standard of the republic, which is the origin of the word Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as.must of their subjection. They retired from the space which they had occupied in the eyes of their fellow-citizens; their continuance in which would have been a symptom of acquiescence, and an insult to those who suffered by the common misfortune. Those who remained in the Note 11. Stanza xvi. The population of Venice at the end of the seventeenth degraded capital might be said rather to haunt the century amounted to nearly two hundred thousand scenes of their departed power, than to live in them. souls. At the last census, taken two years ago, it was The reflection, "who and what enthrals," will hardly no more than about one hundred and three thousand, bear a comment from one who is, nationally, the friend and it diminishes daily. The commerce and the official and the ally of the conqueror. It may, however, be employments, which were to be the unexhausted source allowed to say thus much, that, to those who wish to of Venetian grandeur, have both expired. Most of the recover their independence, any masters must be an patrician mansions are deserted, and would gradually object of detestation; and it may be safely foretold that disappear, had not the government, alarmed by the de- this unprofitable aversion will not have been corrected molition of seventy-two, during the last two years, ex-before Venice shall have sunk into the slime of her pressly forbidden this sad resource of poverty. Many choked canals. remnants of the Venetian nobility are now scattered and confounded with the wealthier Jews upon the banks of the Brenta, whose palladian palaces have sunk, or are sinking, in the general decay. Of the "gentil uomo Veneto," the name is still known, and that is all. He is but the shadow of his former self, but he is polite and kind. It surely may be pardoned to him if he is querulous. Whatever may have been the vices of the re-seer, or Armenian; the Merchant of Venice; Othello. public, and although the natural term of its existence may be thought by foreigners to have arrived in the due course of mortality, only one sentiment can be expected from the Venetians themselves. At no time were the subjects of the republic so unanimous in their resolution liar to the Alps, which only thrives in very rocky parts, to rally round the standard of St. Mark, as when it was where scarcely soil sufficient for its nourishment can be for the last time unfurled; and the cowardice and the found. On these spots it grows to a greater height than treachery of the few patricians who recommended the any other mountain tree, fatal neutrality, were confined to the persons of the traitors themselves. And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakspeare's art. Venice Preserved; Mysteries of Udolpho; the Ghost Note 13. Stanza xx. But from their nature will the tannen grow Tannen is the plural of tanne, a species of fir Note 14. Stanza xxviii. A single star is at her side, and reigns the Brenta near La Mira. Note 15. Stanza xxx. 3 pecu The present race cannot be thought to regret the loss of their aristocratical forms, and too despotic gov-gerated to those who have never seen an oriental or an The above description may seem fantastical or exagernment; they think only on their vanished indepen- Italian sky; yet it is but a literal and hardly sufficient dence. They pine away at the remembrance, and on delineation of an August evening (the eighteenth), as this subject suspend for a moment their gay good-hu- contemplated in one of many rides along the banks of mour. Venice may be said, in the words of the scripture, "to die daily;" and so general and so apparent is the decline, as to become painful to a stranger, not reconciled to the sight of a whole nation expiring, as it Watering the tree which bears his lady's name With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame. were, before his eyes. So artificial a creation, having Thanks to the critical acumen of a Scotchman, we lost that principle which called it into life and sup-now know as little of Laura as ever.' The discoveries ported its existence, must fall to picces at once, and of the Abbé de Sade, his triumphs, his sneers, can no sink more rapidly than it rose. The abhorrence of longer instruct or amuse.2 We must not, however, slavery, which drove the Venetians to the sea, has, think that these memoirs are as much a romance as since their disaster, forced them to the land, where Belisarius or the Incas, although we are told so by Dr. they may be at least overlooked amongst the crowd Beattie, a great name, but a