BEPPO THE CONSCRIPT.*
MR. AnoLenus TROLLOPE is, though slowly, visibly improving. The lexicographical part of his novels is melting away by degrees under the mild ray of a beneficent criticism. We have just counted three long Italian phrases at the end of the second volume of his new book before us which appear without one explanatory foot-note. A change so great could not be expected to have taken place all at once. Indulgences linger after con- version of the mind. Accordingly in the first volume there are traces still of the exegetical temptation. Thus we are told by the author that benedizione del cielo, an Italian idiom used by one of his characters, is "a popular phrase for a groat and unexpected benefit," and as this information is given to the reader in the middle of a meal, the author seems to fill the office of motherly chorus full of anxiety lest any of the good things of her offspring should pass unappreciated. Then, again, " Tuet' altro, lo posso dir io !" means "Very much otherwise, I can assure you.'' Well that is something to know. But on the next page the old exegetical Adam in Mr. Trollope fairly bursts all bounds, and he falls possessed in an explanatory fit. We admit that he came mentally in view of an idiomatic rhapsody enough to possess any ordinarily explanatory temperament. No ordinarily exegetical temperament could, in the novitiate of recent conversion, have stood firm before the thrilling tide of the following exclamations, " 'E un gran' vino, davvero I Cite colore! Cite squisito sapore E fior di roba l'" This exclamation, or rather these exclama- tions, are made by an attorney. We are indebted to Mr. Trollope for their meaning. They mean in English, "It's a grand wine, truly ! What a colour What exquisite flavour I It's a very choice article," literally, "flower of goods." Attorneys who can put such beautiful thoughts into such beautiful language, and that language Italian, are enviable men, and Mr. Thomas Adol- phus Trollope is an enviable man for knowing such men and being able to understand them, and still more enviable for being able to create them.
The truth is that Mr. Adolphus Trollope's novels are a very curious study to the literary anatomist. They are evidently written by a man of masculine sense and keen observation, with very considerable facility of language, who yet, by some fluke of
nature or circumstance, writes in the exact temper and style of a sweet ambitious gill of eighteen. His knowledge of Italian habits, Italian politics, or deeper still, of all the tiny counter-rills of temper, opinion, habit, and feeling in the lower depths of Italian life, which ultimately make up the main stream of Italian politics, his knowledge of all these is so genuine, and living, and masculine withal, that such a man ought to hold a responsible and influential position in our Italian Foreigu Office. That a spe'cialite' like this should go begging in the production of third-rate novels of the female gender is a positive loss to the country. Imagine an author with the observation of a statesman and man of the world, and capable not only of a comprehensive but a delicate view of national characteristics, writing as if he were cajoling young children round his knee into • Beppo the Conscript. A Novel. By T. Adolphus Trollope, Author of "La Beata," Ito. London; Chapman and Hall. listening to a fairy tale, and you have an exact description, we think, of the whole tone of Mr. Adolphus Trollope's novels. Every page labours to be " so nice," "so pretty," "so interest- ing," "so captivating," that a reader accustomed to the manliness and concentration of art even in buffoonery, would be only too apt to fling his books away without waiting to recognize their more substantial merits.
Of the introduction to Beppo we will only say that it gives an excellent and graphic account of the way in which the Romish clergy very naturally, we think, tampered with the conscription laws, and of the general effect upon Italy of the new *regime. If Mr. Trollope is bitterly opposed to the Roman priesthood in Italy, so are crowds of Italian Catholics. This account of them, though written by a Protestant, is fair enough. The story itself illustrates the agricultural life of the rich pea- sants or farmers inhabiting the innumerable and rich valleys of the mid-Apennines which, open upon the Adriatic. It is in fact a more dramatic expansion of the introduction. Beppo, or Beppo Venni, the son of Paolo Venni, a wealthy Italian farmer, is desperately in love with Giulia Vanni, the orphan and penni- less daughter of a distant cousin of the Vannis. Giulia, ac- cording to the old Italian custom, in default of nearer relatives has fallen to Paolo's care to be brought up with his own children. Beppo becomes a conscript under the new Italian regime. He is seduced by the parish priest Don Evandro Baluffi into becoming a defaulter. Giulia, who in his prosperity, when Beppo is the ostensible heir to the rich old Paolo's wealth, affects in the pride of her poverty to turn up her nose at him, reveals her hidden love for him when he is in trouble and flying from justice in peril of his life. Of course the story ends happily in the marriage of the lovers. These are the slender materials out of which Mr. Trollope has spun his tale. But they enable him to describe the curious and beautiful scenery of the mid-Apeunine region on the side of the Adriatic, to paint the Romagnole farmer in his ramshackle and antique but tolerably substantial wealth, in his dependence on the parish priest, his rela- tion towards the neighbouring provincial town and authorities, in his family relations, and a host of sidelong aspects very inter- esting to the friend of Italy.
There is the region itself. It lies between the howling tops of the higher Apennine range and the flat strip of rich alluvial soil on the sea-shore, on "the great massive flanks of the mountains, which are there broken by an innumerable multi- tude of small streams into a labyrinth of little valleys—a world of bosky greenery, of sunny meadows on the uplands, of rich fat pastures in the watered bottoms, of woodlands on the swelling hill-sides. . . . From many a snug homestead, deep- niched in the hollow of some dark-green valley, a peep of the restless Adriatic, tumbling itself into white-crested breakers flashing in the Southern sun, is seen across the sea-side plains, through the valley's mouth, like the section of a landscape through a telescope." Then there is the farm, half way up one of these niches, looking down at the see, of mag- nificent frontage, and enormous apparent waste of brick and mortar, unrepaired, untidy, ramshackle, naked. Yet the owner is rich. "Paulo Venni is of the race of well-to-do peasants, a very common race in the rich and fertile province of Romagna, spending his life between scraping and hoarding up hard cash with agricultural thrift for the benefit of his body, and having it squeezed out of him for the benefit of his soul by his guide, philosopher, and friend, Don Evandro, the parish curato, "in his triangular beaver, snuffy black waistcoat, long-tailed surtout coat, shiny black camlet _shorts, black worsted stockings, and thick, low-cut shoes, with big plated buckles on them." All the other characters, the heavy, honest, handsome Beppo, and his equally handsome, brighter, less honest brother Carlo, their hand- some mother Assunta, and their poor, orphan, proud, vixenish, loveable, beautiful, and noble cousin Giulia, are equally well- marked, distinct, and real. In short it is not too much to say that everything in the book is real except the book itself, in other words, the style. Mr. Adolphus Trollope thinks like Carlo, feels like Giulia, but writes like the Honourable Miss. Belgravia, who goes into hysterics over the froth of Italian life and yawns over its substance. Should he resent our criticism as impertinent, we can only say that we sincerely respect his talents, his knowledge, and even his power of language, but how the girlish conception of art in style ever got into such a mas- culine head is beyond our comprehension.
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