friends to whom he dedicated them were convalescent. In love, as in art, he was a pagan, asking nothing more than physical beauty, his passion dying as soon as the novelty faded. Hölderlin's Hyperion' is in some ways more closely akin to 'Ortis' than to 'Werther,' since it, too, contains a tragedy of patriotism as well as of love; in his passionate devotion to all things Greek Hölderlin rivalled Foscolo, but his Hymn to Beauty shows that high moral qualities are essential in his conception.

Strong though the romantic elements were in him, Foscolo in his poetry is essentially a classic, a champion of the neo-classical revival. Winckelmann was the high priest, and Rome the centre of the movement. His neo-classicism, his ideal world of ancient Greece with the plastic serenity of its mythology, is, of course, a poetical Arcadia of his own, differing as much from the reality as do those of Hölderlin or Goethe; but it seems to us a truer classicism than that of the other leaders of the school in Italy at this time. Monti's classicism is on the surface, while that of Leopardi, whose scholarship was more profound even than Foscolo's, lies chiefly in the form. He bewails the passing of the old paganism, symbolising his own health and happiness, just as he prefers to embody his despair in Sappho or Brutus; but he cannot breathe new life into the mythology, because for him there can be no happiness in the present. Deep down in Foscolo's heart the serene classical harmony of the Greeks, of Homer or Praxiteles, found an answering echo, reinforced by his Greek blood, or at least by his consciousness of it, and the glamour that surrounded his childhood in Zante. It is this that gives his poems their atmosphere. There exists in the world an underlying harmony, which man too craves to find as indispensable to revive him after fatigue and suffering,' he says. And the more successful he is in discovering such a harmony, the more conscious he becomes of it and delights in it, so much the more are his passions fired to elevate and purify themselves.' It would be difficult to give a better description of the relation between Foscolo's life and his art or a clearer explanation of why it was that Greek art appealed to him above all others; for in his life he never attained this harmony, still less the Olympic calm

of Goethe. This also is why his art is plastic, not pictorial. Form meant more to him than colour.

Yet Foscolo seems to have known and cared little for works of art. He has not a word to say of the pictures or statues of Florence. Perhaps this very limitation accounts for his success. There is no archæology or scholarship in his poems. All that remains of his immense reading, which comes out in his notes, are the visions it helped to feed. His learning, like his passion, has been absorbed in them. They are his own, as is the plastic form they took in his mind. He needed no models. This is why he can not only make the world of his day plastic, but also breathe life into it.

Foscolo finds his counterpart in Canova, the sculptor of the neo-classical revival, to whom he dedicates 'Le Grazie,' since he was then at work on a group of the Graces. Canova's art was, of course, but another reincarnation of the old mythology, which appealed to him as strongly as to Foscolo, through his own temperament. But it lacks the serenity of Foscolo's vision. This is unclouded by Canova's melancholy, nor does it bear any trace of his veiled sensuality, of the conscious nudity, as in the Venus emerging from her Bath, which had just been placed in the Pitti and to which Foscolo here refers. 'Dei Sepolcri' is Foscolo's most nearly perfect long poem. The idea of death, which to him meant annihilation, haunted him continually. 'He refuses to believe in any religion, yet shows his intense desire for faith in a vague, indefinite religiousness which hovers over the tombs without having the strength to rise to God.'

'All'ombra de' cipressi e dentro l'urne
Confortate di pianto è forse il sonno
Della morte men duro?'

Here we have the cold truth for Foscolo, but, as he has shown in 'Ortis,' we must turn our backs upon it if we are to have poetry or even happiness. There is no need to kill the illusion before its time. Fame he wants and a grave not unhonoured, and throughout the rest of this splendid poem we move among the illusions. Foscolo is in a state of poetic exaltation which enables him to soar far above the logic of his beliefs. Here he

finds the inspiring faith he needs. Sdegno il verso che suona e che non crea,' he says. The charge of emptiness is the last that can be brought against this work; but it also possesses the music of all great poetry. In the most famous passage, the key of the whole poem, he describes the effect produced upon him by the sight of the tombs of the mighty dead in S. Croce at Florence, among whom he now rests:

'A egregie cose il forte animo accendono
L'urne de' forti, o Pindemonte; e bella
E santa fanno al peregrin la terra

Che le ricetta.'

