stage, left void by the once brilliant but now moribund school of Rossini, save that in that instance the evening star of the old dispensation was also the morning star of the new. No such Janus-Verdi arose upon poetry, but the man for the occasion was found in the principal figure of our next chapter, Giosuè Carducci.
The drama of the period has only one eminent representative, Pietro Cossa (1830–80), and his works, strictly speaking, fall somewhat later. Cossa, though fine both in versification and rhetoric, is essentially more of a playwright than of a poet, but half redeems his deficiencies by a quality not too common on the tragic stage of our day, masculine strength. Almost every scene is powerful, the action rarely halts or lingers, there is never any room for doubt as to the author's intention, and the language is energetic without bombast. Cossa's shortcomings are mainly in the higher region of art. He has little creative power, and although he is occasionally felicitous in the invention of a minor character, he rarely ventures to travel beyond the record in the delineation of the historical personages who form the most important portion of his dramatic flock. There is no penetration, no subtlety, nothing to manifest endowment with any insight beyond the ordinary. As conventional representations, however, Cossa's characters are brilliant, and he may even be accused of excess in the accumulation of historical traits, as though he could not bear to part with an anecdote. Nero, Messalina, Cola di Rienzo, The Borgias, Cleopatra, Julian the Apostate are among the most remarkable of his numerous historical tragedies; if not great plays or dramatic poems, they are, at all events, very splendid historical masquerades. There is more originality in
