phrases such as this: "Il est fort possible et même assez probable que les morts nous entourent, puisqu'il est impossible que les morts ne vivent pas."

In short, his book gives the impression of a merry-go-round of useless chatter about ambiguous mysteries. The only thing that is clear is that he is earning money by means of this chatter. The only thing he has done that called for personal exertion was to go to Elberfeldt to see the educated horses of Herr Krall. But his visit adds nothing to what we had learned from the reports of the psychologists who had preceded him. And Maeterlinck himself destroys all the significance which the calculations of the German steeds might be thought to have as a proof of animal intelligence, by pointing out that human calculating prodigies are in general children or half-witted persons who guess mathematical results by a strange sort of intuition, but do not carry through real mathematical operations. What is more, Maeterlinck (who has read Shakespeare, it would seem) ought to have recognized that the horses of Elberfeldt are not a novelty. At the end of the sixteenth century a certain Bankes exhibited in London, before St. Paul's, a horse so well trained that he could count coins, and could carry things to a spectator whose name his master pronounced. Shakespeare refers to him in Love's Labour Lost.

Mediocre enough as a poet, Maeterlinck has not even any great aptitude for metaphysics, whatever his French and German admirers may say. He is a parlor occultist, a moralist for old ladies, a syrupy philosopher, a friar without faith, a scientist without clearness, a poet without imagination, a casuist for idle consciences, a fakir of facile marvels. To read him after reading a great philosopher is like smoking opium after climbing a mountain. To read him after reading a great poet is like drinking a cup of camomile after a goblet of old wine.

XXIV

GIOVANNI PAPINI1

I

GIOVANNI PAPINI does not need to be introauced to our readers. Every one knows, his friends with even more certainty than his enemies, that he is the ugliest man in Italy (if indeed he deserves the name of man at all), so repulsive that Mirabeau would seem in comparison an academy model, a Discobolus, an Apollo Belvedere. And since the face is the mirror of the soul, as the infinite wisdom of the race informs us in one of its proverbial condensations of experience, no one will be surprised to learn that this Papini is the scoundrel of literature, the blackguard of journalism, the Barabbas of art, the thug of philosophy, the bully of politics, the Apaché of culture, and that he is inextricably involved in all the enterprises of the intellectual underworld. It is also well known that he lives sumptuously and gorgeously, and of course like

'Written soon after the publication of Stroncature ("Slashings"), Florence, 1916.

a Sybarite, in an inaccessible castle; and that he derives his usual means of sustenance from theft, blackmail, and highway robbery. We may add, though it is scarcely necessary, that his favorite food is the flesh of fools and his favorite drink is warm, steaming human blood.

It is a matter of common knowledge that this creature is the worst of all the churls and boors that feed on Italian soil: rumor has it that he has sworn a Carthaginian hatred against every past or future treatise on good behavior. This shameful rascal goes even so far as to say what he actually thinks. Worse still, he has the audacity to turn on the critics when they annoy him:

Cet animal est très méchant:

Quand on l'attaque il se défend!

This Giovanni Papini, this sinister chameleon of the zoology of the spirit, has just published a new book, a thick book, an abominable book. If our eyes were not veiled by that natural kindliness which always dominates a well-bred soul, and if our severest words were not shut deep down in our throat and our ink-well by the practical necessity of defending a colleague, we should be tempted to say that not even in the most decadent and vituperative periods of our literature has any one ever applied such a boundless flow of ribald and perfidious terms to men who in spite of their moments of weakness (due,

no doubt, to the influence of Homer's nods), honor the name and genius of Italy among ourselves and before the world. Disgust assails us, nausea overwhelms us, scorn conquers us, indignation stifles us, wrath shakes us, and rage consumes us when we see this miscreant of the pen, this bandit of paper, this outlaw of ink, move to the assault of persons whom the country honors, universities approve, academies reward, foreigners admire, and the bourgeoisie respects without knowing why.

Who can witness such an atrocious spectacle without shuddering? Who can be content to stand aside with folded arms? Never shall it be said that filibusters and libelers may devastate with impunity the hortos conclusos, the gardens of Armida, the ivory towers and the terrestrial paradises of our literature. Our voice is weak, and modest is our strength. But we rise to protest (with dignity, with nobility, but with energy) against this shameful degeneration of criticism.

II

The volume in question, which the author shamelessly entitles Slashings, opens appropriately with several pages of "Boasts," in which Papini insinuates that indignation as well as love may lead to knowledge, since only our enemies