Here again it is in the visions, in the descriptive passages, that Foscolo is at his best, in pictures such as that of the ghosts fighting at Marathon or the prophecy of Cassandra at the end. But these visions do not stand alone. Behind them we are conscious of the poet's unsatisfied melancholy transforming them into a whole that is the bone of his bone. It is in its illogicality, in its truth to Foscolo himself with all his contradictions, that the greatness of the poem lies. In the beautiful sonnet Alla Sera' we have the quiet, resigned acceptance that Foscolo was to know only for a moment on rare occasions:

Forse perchè della fatal quiete

Tu sei l'imago, a me si cara vieni

O sera!...

E mentre io guardo la tua pace, dorme

Quello spirito guerrier ch'entro mi rugge.'

In its sense of peace, its haunting melancholy, the sonnet almost suggests Leopardi. But in 'Dei Sepolcri' we are never far from the Ortis who sought to lose himself in the lovely world of Greek mythology, in Homer and his memories of Zacynthus as an escape from the world of reality which for him could hold out no hope.

L. COLLISON-MORLEY.

Art. 13.-THE LABOUR PARTY.

THE essential and characteristic feature of democracy is its organic quality. Democracy must be born not made; for it rests absolutely upon an organic, not a mechanical, conception of politics. A living organism has mind, will, life of its own; a machine, until made active by some impulse external to and independent of itself, is a mere inert and meaningless mass of matter. It is because democracy has the capacity of exhibiting the features of a living organism-the tissue and substance of which are the characters and personalities, the aims, the outlook, the ideals, the hopes, and the wishes of the individual men and women who compose it-that it can claim to be the highest form of human government. But if this claim is to be made good, it is indispensable that democracy should be true to the principle of its being, and that the organic element should predominate over the mechanical. When it is otherwise, when the mechanical element is uppermost, what appears to be democracy is really a changeling and -since the corruption of the best is the worst-the most worthless, if not the most dangerous form of human government. And further, that organic quality requires for its preservation the collision and contact of opposite forces. The collision and contact of party is as essential for the political organism as the collision and contact of sex is for the physical.

The machine-made party is thus the most dangerous of all the enemies of democracy. What should be living is dead; what should be spontaneous is induced; what should be real is sham. A foreign body is introduced into the political organism. Unless it be expelled or absorbed, the organism dies. To-day, the world is full of machine-made democracies crumbling before our eyes. The suspicion of the party machines,' so frequently expressed in this country by men of educated minds, is clear enough indication of their instinctive appreciation of the organic conception of politics, and it is the modern elaboration of the party machine which is perhaps more than any other single cause responsible for the complete withdrawal of many of the higher and

more fastidious types of personality in the Britain of today from any active engrossment in political life. Certain it is that the more the mechanical element in party vanquishes the organic, the lower sinks the reputation of the politician, the more sordid and degraded does the political life of a nation become. And, conversely, how invigorating and regenerating is the effect on political life of the personality which possesses the special genius for developing the organic rather than the mechanical, which can bring life into the dry bones, whether it be Grattan in 18th-century Ireland, Lincoln in the United States, or here and to-day, the Prime Minister!

that

If these general propositions be sound, it is worth while to examine the Labour Party in their light; since it seems at least probable that for the years immediately ahead, the Labour Party must share with the Conservative the conduct of the political life of England. Is it fit for that task? Is it founded upon an organic conception of politics? Will its effect be to lead democracy to a more vigorous and real life, more wholesome, more healthy? Will it develop the better and not the worse qualities of its own leaders? These questions reach, in importance, far beyond and below any connected with the programme or the policy of the Labour Party.

Now, if a party is to be a living organism it must in the first place possess a real unity of structure. The individual citizens must be the foundation, for they alone can supply vitality and reality. Thus in evil days or fine, the Conservative and the Liberal parties have alike been composed of actual men and women, combining together for no other reason than that they had common principles, common aspirations, common views on the government of the country and the affairs of the community. Their system of organising has become more elaborate, more complex, more laborious, under the changed conditions of modern life, but be it simple or elaborate, both the Conservative and the Liberal parties have been composed of actual citizens, combined for a single purpose. Whether in city ward or country polling district, in constituency association, in national federation, on the benches of the House of Commons or in the Cabinet, these political principles, held in common, are the link which unites them. At whatever point it