SOURCE: “Giosue Carducci: A Character Sketch.” Westminster Review 164, no. 1 (July 1905): 53-65.

In the following essay, the unsigned critic proposes that Carducci exemplified many of the ideals contained in his poetry, and examines Carducci's influence during his lifetime.

Italian modern literature has no greater representative than Giosue Carducci, a true-born poet of lofty ideals, to which he gave such a sublime form as to make him classic in his own times. Occasionally he was very much discussed, not for his literary merits—which were universally admitted as being unsurpassable—but owing to a fanciful interpretation given to his political writings, now by one political party, then by another. But of this we shall have something more to say in the second part of this article, as we desire to give first of all an outline of Carducci's life and character.

Giosue Carducci is now seventy years old, having been...