ver adored,' he tells us: and we now know
how truthful he was in saying so. I have only summarised in this article
the most important confirmations of his exact accuracy in facts and
dates; the number could be extended indefinitely. In the manuscripts we
find innumerable further confirmations; and their chief value as
testimony is that they tell us nothing which we should not have already
known, if we had merely taken Casanova at his word. But it is not always
easy to take people at their own word, when they are writing about
themselves; and the world has been very loth to believe in Casanova as
he represents himself. It has been specially loth to believe that he is
telling the truth when he tells us about his adventures with women. But
the letters contained among these manuscripts show us the women of
Casanova writing to him with all the fervour and all the fidelity which
he attributes to them; and they show him to us in the character of as
fervid and faithful a lover. In every fact, every detail, and in the
whole mental impression which they convey, these manuscripts bring
before us the Casanova of the _Memoirs_. As I seemed to come upon
Casanova at home, it was as if I came upon an old friend, already
perfectly known to me, before I had made my pilgrimage to Dux.

1902.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See the account of this visit to Holland, and the reference to
taking a passport, _Memoirs_, v. 238.

[2] See Charles Henry, _Les Connaissances Mathematiques de Casanova_.
Rome 1883.

[3] See _Memoirs_, ix. 272, _et seq._

JOHN DONNE

I

Biography as a fine art can go no further than Walton's _Life and Death
of Dr. Donne_. From the 'good and virtuous parents' of the first line to
the 'small quantity of Christian dust' of the last, every word is the
touch of a cunning brush painting a picture. The picture lives, and with
so vivid and gracious a life that it imposes itself upon us as the
portrait of a real man, faithfully copied from the man as he lived. But
that is precisely the art of the painter. Walton's picture is so
beautiful because everything in it is sacrificed to beauty; because it
is a convention, a picture in which life is treated almost as theme for
music. And so there remains an opportunity, even after this masterpiece,
for a life of Donne which shall make no pretence to harmonise a
sometimes discordant existence, or indeed to produce, properly speaking,
a piece of art at all; but which shall be faithful