"The Improvisatore," upon
which, next to "The Wonder-Tales," his fame rests, is a kind of
disguised autobiography which exhibits the author's morbid sensibility
and what I should call the unmasculine character of his mind,[19] To
appeal to the reader's pity in your hero's behalf is a daring
experiment, and it cannot, except in brief scenes, be successful. A
prolonged strain of compassion soon becomes wearisome, and not the
worthiest object in the world can keep one's charity interested through
four hundred pages. Antonio, in "The Improvisatore," is a milksop whom
the author, with a lavish expenditure of sympathy, parades as a hero. He
is positively ludicrous in his pitiful softness, vanity, and humility.
That the book nevertheless remains unfailingly popular, and is even yet
found in the satchel of every Roman tourist, is chiefly due to the
poetic intensity with which the author absorbed and portrayed every
Roman sight and sound. Italy throbs and glows in the pages of "The
Improvisatore"--the old vagabond Italy of pre-Garibaldian days, when
priests and bandits and pretty women divided the power of Church and
State.
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