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Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20494, 12 March 1932, Page 13

"Tlje exact circumstances attending the tragic and heroic death of the young Italian poet, Lauro do Bosis,'' ■whites ' Mr Arthur Livingston, in the New York "Herald Tribune," "will probably'' never be known." He continues: . Taking off from Marseilles .on tlie ' afternoon of October 17th, he arrived over Borne just after sundown, dropped aQtiFascist leaflets along the Ooißo' ana over the principal square#, and then headed out to 8W» PasaiCf: over 0«ti» ihojM* sft«t & oVlock. ' No trace of him has since been found. The theory, that he Was shot dqwn by fascist pursuit aeroplanes and, that the nsw» was " - suppressed Is; hardly worthy of consideration. s ■Equally fantastic th* nqtign, still held by many persgnp, that he really escaped und- ifsomewhere in Riding, Why should he hidef More ' probable the opinion of ~ avjptors, which \s also that Qf % prominent American ace, that thet of -De soais ik to be attributed to some accident connected ' with his inexperience in flying ovef water at night. The) tragedy, a.t any rate,-as » fact, and the waters pf- thei Tyrrhenum, already pregnant with so "much literary history, have closed over another Shelley. The pontic relics of Be Bojis are not numerous-^-scattered" poemg still to be collected from among his friends, verse' translations from the {Jreek—Tj[ls version of. the ' 'Oepidua Bex'* was produced 1999 in the ' Coliseum in Borne; prose translations from English: the ''Golden Bough" of Fraser, the "Helen of Troy u . of John Erskine. the "Bridge of &an Luis Bey'.' of • Thornton Wilder; ,an anthology of Italian poetry translated into English, which is soon to appear ia Hew York (Oxford Press); Anally, his. most extensive work, % verse dram*, in Greek style, "Icarus," which dealt with the death of a brother, also in an aviation accident, aqd Which reads,..in a hundred ways, and more particularly in its note of heroic sacrifice, like a prophecy of his own death. ... Lanro was the son of a celebrated father, Adolfo de Bosis, who wrote the - : best Italian translations of Shelley, and was a leader iii the Italian literary renascence of the 'nineties: He promoted and edited the VOonvito," (a- series of volumes by verse and prose _ writers which struck the keynote of the Sommarugia'D'Annunzian decade in the Borne o{ the '9o'») and wa? in general . the individual who, working behind - the scenes, and holding most of the leading strings, became the representative spirit of the D'Aununzian era in Italian cultivated s society. And, .in troth, among the many things that have been lost in the premature passing of Jjaurc de 3Bos{* ate ; his own poetic memories of his father and of hi* father's environment-r-a vision- such as only he could hive given, as the preserver of his father's confidences, of the decade that was glorious just before he was born. The German lyric poet B6rrle3, Freiherr von Munchausen, has recently ■ written for the "Deutsche Allgemeine 55eitmig''- one of the most oloqnent tributes ever composed to the .value of the printed, book: When we remember the happiness which books like Dickens's "David Oopperfield'' and Adalbert Stifter'* "Nachson3mcr ,, hBT « . given this unhappy world . . one is inclined to believe that good books at# much more important than all political and facial and industrial measures. . Books are. the. truest companions, books are bettef" friends than men, for they speak only when we wish them to, and are silent when we have • gome other occupation than listening to them. They always Rive, and never a«k anything m .return . . . The' world's wisdom would- be lost if book* were lost, and all the hoanty iii the world lives its, higher and mora spiritual life on their quiet pages. Mr Gerald Hopkins B&ya of A. P. Herbert, that no one woul<| dream of doubting that he, of all men, where a joke begins, but th#w are those who sometimes find tljentwlves wondering whether he knows with quite the same degree of certainty" where it ends. It would Ije the greatest pity in the world if Mr Herbert should take his cap and bells too seriously and turn the tooth permanently into the pulpit,