senso?' There is one thing inevitable for him who drinks too long and too deep from the cup of experience. If weariness and disillusion may inspire, they must also weaken the art of the poet who has thus drunken and not known when to throw the cup aside.

'Sono spogliati tutti i miei rosai.

Non più ghirlande! E la mia coppa è vuota.
Bevvi, bevvi e ribevvi. Al fine ignota

Non me nessuna ebrezza.

It is the salutary part of this poetry of weariness, so characteristic, not only of D'Annunzio, but of all he stands for in that decadent phase of thought and literature and life of which, on one side at least, he is the foremost exemplar, that, when revulsion is at hand, the reader is almost always won back by some beautiful vision of the world we know and love, or by some deep and sincere cry from the poet's heart-' Allor che su 'l vento maestrale mi balzava la strofe. . . squillando annanzi, O mare, O mare, O mare!'†

In his so-called decadent verse, too, there is much of great beauty, some of it at least being no more 'decadent' than is that poetic melancholy which is the habit of mind of all the poets of love, from Catullus or Omar Khayyám to Leconte de Lisle and Carducci. Read, for instance, 'The Triumph of Iseult' (itself a metrical triumph in the difficult manner of Lorenzo di Medici), recalling as it does Villon and Swinburne and William Morris, and yet so unmistakably the poet's own, with its monotonously sweet refrain, 'for everything save love is vain':—

Torna in fior di giovinezza

Isaotta Blanzesmano,

Dice: Tutto al mondo è vano.

Nè l' amore ogni dolcezza!' ‡

That, too, is the poet's own-the stanza of Death, as a

*Despoiled are all my rose-beds: no garlands now! And my cup is empty. I have drunk of it, I have drunk of it, again and again. And, at last, no intoxication is left to me to know...

Then on the tempestuous wind my song turns, crying, with great longing, O sea, O sea, O sea!'

Cometh again, in her flower of youth, Iseult of the White Hands. She says: "All the world is vain; in love only doth all sweetness live.”’

beautiful woman, closing the procession, however much the Guinevere and other stanzas suggest comparison with familiar lines of the poets named above:

'Chiude il gran corteo la Morte;

Non la dea de' cemeteri,

Ma una fresca donna e forte
Cui valletti lusinghieri
Sono i Sogni ed i Piaceri
Da 'l gentil volto pagano.
Dice: Tutto al mondo è vano,
Ne l'amore ogni dolcezza!' *

Perhaps one reason why D'Annunzio appeals more strongly than Carducci to the Italians of the North, to the French of the North, to the Germans and ourselves, is that he has more of the love of the mysterious. In one of his most beautiful short poems, the Vas Mysteri,' in the Poema Paradisiaco' volume of 1893, he makes indeed a direct invocation to that veiled Muse: 'Apriti al fine, O tu che l'urna sei del Mistero!' And, again, because he is a prophet of the joy to come'... that 'far-off day of the travailing generations'—

'Cantate, O venti! Ne l' ignoto mare

E l'Isola promessa:

La come in sommo d' un immenso altare
È la gioia promessa.

Gabriele D'Annunzio is now before his countrymen as a 'national' poet. We do not think that his essentially lyrical and emotional genius is well fitted for a sustained flight; but of this perhaps no foreigner can properly judge. Meanwhile the lyrical epic of Garibaldi is in part given to the world. In judging this lyrical epic, or 'epical series

At the end of the noble cortège, Death; not the sombre Lady of Graves, but a woman fresh and strong, whose flattering train-bearers are Dreams and Delights, each of a noble pagan beauty. And she too says: "All the world is vain: in love only doth all sweetness live."'

The 'Canzone di Garibaldi,' published in 1901, is not, as many imagine, a complete work. The present instalment is a poem of twenty-two sections, amounting in all to 1004 lines. The actual title of this section is 'The Night of Caprera,' and it is the third in a series of seven. In time we are to have the other 'books' or sections: (1) 'The Birth of the Hero'; (2) "The Ocean and the Pampas,'; (4) 'From Rome to the Pontine Marshes'; (5) 'Aspromonte and Mentana'; (6) 'The Crown of Peace'; (7) The Hero's End,'

of lyrical chants,' one must bear in mind the author's own comment that the poems should be recited aloud rather than silently read, 'per vivere della sua piena vita musicale, ella ha bisogno di passare nella bocca sonante del dicitore.' But it must be admitted that, with many fine lines, and frequent subtle and enchanting effects as in

'Ei si ricorda nell'alba di Novembre:

Quando salpò da Quarto era la sera,

Sera di Maggio conridere di stelle,'

there is also much mere rhetoric and at times a bathos sinking to the level of distinctly commonplace prose.

