The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1880-07-10
Recent Publications.
Mr.. Symonds's Southern Europe.

Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe,
By John Addington Symonds, Author of Stud
les of the Greek Poets. (New York Harper
Brothers; Portland: Loring, Short & Harmony
Among the artists of language-in these days
of exquisite handling of the instruments which
form the superb orchestra of the English
speech-no writer in prose surpasses Mr.. Sy-
monds in musical, rich and delicious use of
words. The color and purity of his literary
gift, his instant and entire surrender to the
spirit of the moment, the clear sight and bril-
liant and poetic Interpretation that character
ize his manner, grow upon the readers admi-
ration with each succeeding chapter of every
work of Mr.. Symonds. His prose is thoroughly
poetic, yet without affectation, or any trace of
the tiresome sihg-song with which certain
writers weary us-a melopee that has the sound
of prose without its sense, and the diversions
and arbitrary periods of poetry without its
beauty.
In the opening chapter of Mr.. Symonds's
admirable sketches one breathes the italian
air. the mists, heavy with soft southern rain
that part to discover the soft brilliance and
blue depth of southern air and sea-this is TIA
ly itself; and the mists fall back to hide from
our eyes even the thought of northern lands
with fainter sun, and waters that have swept
down from the everlasting ice of the polar cir
Gle. 1t is not only the Italy of to-day, it is the
classic Italy of the past, that Mr.. Symonds
gives us to see-as one recalls a mothers beau
ty in that of her daughter. When he tells us
of "a well, broad, deep and clear, with green
Al, a
from it down the rocky steps, maiden-hair,
black adiantum and blue violets hanging from
the brink and mirrored in the water,'' it is not
only of the flowers fed by the waters that rip
pie in the sunlight of the day that he saw
there, but he thinks, too, of old Theocritus,
strayed forth from the spendors of the court,
to note the color of the violets, shading from
black to palest purple. Few writers have been
able to take so swiftly and hold so lightly the
spirit of delight of a lovely land. Sound,
smell and hue make up one chord, the sense OF
which is pure and perfect peace" declares Mr..
Symonds. This fresh, delicate and vivid blend.
ing of the ancient and the new-as some mar
BILE goddess brought from immemorial dust and
darkness, might be made rosy with today's
morning lights the essence of the authors
work, and is pleasurable in The highest degree.
His treatment of landscape often recalls the
perfect speech and atmosphere of Mr.. Tenny-
sons Lotus Eaters in its quality at once idyllic
and dramatic. Mr.. Symonds understands well
that the old unthinkipg gladness is gone from
among men, save as they find it face to face
with nature-but he also accepts gratefully the
better gifts of a later age; and he is not OF
those irresponsible enthusiasts who declaim
against all later light. Happily for Mr. Sy-
mondss work, he is a geruine believer in the
theory of cart for art''-but, unlike some OF
its followers, he appreciates the truth that,
while direct attempt to teach makes peda-
gogue of poet, and withers the fine flower OF
art-any taint of coarseness or evil instantly
degrades and crushes its beauty.
Peculiarly picturesque is Mr.. Symonds's
sketch of St. Francis of Assist, like a medieval
picture, with few lines clearly set against a
golden background:
So still he lay, so long, SO like stone, SC
gentle were his eyes, so kind and low his voice
that the mice nibbled bread crumbs from his
wallet, lizards ran over him, and larks sang to
him in the air. And from his lonely cave
among the Apennines, the saint cried that the
| thus ran the canticle Of the holy man, in its
quaint and courteous Italian phrases "by my
lord, brother sun; by sister moon and the stars
by brother wind and the air and cloud and
clearness and all weather"
The beautiful country and the wild people
! of Corsica are described in asingulary dramat-