Page:The Saint (1906, 5th ed.).djvu/11

Rh productivity, for he has worked in many fields, but it includes the books by which, gradually at first, and with triumphant strides of late, he has come into great fame in Italy, and has risen into the small group of living authors who write for a cosmopolitan public.

For many years past Signor Fogazzaro has dwelt in his native Vicenza, the most honoured of her citizens, round whom has grown up a band of eager disciples who look to him for guidance, not merely in matters intellectual or aesthetic, but in the conduct of life. He has conceived of the career of a man of letters as a great opportunity, not as a mere trade. Nothing could show better his high seriousness, than his waiting until the age of thirty-nine before publishing his first novel, unless it be the restraint which led him, after having embarked on the career of novelist, to devote four or five years on the average to his studies in fiction. So his books are ripe, the fruits of a deliberate and rich nature, and not the windfalls of a mere literary trick. And now, at a little more than three score years, the publication of The Saint confirms all his previous work and entitles him to rank among the few literary masters of the time.

Many elements in The Saint testify to its importance, but these would not make it a work of art. And, after all, it is as a work of art that it first appeals to readers, who may care little for its religious purport. It is a great novel—so great, that, after living with its characters, we cease to regard it as a novel at all. It keeps our suspense on the stretch from beginning to end. Will the Saint triumph. Will love victoriously claim its own? We hurry on, at the first reading, for the