little authority. His "laof dependants, and not present the humiliating specta-bour" has not been in vain, notwithstanding his "love" cle of a whole nation loaded with recent chains. Their has, like most other passions, made him ridiculous.4 liveliness, their affability, and that happy indifference The hypothesis which overpowered the struggling Itawhich constitution alone can give, for philosophy aspires to it in vain, have not sunk under circumstances; but many peculiarities of costume and manner have by acter of Petrarch; and a Dissertation on a Historical Hy'degrees been lost, and the nobles, with a pride com-year 1784; the other is inserted in the fourth volume of the pothesis of the Abbé de Sade: the first appeared about the mon to all Italians who have been masters, have not Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; and both been persuaded to parade their insignificance. That have been incorporated into a work, published under the first splendour which was a proof and a portion of their title, by Ballantyne in 1810. power, they would not degrade into the trappings 1" Nonnullorum e nobilitate immensæ sunt opes, adeo ut vix æstimari possint: id quod tribus e rebus oritur, parsimonia, commercio, atque iis emolumentis, quæ e Repub. percipiunt, que hanc ob causam diuturna fore creditur."-See De Principatibus Italia Tractatus, edit. 1631. 1 See A historical and critical Essay on the Life and Char 2 Mémoirs pour la Vie de Pétrarque. 3 Life of Beattie, by Sir. W. Forbes, t. ii. p. 106. 4 Mr. Gibbon called his Memoirs "a labour of love," (se0 Decline and Fall, cap. lxx, note 1.) and followed hitn with confidence and delight. The compiler of a very voluminoca work must take much criticism upon trust: Mr. Gibbon has done so, though not so readily as some other authors. lians, and carried along less interested critics in its current, is run out. We have another proof that we can never be sure that the paradox, the most singular, and therefore having the most agreeable and authentic air, will not give place to the re-established ancient prejudice. It seems then, first, that Laura was born, lived, died, and was buried, not in Avignon, but in the country. The fountains of the Sorga, the thickets of Cabrières, may resume their pretensions, and the exploded de la Bastie again be heard with complacency. The hypothesis of the Abbé had no stronger props than the parchment sonnet and medal found on the skeleton of the wife of Hugo de Sade, and the manuscript note to the Virgil of Petrarch, now in the Ambrosian library. If these proofs were both incontestable, the poetry was written, the medal composed, cast, and deposited, within the space of twelve hours; and these deliberate duties were performed round the carcass of one who died of the plague, and was hurried to the grave on the day of her death. These documents, therefore, are too decisive: they prove, not the fact, but the forgery. Either the sonnet or the Virgilian note must be a falsification. The Abbé cites both as incontestably true; the consequent deduction is inevitable-they are both evidently false.' that it was guilty and perverse, that . absorbed him. quite, and mastered his heart.' 4 But In this case, however, he was perhaps alarmed for the culpability of his wishes; for the Abbé de Sade himself, who certainly would not have been scrupulously delicate, if he could have proved his descent from Petrarch as well as Laura, is forced into a stout defence of his virtuous grandmother. As far as relates to the poet, we have no security for the innocence, except perhaps in the constancy of his pursuit. He assures us, in his epistle to posterity, that, when arrived at his fortieth year, he not only had in horror, but had lost all recollection and image of any "irregularity." the birth of his natural daughter cannot be assigned earlier than his thirty-ninth year; and either the niemory or the morality of the poet must, have failed him, when he forgot or was guilty of this slip.3 The weakest argument for the purity of this love has been drawn from the permanence of effects, which survived the object of his passion. The reflection of M. de la Bastie, that virtue alone is capable of making impressions which death cannot efface, is one of those which every body applauds, and every body. finds not to be true, the moment he examines his own breast or the records of human feeling. Such apophthegms can do nothing for Petrarch or for the cause of morality, except with the Secondly, Laura was never married, and was a haughty very weak and the very young. He that has made even virgin rather than that tender and prudent wife