1911 Reviews

Croce, Benedetto, Saggi sulla letteratura italiana del Seicento

Livingston, Arthur

This volume comprises a series of eight studies, of which the first seven appeared between 1890 and 1900, now reissued in enlarged and corrected form. The eighth is entitled: Sensualismo e ingegniosità nella lirica del Seicento, and is intended to serve as an introduction to Croce's anthology of Lirici marinisti (Bari, Laterza, 1910), one of the first volumes in the gigantic series of I scrittori d'Italia, now in process of publication. This essay, of the whole number, (pp. 377-433) is the most broadly theoretical in its scope; it is also the most essentially new. To it therefore we will confine our few observations. With Croce's methods and views in this essay we are wholly in sympathy. His investigations proceed on the apparent assumption that before we explain the Seicento we must know what the characteristics of the Seicento really are.