To prove that Giusti was
really a fine poet, I need give nothing more, for this alone would
imply poetic power; not perhaps of the high epic sort, but of the
kind that gives far more comfort to the heart of mankind, amusing and
consoling it. "Giusti composed satires, but no poems," says a French
critic; but I think most will not, after reading this piece, agree
with him. There are satires and satires, and some are fierce enough
and brutal enough; but when a satire can breathe so much tenderness,
such generous humanity, such pity for the means, at the same time
with such hatred of the source of wrong, and all with an air of such
smiling pathos, I say, if it is not poetry, it is something better,
and by all means let us have it instead of poetry. It is humor, in its
best sense; and, after religion, there is nothing in the world can
make men so conscious, thoughtful, and modest.
A certain pensiveness very perceptible in "St. Ambrose" is the
prevailing sentiment of another poem of Giusti's, which I like very
much, because it is more intelligible than his political satires, and
because it places the reader in immediate sympathy with a man who had
not only the subtlety to depict the faults of the time, but the sad
wisdom to know that he was no better himself merely for seeing them.
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