who a little progress beyond ignorance and pupilage, cannot honoured Avignon by making that town the theatre of be edified with any thing but truth. What is called an honest French passion, and played off for one-and-vindicating the honour of an individual or a nation, is twenty years her little machinery of alternate favours the inost futile, tedious, and uninstructive of all writing; and refusals 2 upon the first poet of the age, It was, indeed, rather too unfair that a female should be made responsible for eleven children upon the faith of a misinterpreted abbreviation, and the decision of a librarian.3 It is, however, satisfactory to think that the love of Petrarch was not platonic. The happiness which he prayed to possess but once and for a moment was surely not of the mind, and something so very real as a marriage project, with, one who has been idly called a They keep his dust in Arquà, where he died. shadowy nymph, may be, perhaps, detected in at least six places of his own sonnets. The love of Petrarch from the unsuccessful attempt to visit Urban V. at Rome, Petrarch retired to Arquà immediately, on his return was neither platonic nor poetical; and, if in one passage in the year 1370, and, with the exception of his celeof his works, he calls it "amore veementeissimo ma unico ed onesto," he confesses, in a letter to a friend, vello de Carrara, ho appears to have passed the four last brated visit to Venice in company with Francesco Noyears of his life between that charming solitude and Padua. For four months previous to his death he was 2 "Par ce petit manège, cette alternative de faveurs et de rigueurs bien ménagée, une femme tendre et sage amuse, in a state of continual languor, and in the morning of pendant vingt-un ans, le plus grand poëte de son siècle, sans July the 19th, in the year 1374, was found dead in his faire la moindre breche à son honneur." Mém. pour la Vie de Petrarque, Préface aux Français. The Italian editor library chair with his head resting upon a book. The of the London edition of Petrarch, who has translated Lord chair is still shown amongst the precious relics of Arquà, ' Woodhouselee, renders the femme tendre et sage,' riffinata civetta. Riflessioni intorno a Madonna Laura, p. 234. which, from the uninterrupted veneration that has been attached to every thing relative to this great man, from A 1 The sonnet had before awakened the suspicions of Mr. Horace Walpole. See his letter to Wharton in 1763. vol. iii. ed. 1811. In a dialogue with St. Augustin, Petrarch has described Laura as having a body exhausted with repeated ptubs. The old editors read and printed perturbationibus; but M. Capperonier, librarian to the French King, in 1762, who saw the MS. in the Paris library, made an attestation that on lit et qu'on Coit lire, partubus exhaustum." De Sude joined the names of Messrs. Boudot and Bejot with M. Capperonier, and in the whole discussion on this tubs, showed himself a downright literary rogue. Seo Riflessioni, etc., p. 267. Thomas Aquinas I called in to settle whether Petrarch's mistress was a chaste naid or a continent wife. 4 "Pigmalion, quanto lodarti dei Sonetto 58, Quando giunse a Simon! although it will always meet with more applause than that sober criticism, which is attributed to the malicious desire of reducing a great man to the common standard of humanity. It is, after all, not unlikely, that our historian was right in retaining his favourite hypothetic salvo, which secures the author, although it scarcely saves the honour of the still unknown mistress of Petrarch." Note 16. Stanza xxxi. "Quella rea e perversa passione che solo tutto mi occu pava e mi regnava nel cuore." 2 Azion disonesta, are his words. 3 "A questa confessione cosi sincera diede forse occasione una nuova caduta ch' ei fece." Tiraboschi, Storia, etc., tom. v. lib. iv. par. ii. pag. 492. 4"Il n'y a que la vertu seule qui soit capable de faire des impressions que la mort n' efface pas." M. de Bimard, Baion de la Bastie, in the Memoires de l'Academio des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres for 1740 and 1751. See also Riflessioni, etc.. p. 295. 