MEMOIRS OF CARLO GOLDONI ('Mernoires de Carlo Goldoni'). This work is celebrated among the many of this class in literature, and yet, in ageneral way, is compar atively little known. The
were written in French, when Goldoni was 80 years old, and first appeared in Paris in 1787 (3 vols.). An excellent edition, reproducing them entire and accurately, was published on the second centenary of the author's birth 1907, by the Florentine firm Barbera, edited with Italian notes by Guido Mazzoni. It was in 1760, a year before Goldoni was called to Paris, that he con ceived, as he states in the preface to the
gives an account of the composing, construc tion and outcome of his many plays, together with the criticism of them and rivalry excited by them. The third and final part of the
The 'Memoirs) of Goldoni have been called his most amusing comedy and pronounced by no less a literary light than Gibbon, amore truly dramatic than his Italian Comedies." They have been the subject of admiration of some of the most distinguished of litterateurs not only in Italy but in England, France and Ger many, is proven by such testimony as that of Byron, Voltaire and Goethe. But to appreciate and enjoy Goldoni's entertaining personal rem iniscences, no such extraordinary literary talent is necessary,— far from it, for the average reader can hardly fail to get enjoyment from them, especially if he be at all interested in 18th century life in Italy. As a faithful picture of the life of this period, especially the life of the humbler classes, the