Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/845

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Minor Notices S3 5 A work which is intended primarily for Dante scholars, but which will be found very useful for every student of the thirteenth century in Italy is Arte, Scienza e Fede ai Giorni di Dante (Milan, Hoepli). It consists of eight lectures delivered last year by eminent specialists before the Dante Society of Milan. Thus Pasquale del Giudice deals with Italian feudalism, Nino Tamassia with the life of the people, and Luigi Rocca with the Papacy and the Church ; Paul Sabatier writes with fervor in French on St. Francis and the religious movement ; Professor Felice Tocco analyzes with extraordinary clearness the currents of philosophic thought ; iViichele Scherillo discusses Dante and the study of classic poetry ; Francesco Novati describes court life and poetry ; and Francesco Flamini treats of popular poets and poetry. Nor should the general intro- duction by Gaetano Negri, President of the Royal Lombard Institute, be overlooked. Each essay is followed by an appendix containing full notes and references which testify to the writers' scholarship. The literary excellence which characterizes most of the volume will surprise readers who have not kept pace with recent Italian progress in humane studies. The eight treatises on Latin versification which Giovanni Mari has edited in / Tnitfati Medievali di Rithmica Latina (Milan, Hoepli) are of interest chiefly to students of medieval metrics. It is true that these treatises, like the similar manuals of prose composition, introduce a large number of illustrative examples, but the poetical value of such illustra- tions is very slight and they tell us provokingly little concerning the life of their time. Even the Ars Rithmica of Jean de Garlande, who took an active part in the busy life of the University of Paris and wrote vol- uminously on all kinds of grammatical and rhetorical subjects, is, like the rest of his bad verse, singularly disappointing to the student of medi- eval culture. Of course all this is no fault of Signore Mari ; from a metrical point of view the texts deserved publication, and the edition gives evidence of the sound scholarship which we should expect from a pupil of so eminent a medievalist as Francesco Novati. There is abundant opportunity for work of this quality in the somewhat neglected field of medieval Latin literature. C. H. H. Lives of Great Italians, by Frank Horridge (London, T. Fisher Unwin ; Boston, L. C. Page and Co. ) , is a volume of biographical essays on Dante, Petrarch, Carmagnola, Machiavelli, Michel Angelo Buonar- roti, Galileo, Goldoni, Alfieri, Cavour and Victor Emanuel. The essays on Petrarch, Machiavelli and Michel Angelo fill nearly 300 of the 470 pages, but none of them has much value for the serious historical reader. Mr. Horridge seems painstaking, but he has neither the original point of view nor the incisive style required of a biographer who wishes to appeal to a popular audience. The Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, new series. Vol. XIV. (Longmans, pp. 372), opens with a presidential address by Dr.