5 "And if the virtue or prudence of Laura was inexorable he enjoyed, and might boast of enjoying the nymph of poet "Decline and Fall, cap. lxx. p. 327. vol. xii. oct. Perhaps the if is here meant for although. ry. the moment of his death to the present hour, have, it capacity, extensive erudition, and refined taste, joined may be hoped, a better chance of authenticity than the to that engaging simplicity of manners which has been Shakspearian memorials of Stratford-upon-Avon. so frequently recognised as the surest, though it is certainly not an indispensable, trait of superior genius. Arquà (for the last syllable is accented in pronunciation, although the analogy of the English language Every footstep of Laura's lover has been anxiously has been observed in the verse), is twelve miles from traced and recorded. The house in which he lodged is Padua, and about three miles on the right of the high shown in Venice. The inhabitants of Arezzo, in order road to Rovigo, in the bosom of the Euganean hills. to decide the ancient controversy between their city and After a walk of twenty minutes, across a flat well-wooded the neighbouring Ancisa, where Petrarch was carried meadow, you come to a little blue lake, clear but fathom-when seven months old, and remained until his seventh less, and to the foot of a succession of acclivities and year, have designated, by a long inscription, the spot hills, clothed with vineyards and orchards, rich with fir where their great fellow-citizen was born. A tablet has and pomegranate trees, and every sunny fruit-shrub. been raised to him at Parma, in the chapel of St. Agatha, From the banks of the lake, the road winds into the hills, at the cathedral,' because he was archdeacon of that and the church of Arquà is soon seen between a cleft society, and was only snatched from his intended sepulwhere two ridges slope towards each other, and nearly ture in their church by a foreign death. Another tablet inclose the village. The houses are scattered at intervals with a bust has been erected to him at Pavia, on acon the steep sides of these summits; and that of the count of his having passed the autumn of 1368 in that poet is on the edge of a little knoll overlooking two de- city, with his son-in-law Brossano. The political con¡cents, and commanding a view not only of the glowing dition which has for ages precluded the Italians from gardens in the dales immediately beneath, but of the the criticism of the living, has concentrated their wide plains, above whose low woods of mulberry and attention to the illustration of the dead. willow thickened into a dark mass by festoons of vines, tall single cypresses, and the spires of towns are seen in the distance, which stretches to the mouths of the Po and, the shores of the Adriatic. The climate of these volcanic hills is warmer, and the vintage begins a week sooner than in the plains of Padua. Petrarch is laid, for he cannot be said to be buried, in a sarcophagus of red marble, raised on four pilasters on an elevated base, and preserved from an association with meaner tombs. It stands conspicuously alone, but will be soon overshadowed by four lately-planted laurels. Petrarch's fountain, for here every thing is Petrarch's, springs and expands itself beneath an artificial arch, a little below the church, and abounds plentifully, in the driest season, with that soft water which was the ancient wealth of the Euganean hills. It would be more attractive, were it not, in some seasons, beset with hornets and wasps. No other coincidence could assimilate the tombs of Petrarch and Archilochus. The revolutions of centuries have spared these sequestered valleys, and the only violence which has been cffered to the ashes of Petrarch, was prompted, not by hate, but veneration. An attempt was made to rob the sarcophagus of its reasure, and one of the arms was stolen by a Florentine, through a rent which is still visible. The injury is not forgotten, but has served to identify the poet with the country where he was born, but where he would not live. A peasant boy of Arquá being asked who Petrarch was, replied, "that the people of the parsonage knew all about him, but that he only knew that he was a Florentine." Mr. Forsyth was not quite correct in saying, that Petrarch never returned to Tuscany after he had once quitted it when a boy. It appears he did pass through Florence on his way from Parma to Rome, and on his return in the year 1350, and remained there long enough to form some acquaintance with its most distinguished inhabitants. A Florentine gentleman, ashamed of the aversion of the poet for his native country, was eager to point out this trivial error in our accomplished traveller, whom he knew and respected for an extraordinary 1 Remarks, etc. on Italy, p, 95, rote, 2d edit. Note 17. Stanza xxxiv. Or, it may be, with demons. The struggle is to the full as likely to be with demons as with our better thoughts. Satan chose the wilderness for the temptation of our Saviour. And our unsullied John Locke preferred the presence of a child to complete solitude. Note 18. Stanza