has not made headway in Anglo-Saxon countries. In the first place, he has not been extensively translated, and in the second place, although the subject of his song was so often liberty, his lines are so replete with erudite classic illusions that even though he could be translated he would be found to be hard reading. But more than all there is probably no poet whose matter loses so much of its music and its fire by translation as Carducci. Such exquisite verses as the "Idylls of the Lowlands," "The Ox," "The Hymn to the Seasons," "To the Fountains of Clitumnus" are translatable. It would require a Longfellow to do it so that they should not be emasculated.

In 1906 he was awarded the Nobel prize for literature and the entire literary world approved of the reward. Two years previously he had resigned his professorship, and parliament voted him a pension of twelve thousand lire a year for life, but it was of short duration, for he died in 1907.

Mario Rapisardi, to whom a monument has been erected in his native town of Catania, and who is known best for his tragedy "Manfredi" and his philosophic poem, "La Palingenesi," and "Poesie religiose," was a ferocious critic of Carducci. In his poem entitled "Lucifer" there are many disparaging allusions to him. Rapisardi was a teacher and a poet, but a spiritual chameleon: a devout believer, he became a radicalist; a monarchist, he became a socialist; a romanticist, he became a classicist. He is one of the best specimens of the old order of poets. His "Falling Stars" and "The Impenitent" have a genuine lyric quality, and such poems as "To a Fire-fly" have movement, rhythm, and luminosity that are impressive.

The only poet that approximated Carducci's stature was Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912). Though he was a few years younger, the period of his literary activity was contemporaneous. When Carducci died, Pascoli succeeded him for a few years in the University of Bologna. His personal story appealed tremendously to Italians, and he was of the masses in appearance