Page:A History of Italian Literature - Garnett (1898).djvu/420

402 in his composition, and he recalls no precursor so much as the German poet Platen, an equal master of form; but Platen, though a real patriot, is more at home with any nation than his own. It is a chief glory of Carducci to have united an intensely patriotic spirit to a comprehensive cosmopolitanism. Though ranging far and wide to enrich the domestic literature with new metrical forms, he loves those in which the Italian genius has embodied itself from days of old, and is always ready to defend them against degenerate countrymen, no less than against unappreciative foreigners. Like Wordsworth, he has simultaneously vindicated and illustrated the sonnet:

Carducci's example could not but create a school of poets, many of great merit, but most of whom stand to him more or less in the relation of disciples to a master. The chief exception is the only one who can claim, like Timotheus, to "divide the crown,". D'Annunzio (born 1863) is a second Marini, endowed