xxxvii. In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire; Perhaps the couplet in which Boileau depreciates Tasso, may serve as well as any other specimen to jus-> tify the opinion given of the harmony of French verse. A Malherbe, à Racan, préférer Théophile, Et le clinquant du Tasse à tout l'or de Virgile. Sat. ix. verse 176. The biographer Serassi, out of tenderness to the reputation either of the Italian or the French poet, is eager to observe that the satirist recanted or explained away this censure, and subsequently allowed the author of the Jerusalem to be a "genius sublime, vast, and happily born for the higher flights of poetry." To this we will add, that the recantation is far from satisfactory, whon קן in Scrassi's life of the poet. But Tiraboschi had beforù laid that rivalry at rest, by showing, that between Ariosto and Tasso it is not a question of comparison, but of preference. Note 19. Stanza xli. The lightning rent from Ariosto's bust The iron crown of laurel's minick'd leaves. we examine the whole anecdote as reported by Olivet. The sentence pronounced against him by Bohours 2 is recorded only to the confusion of the critic, whose palinodia the Italian makes no effort to discover, and would not perhaps accept. As to the opposition which the Jerusalem encountered from the Cruscan academy, who degraded Tasso from all competition with Ariosto, below Bojardo and Pulci, the disgrace of such opposition Benedictine church to the library of Ferrara, his bust, must also, in some measure, be laid to the charge of which surmounted the tomb, was struck by lightning, Alphonso, and the court of Ferrara. For Leonard Sal- and a crown of iron laurels melted away. The event viati, the principal and nearly the sole origin of this has been recorded by a writer of the last century. The attack, was, there can be no doubt, influenced by a transfer of these sacred ashes on the 6th of June, 1801, hope to acquire the favour of the House of Este: an was one of the most brilliant spectacles of the shortobject which he thought attainable by exalting the repu- lived Italian Republic, and to consecrate the memory of tation of a native poet at the expense of a rival, then a the ceremony, the once famous fallen Intrepidi were prisoner of state. The hopes and efforts of Salviati revived and re-formed in the Ariostean academy. The must serve to show the cotemporary opinion as to the large public place through which the procession paraded nature of the poet's imprisonment; and will fill the was then for the first time called Ariosto Square. The measure of our indignation at the tyrant jailor. In author of the Orlando is jealously claimed as the Hofact, the antagonist of Tasso was not disappointed in the reception given to his criticism; he was called to the osto was of Reggio, and the house in which he was mer, not of Italy, but Ferrara. The mother of Aricourt of Ferrara, where, having endeavoured to heighten born is carefully distinguished by a tablet with these his claims to favour, by panegyrics on the family of his words: "Qui nacque Ludovico Ariosto il giorno 8 di sovereign, he was in his turn abandoned, and expired Settembre dell' anno 1474." But the Ferrarese make in neglected poverty. The opposition of the Cruscans light of the accident by which their poet was born was brought to a close in six years after the commence- abroad, and claim him exclusively for their own. They ment of the controversy; and if the academy owed its first renown to having almost opened with such a para-ink-stand, and his autographs. possess his bones, they show his arm-chair, and his dox, it is probable that, on the other hand, the care of his reputation alleviated rather than aggravated the imprisonment of the injured poet. The defence of his The house where he lived, the room where he died, are father and of himself, for both were involved in the designated by his own replaced memorial, and by a censure of Salviati, found employment for many of his recent inscription. The Ferrarese are more jealous of solitary hours, and the captive could have been but little their claims since the animosity of Denina, arising from embarrassed to reply to accusations, where, amongst a cause which their apologists mysteriously hint is not other delinquencies, he was charged with invidiously unknown to them, ventured to degrade their soil and omitting, in his comparison between France and Italy, climate to a Baotian incapacity for all spiritual producto make any mention of the cupola of, St. Maria del tions. A quarto volume has been called forth by the Fiore at Florence.' The late biographer of Ariosto detraction, and this supplement to Baretti's Memoirs seems as if willing to renew the controversy by doubting of the illustrious Ferrarese, has been considered a trithe interpretation of Tasso's self-estimation, related umphant reply to the "Quadro Storico Statistico dell' Alta Italia." 