Here, as in matters of deeper import, it is to be wished that D'Annunzio had more of the intellectual pride and artistic control of his greater compatriot, Giosuè Carducci ; the more so as his influence is becoming steadily more potent in Italy, despite obstacles of all kinds, and notwithstanding the animadversions, both wise and unwise, of perhaps the majority of the critics and of the readingpublic. Carducci's high place is now beyond cavil. He for his part has ever thought of his to-morrow. Gabriele D'Annunzio has owed so much to French writers that it is to be wished he could more consistently have borne in mind, that he may henceforth bear in mind, the memorable words of Sainte-Beuve, C'est à ce lendemain sévère que tout artiste sérieux doit songer.' And what better watchword could he, too, have than that of his master, the veteran Carducci, already adopted by Young Italy, fervent and hopeful: 'O pochi e forti, all' opera!' 'To the good work, then, O ye few and strong!'

Art. XIII.-EFFICIENCY IN THE SERVICES.

1. The Great Alternative: a Plea for a National Policy. By Spenser Wilkinson. New edition. Westminster : Constable, 1902.

2. The Brain of an Army: a Popular Account of the German General Staff. By Spenser Wilkinson. New edition. Westminster: Constable, 1895.

3. The Brain of the Navy. By Spenser Wilkinson. Westminster: Constable, 1895.

4. The Nation's Awakening.

Westminster: Constable, 1896.

By Spenser Wilkinson.

5. The Times' History of the War in South Africa. Vol. II. Edited by L. A. Amery. London: Sampson Low, 1902.

6. The Army from Within.

6

By the Author of An Absent-minded War' [Captain Cairnes.] London: Sands, 1901.

7. Committee on Military Education: Minutes of Evidence and Report. (Cd. 982-3.) London: Eyre and Spottis woode, 1902.

8. Naval Efficiency: the War-readiness of the Fleet. By A. S. Hurd. London: Chapman and Hall, 1902.

·

9. The Encyclopædia Britannica (new volumes). Vol. 25. Article Armies.' London: Black, and the Times,' 1902.

THE publication of a new edition of Mr Wilkinson's work, 'The Great Alternative,' comes at an opportune moment, when, with the sound of the rejoicings over the conclusion of an honourable peace already fading away into the past, men are everywhere asking whether or not England and the Empire are to profit by the experience of the thirty months of conflict now so fortunately ended. It is Mr Wilkinson's merit that he has proved himself one of the clearest thinkers upon vital questions of national policy, whether in the field of foreign affairs or in that of the management of the army and navy. In a series of notable works he has pointed out the defects in the present system; and any man conversant with his teaching could have foretold the misfortunes which, at the outset, befell our army in South Africa. He speaks, then, as one whose inductions have throughout been confirmed

by experience. But he is not merely a destructive critic; besides indicating the faults, he has suggested the remedies; and for that reason his views are worth careful examination.

The essential idea or purpose of his works is that of the application of organised knowledge to the problems of our national life. In his earlier writings he attempted to ascertain how and why it is that, in a world armed to the teeth, and in an age of universal compulsory service, England has rested content with a diminutive army recruited in extremely haphazard fashion and indifferently organised. The search for the answer to this question led him, as an officer in the volunteers, to undertake a long course of professional study, the first-fruits of which were a series of military monographs, published from ten to fifteen years ago by the Manchester Tactical Society The excellence of these works has been so generally recognised by eminent soldiers in the army that we need not dwell further upon them or commend them further to the reader's attention. One in particular, an English version of the Order of Field-service for the German Army,' has been adopted by the War Office and officially declared to be a model translation of a professional military work.

In the purely professional and technical study of land warfare, the writer, as his subsequent works show, kept steadily in view the larger strategical and political aspects of the question. In 'The Nation's Awakening' and 'The Great Alternative,' for instance, he enunciated what was, at the time when these works were written, a new doctrine-that of the oneness of the sea from the strategical and political standpoints. In his examination of military institutions throughout the world, Mr Wilkinson necessarily devoted great attention to Germany; and from his investigation of the German system-pursued, not only by the study of German military literature, but also by personal research in Berlin, and by making acquaintance with many of the chief German leaders in the wars of 1866 and 1870-he came to see that the principal factor in the military greatness of Germany was her understanding of the importance of knowledge and the choice of leaders possessing it. The great General Staff at Berlin, which was the instrument both for the diffusion of knowledge