From ‘The Magnanimity of Italy’, The Spectator, 18 July 1915:
The Italian always aspires not only to do great things, but to do them in the great way, whether it be to build a church, a hospital, or a railway station, paint a picture, or write an ode. Picturesqueness and the refinement of miniature work—these appeal to him very little. He wants the big brush, the big canvas. What Sir Thomas Browne so well called ” the wild enormities of ancient magnanimity” inspire no fears in his mind. The grandiose does not alarm him, but only the mean and the petty. This great-heartedness is shown very clearly not only in Italian manners, which have always been the most stately and full-sweeping in the world, but in the Italian titles and the Italian language. For example, the great officials of Venice were content with no less a title than “Magnifico,” and it is from the Italian lingua franca of the Levant that we get such titles as the Grand Seigneur and the Sublime Porte.
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