8 1 Histoire de l'Académie Française, depuis 1652 jusqu'à 1700, par l'abbé d'Olivet, p. 181. édit. Amsterdam, 1730. Mais, ensuite, venant à l'usage qu'il a fait de ses talens, j'aurais montré que le bon sens n'est pas toujours ce qui domine chez lui," p. 182. Boileau said he had not changed his opinion: "J'en aisi peu changé, dit-il," etc. p. 181. 2 La manière de bien penser dans les ouvrages de l'esprit, sec. dial. p. 89. édit. 1692. Philanthes is for Tasso, and says, in the outset, "do tous les boaux esprits que l'Italie a portés, le Tasse est peut-être celui qui pense le plus noblement." But Bohours seems to speak in Eudoxus, who closes with the absurd comparison, Faites valoire le Tasse tant qu'il vous plaira, je m'en tiens pour moi à Virgile," etc. ib. p. 102. 3 La Vita, etc. lib. iii. p. 90, tom. ii. The English reader may see an account of the opposition of the Crusca to Tasso, in Dr. Black, Life, etc. cap. xvii. vol. ii. 4 For further, and, it is hoped, decisive proof, that Tasso was neither more nor less than a prisoner of state, the reader is referred to "Historical Illustrations of the IVth Canto of Childe Harold," p. 5, and following. 5 Orazioni funebri. . . . Delle lodi di Don Luigi Cardinal d'Esto.. Delo lodi di Donno Alfonzo d'Este. See La Vita, lib. iii. pag. 117. 6 It was founded in 1582, and the Cruscan answer to Peltegrinol's Caraffa or epica poesia, was published in 1584. 7 "Cotanto poté sempre in lui il veleno della sua pessima -olonta contro alia nazion Fiorentana." La Vita, lib. iii. pp. 9. 98. tom. ii. 3 La Vita di M. L. Ariosto, scritta dall' Abate Giro lamo Baruffaldi giuniore, etc., Ferrara, 1807. lib. iii. page 262. See Historicul Illustrations, etc. p. 26. hic illius arma, Hic currus fuit. Note 20. Stanza xli. For the true laurel-wreath which glory weaves Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves. The eagle, the sea-calf, the laurel, and the white vine, were amongst the most approved preservatives against lightning: Jupiter chose the first, Augustus Cæsar the second, and Tiberius never failed to wear a wreath of the third when the sky threatened a thunderstorm. These superstitions may be received without a 1 Storia della Lett., etc. lib. iii. tom. vii. par. iii. p. 1220 sect. 4. 2 "Mi raccontarono que' monaci, ch'.essendo caduto im fulmine nella loro chiesa schiantó esso dalle tempie la corona di lauro a quell' immortale poeta.' ." Op. di Bianconi, vol. iii. p. 176. ed. Milano, 1802; lettera al Signor Guido Savini Arcifisiocritico, sull' indole di un fulmine caduto in Dresda l' anno 1759. 3 "Appassionato ammiratore ed invitto apologista dell' Omero Ferrarese." The title was first given by Tasso, and is quoted to the confusion of the Tassisti, lib. iii. pp. 262 265. La Vita di M. L. Ariosto, etc. 4 "Parva, sed apta mihi, sed nulli obnoxia, sed non Sordida, parta meo sed tamen ære demus." 5 Aquila, vitulus marinus, et laurus. fulmine non feriuntur Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. ii. cap. lv. 6 Columella, lib. x. 7 Sueton. in Vit. August. cap. xo sneer in a country where the magical properties of the Alas! how do we poor mortals fret and vex ourselves if hazer-twig have not lost all their credit; and perhaps the any of our friends happen to die or be killed, whose reader may not be much surprised to find that a com-life is yet so short, when the carcasses of so many noble mentator on Suetonius has taken upon himself gravely cities lie here exposed before me in one view."1 to disprove the imputed virtues of the crown of Tibe Note 24. Stanza xlvi. rius, by mentioning that, a few years before he wrote, and we pass a laurel was actually struck by lightning at Rome. Note 21. Stanza xli. Know that the lightning sanctifies below. The Curtian lake and the Ruminal fig-tree in the Forum, having been touched by lightning, were held sacred, and the memory of the accident was preserved by a puteal, or altar, resembling the mouth of a well, with a little chapel covering the cavity supposed to be made by the thunderbolt: Bodies scathed and persons struck dead were thought to be incorruptible; and a stroke not fatal conferred perpetual dignity upon the man so distinguished by Heaven.3 The skeleton of her Titanic form. It is Poggio, who, looking from the Capitoline hill upon ruined Rome, breaks forth into the exclamation, "Ut nunc omni decore nudata, prostrata jacet, instar gigantei cadaveris corrupti atque undique exesi." 