THANKING, AND BEGGING, HER FOR MUSIC
Ariadne in Mantua, A Romance in Five Acts, by Vernon Lee. Oxford: B.H. Blackwell 50 and 51 Broad Street. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company. A.D. MCMIII. Octavo. Pp. x: 11-66.
Like almost everything else written by Vernon Lee there is to be found that insistent little touch which is her sign-manual when dealing with Italy or its makers of forgotten melodies. In other words, the music of her rhythmic prose is summed up in one poignant vocable—Forlorn.
As for her vanished world of dear dead women and their lovers who are dust, we may indeed for a brief hour enter that enchanted atmosphere. Then a vapour arises as out of long lost lagoons, and, be it Venice or Mantua, we come to feel "how deep an abyss separates us—and how many faint and nameless ghosts crowd round the few enduring things bequeathed to us by the past."
T.B.M.
PREFACE
"Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichniss"