monplace as to deserve only a word and a glance. And the principle that you must know a man in order to understand his work has special force when that work is not the labored product of a brain, but a free expression of nature incarnate in a complete personality.
Armando Spadini, like all who work by inspiration and by instinct rather than by deliberate will, is still a child, despite his five and thirty years; a child spoiled by life, by suffering, by men; a restless child, a melancholy child, but a child with all that is good and all that is ill in the madness and the divinity of childhood. He does not advance by plans and calculations, as do serious men, convinced seekers, self-made men. He moves by leaps, by improvisations, by dashes and flashes. Something suddenly stirs him, draws him, takes possession of him. He is like a child with a new toy, like a moth drawn to the flame. Nothing then can hold him back, and no one can control him. He goes into a sort of furious trance or epileptic seizure, and therein he remains until, conquered or conquering, he returns to the everyday sadness of all those who feel that their achievement is still far short of the ideal.
Spadini is a primitive being, a creature of passion, of impulse and excess, never within the balance of a manhood that has adapted itself to law. Within the course of a few days, of a few
