Donatello must rank with a class of poetic creations which has
nearly become extinct among modern writers: he belongs to the world of
Caliban, Puck, and Ariel. But besides this unique creation, the book
reveals regions of thought wide, ruin-scarred, and verdurously fair as
the Campagna itself, winning the mind back through history to the
primitive purity of man and of Christianity. I recoil from any attempt
at adequate analysis of this marvellous production, for it is one of
those works of art which are also works of nature, and will present to
each thoughtful reader a new set of meanings, according to his
individuality, insight, or experience. The most obvious part of the
theme is that which is represented in the title, the study of the Faun's
nature; and this embraces the whole question of sin and crime, their
origin and distinction. But it is not the case, as has been assumed,
that in this study the author takes the position of advocate to a theory
that sin was requisite to the development of soul in man. For, though he
shows that remorse developed in Donatello "a more definite and nobler
individuality," he also reminds us that "sometimes the instruction comes
without the sorrow, and oftener the sorrow teaches no lesson that abides
with us"; and he illustrates this in the exquisite height of
spirituality to which Hilda has attained through sinlessness. He is not,
I say, the advocate of a theory: this charge has been made by
self-confident critics, who saw only the one idea,--that of a
Beneficence which has so handled sin, that, instead of destroying man,
"it has really become an instrument most effective in the education of
intellect and soul.
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