Chapter 106

THE BETROTHED LOVERS (I Promessi Sposi). By ALESSANDRO MANZONI. With a Biographical Introduction by the Editor, and Portrait of the Author.

Of this great work GOETHE wrote:--"Manzoni's romance transcends all that we have knowledge of in this kind. I need only say that the internal part, all that comes from the core of the poet, is thoroughly perfect, and that the external part, all the notes of localities and so forth, is not a whit behind its great inner qualities. . . . The work gives us the pleasure of an absolutely ripe fruit."