rather a reproach than an honour to his patriotic lyrics that their strong point should be not eloquence but description, which is always excellent.
The reputation of the good priest and good patriot, Giacomo Zanella (1820–89), has, on the contrary, gone on increasing, and with justice, for his verse is usually at the level of his thought, and his thought, if more frequently graceful than striking, sometimes attains a commanding elevation, as in his odes to Dante and on the opening of the Suez Canal. His Psyche and Egoism and Charity are clearly and exquisitely cut as Greek gems. Zanella's speciality, however, is his effort to ally science with poetry, and though he cannot always prevail upon them to shake hands, one of his lyrics of this character, The Vigil, a meditation upon Evolution from a theologian's point of view, is perhaps his masterpiece. Another very striking poem is the colloquy between Milton and Galileo, in which Galileo's dread of the sceptical tendency of the science to which he has imparted such an impulse is represented as determining Milton "to justify the ways of God to man." Zanella, a native of the Vicenzan district, was a gentle, tender, melancholy man, not unlike Cowper, and his reason, under the stress of domestic affliction, at one time seemed in danger of suffering the same eclipse. Recovering, he forsook the career of college professor for a cottage near Vicenza, where:
"Dopo sparsi al vento
Tanti sogni superbi e tanto foco
Di poesia dagl' anni inerti spento,
Voluntario romito in questo loco,
Trapochi arbori e fior vivo contento."
This retirement, nevertheless, produced some of
