To Ferrari in particular he owes much, even in point of style—though his style is not without reflections of Foscolo, Guerrazzi, and Carducci as well. It has been pointed out that certain passages in the Political Struggle in Italy are derived from Ferrari’s History of the Revolutions of Italy; but the influence is limited to a single part of Oriani’s book, and in any case proves nothing against him, since he, assimilating the skill and the method of Ferrari, was merely going on to discuss epochs not treated by Ferrari, and proving thus that he had the right to take over the results of his predecessor, summarizing and illuminating them.
His Political Struggle in Italy—though it is ill proportioned, since the first third goes to the fall of the Napoleonic empire, while the remaining two-thirds treat of the nineteenth century—is the only modern general history of Italy that is more than a storehouse of facts or a manual of dates. It is Oriani’s masterpiece, though finer single pages may be found in other volumes, for instance in the collections of miscellaneous essays entitled To Dogali, Sunset Shadows, and Bivouac Fires.
III
Like all those men of genius whose curiosity is equal to their energy, Oriani was polygonal:
