A curiously light-hearted book. Of-course, with Rolfe, "light-hearted" is bound to have quite a rather different flavor, and so it does here. Within the first pages we are told that the original text appears to have been the diary of a priest who was stabbed in the top of the head; then follows an accidental death and a public execution. Even so, this book is power-packed with Rolfe's infectious love for the High Renaissance in Italy, and is illuminated with Rolfe's characteristic erudition and goofy vocabulary. There is no question that Rolfe loved this book more than most of his few completed works, and it is appropriate that he adorned it with a lovely and inventive cover-design which appears in this posthumous edition. ( )