a fortress with spurs and loopholes in every direction. Unlike those narrow spirits who are proud of their fixed itinerary, he did not confine himself to a single path. He was poet and critic, narrator and philosopher, historian and essayist. His activity was as diversified as his mind was concentrated. His fecundity in thought was as great as his facility with the pen. He was as prodigal with the riches of his spirit as only the rich, and the generous rich, can be. In works of widely different purpose and content he maintained himself always upon the same level. Always and everywhere he was true to himself.
There are few men, I think, who can compare with him as essayists. (Does any one still remember that flaccid little Milanese Renan called Gaetano Negri?) His hundred pages on Machiavelli—in To Dogali—are hundreds of times truer, deeper, and more instructive than all the volumes of Villari and Tommaseo. Here again, to be sure, the inspiration comes from Ferrari; but it is Oriani whom we have to thank for pointing out the convergence of Machiavelli’s glory and greatness in art, in the creation of prose—a truth not even glimpsed by the very man who ought ex officio to have discovered it: De Sanctis.
His newspaper articles—in the last years of his life he had to devote much of his time to newspaper work—were very notable indeed. They
