"I have seen the ugly, and am enamoured of the beautiful." His tolerant scepticism, or a melancholy temperament, and not optimism, is, according to himself, the cause of his disinclination to search the soul of the wicked. Wickedness has no attraction for him, and he flees from it even in his books. Nor do the bad seem to him as artistic as the good, and still less so than the weak.
"I certainly avoid them," he owns, "and this because a person must live with me for months and months, so to speak, day and night, before I can take him for a type of a novel. ... I admit that in the balance of humanity wickedness may perhaps preponderate; but never mind, the good is there too, and is just as true as the bad, and artistically its equal. And there is something even better, and that is to seek the good in this bad; and that is my favourite occupation, to go in quest of a human soul."
We have quoted so largely from the writer's own words because, with the sure self-criticism of the true artist, he has better and more succinctly than we could, sketched the amiable personality of himself and his works. Equally just is his resumé of his books.
"I began my career" (1869), he says, "with a very mediocre novel, 'Due Amori,' followed by one that was not worth more, 'Un Segreto.' [Of these he has never permitted a reprint.] Then followed a romance, in which, according to my opinion, and also according to the opinion of the critics, there was a warm description of the human heart, 'Il Romanzo d'un Vedovo.' But my first true success was achieved by 'Il Tesoro di Donnina,' and this was followed by others, written with ever-increasing security of touch."
The fact was, that these earliest stories were written in Farina's first style – a style he happily soon abandoned. The artist had not yet found his own groove, and was attempting to walk in those traced by the French Bohemian school – grooves totally unsuited to his nature and mode of regarding life. Stories dealing with illicit love, with shipwrecked happiness owing to the fascinations of those sirens rarely found outside the covers of a book, ill suited his genius; and Farina well understood the limits of his capacities when he ceased depicting such wretched personages as Castelli the widower, and Signora Albruzzi the enchantress. The only character that has a true ring is that of Letitia, the injured wife, a noble, congenial figure.
In 'Tesoro di Donnina' (1873), Farina strikes his own keynote, and proves that the glad rather than the shady sides of human life are best suited to his pencil. Here we find the encomium of pure family life that distinguishes him, the high ethical standard that never defeats its purpose by assuming a didactic garb. The book earned for Farina the title of an Italian Dickens, one of those unfortunate designations that cling to a man, and are so apt to mislead. Not but what the name in itself is honourable; but it is a cheap form of criticism to call every humorist a Dickens, and in the case of these two men the nature of the humour is most diverse. It only has this common ground that in both cases it springs from a large warm heart that loves its fellow-men; but while Dickens dwells on the darker, sterner side of humanity, or falls into caricature when he deals with the simple-natured good, the Italian skims the surface more lightly and gracefully, and with his inborn native sense of beauty and form avoids contrasts that are too sharp, faults of taste that spring from those roistering animal spirits that are
