THE DONKEY OF GOD By Louis Untermeyer An Italian tourist
agency held a competition for the best book about Italy written by a non-Italian. It is not difficult to see why Mr. Unterrneyer,,the American poet, was awarded a first prize for The Donkey of God (Gollahcz, 10s. 6d.); Like all the best publicity, it is a nice mixture of fact and fancy, and, with its catchy title to put him off the scent, calculated to overcome the sales-resistance of the toughest Italophobe. Italy appears as she does on railway and steamship posters : a land of sunlit landscapes, tinkling fountains, cool churches, and singing peasants. For obvious reasons, the book is con- cerned only with the better-known tourist centres, and these are described with an intensity of colour and emotion which the clever naivete of Mr. Untermeyer's prose makes all the more , intense. Very clever, too, is the artless manner in which he sandwiches anecdotes and local legends between the guide-book sections. These range from the tender and romantic to the mystical and macabre. Some of them are genuine legends, while others are admittedly fictitious, as if, the peasants being silent, the very stones had cried out their secret to the listening poet. If there is anybody, whether he has been there or not, who still thinks that Italy is a dull country, he should read this book. He will be forced to admit that the place and people who inspired it must, ipso facto, be worth a visit. The sixty, three woodcuts by Mr. James Macdonald are strangely amateurish, but suit the text admirably.
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