e season, and began to practise as
advocate, but in that casual way common to young men who know that their
real leader is not Themis but Apollo. Erelong he abandoned the bar and
devoted himself with equal enthusiasm to music and poetry, for both of
which he had unusual aptitude. Down to 1881 he printed chiefly volumes
of verse which gave him a genuine, if not popular reputation. In that
year he brought out his first romance, _Malombra_, and from time to time
during the past quarter of a century he has followed it with _Daniele
Cortis_, _Il Mistero del Poeta_, _Piccolo Mondo Antico_, _Piccolo Mondo
Moderno_, and finally, in the autumn of 1905, _Il Santo_. This list by
no means exhausts his productivity, for he has worked in many fields,
but it includes the books by which, gradually at first, and with
triumphant strides of late, he has come into great fame in Italy and
has risen into the small group of living authors who write for a
cosmopolitan public.

For many years past Signor Fogazzaro has dwelt in his native Vicenza,
the most honoured of her citizens, round whom has grown up a band of
eager disciples, who look to him for guidance not merely in matters
intellectual or aesthetic, but in the conduct of life. He has conceived
of the career of man of letters as a great opportunity, not as a mere
trade. Nothing could show better his high seriousness than his waiting
until the age of thirty-nine before publishing his first novel, unless
it be the restraint which led him, after having embarked on the career
of novelist to devote four or five years on the average to his studies
in fiction. So his books are ripe, the fruits of a deliberate and rich
nature, and not the windfalls of a mere literary trick. And now the
publication of _The Saint_ confirms all his previous work, and entitles
him, at a little more than threescore years, to rank among the few
literary masters of the time.

III

Many elements in _The Saint_ testify to its importance; but these would
not make it a work of art. And after all it is as a work of art that it
first appeals to readers, who may care little for its religious purport.
It is a great novel--so great, that, after living with its characters,
we cease to regard it as a novel at all. It keeps our suspense on the
stretch through nearly five hundred pages. Will the Saint triumph--will
love victoriously claim its own? We hurry on, at the first reading,
for the solution; then we go back and disco