2 Note 25. Stanza xlix. deficient in delicacy, when he made his grateful nymph inform her discreet Damon that in some happier moment he might perhaps be the companion of her bath: There, too, the goddess loves in stone. the lines in the Seasons, and the comparison of the obThe view of the Venus of Medicis instantly suggests ject with the description proves, not only the correctness of the portrait, but the peculiar turn of thought, Those killed by lightning were wrapped in a white and, if the term may be used, the sexual imagination of garment, aud buried where they fell. The superstition duced from another hint in the same episode of Musithe descriptive poet. The same conclusion may be dewas not confined to the worshippers of Jupiter: the dora; for Thomson's notion of the privileges of favoured Lombards believed in the omens furnished by lightning, love must have been either very primitive, or rather and a Christian priest confesses that by a diabolical skill in interpreting thunder, a seer foretold to Agilulf, duke of Turin, an event which came to pass, and gave him a queen and a crown.4 There was, however, something equivocal in this sign, which the ancient inhabitants of "The time may come you need not fly." Rome did not always consider propitious; and as the The reader will recollect the anecdote told in the fears are likely to last longer than the consolations of life of Dr. Johnson. We will not leave the Florentine superstition, it is not strange that the Romans of the age gallery without a word on the IVhetter. It seems strange of Leo X. 'should have been so much terrified at some that the character of that disputed statue should not be misinterpreted storms as to require the exhortations of a scholar, who arrayed all the learning on thunder and lightning to prove the omen favourable; beginning with the flash which struck the walls of Velitræ, and including that which played upon a gate at Florence, and foretold the pontificate of one of its citizens.. Note 22. Stanza lxii. Italia, oh Italia, etc. The two stanzas, XLII. and XLIII., are, with the exception of a line or two, a translation of the famous sonnet of Filicaja: "Italia, Italia, O tu cui feo la sorte." Note 23. Stanza xliv. and entirely decided, at least in the mind of any one who has seen a sarcophagus in the vestibule of the Basilica of St. Paul without the walls, at Rome, where the whole group of the fable of Marsyas is seen in tolerable preservation; and the Scythian slave whetting the knife is represented exactly in the same position as this celebrated masterpiece. The slave is not naked: but it is easier to get rid of this difficulty than to suppose the knife in the hand of the Florentine statue an instrument for shaving, which it must be, if, as Lanzi supposes, the man is no other than the barber of Julius Cæsar. Winkelmann, illustrating a bas-relief of the same subject, follows the opinion of Leonard Agostini, and his authority might have been thought conclusive, even if the resemblance did not strike the most careless observer.3. Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him, The Roman friend of Rome's least mortal mind. The celebrated letter of Servius Sulpicius to Cicero, on the death of his daughter, describes as it then Amongst the bronzes of the same princely collection, was, now is, a path which I often traced in Greece, both by is still to be seen the inscribed tablet copied and comsea and land, in different journeys and voyages. mented upon by Mr. Gibbon. Our historian found "On my return from Asia, as I was sailing from some difficulties, but did not desist from his illustraEgina towards Megara, I began to contemplate the tion: he might be vexed to hear that his criticism has prospect of the countries around me: Ægina was behind, been thrown away on an inscription now generally reMegara before me; Piræus on the right, Corinth on the cognised to be a forgery. left; all which towns, once famous and flourishing, now lie overturned and buried in their ruins. Upon this sight, I could not but think presently within myself, Note 26. Stanza !i. -his eyes to thee upturn, Feeding on thy'sweet cheek. ὀφθαλμοὺς ἐστιν. .Atque oculos pascat uterque suos."-Ovid. Amor. lib. n 1 Dr. Middleton-History of the Life of M. Tullius Cicero sect. vii. pag. 371, vol. fi. De fortunæ varietate urbis Romæ et de ruinis ejusdem descriptio, ap. Sallengre, Thesaur. tom. i. pag. 501. 3 See Monim. Ant. ined. par. i. cap. xvii. n. xlii. pag. 50. and Storia delle arti, etc. lib. xi. cap. i, tom. ii. p. 314. not. B 4 Nomina gentesque Antique Italiæ, p. 204. edit. oct. |