It is a princely colonnade! And wrought around a princely place, Looks with its venerable face Over the far and subject sea, Which makes the fearless isles so free! And 't is a strange and noble pile, Every pillar fair to see, Marble-jasper-and porphyry — The church of St. Mark-which stands hard by And cupola and minaret; More like the mosque of orient lands, Than the fanes wherein we pray, And Mary's blessèd likeness stands. TO JOHN MURRAY VENICE, November 25, 1816. DEAR SIR,- - It is some months since I have heard from or of you I think, not since I left Diodati. From Milan I wrote once or twice; but have been here some little time, and intend to pass the winter without removing. I was much pleased with the Lago di Garda, and with Verona, particularly the amphitheatre, and a sarcophagus in a Convent garden, which they show as Juliet's: they insist on 1 First published in 1901, from a manuscript in possession of Mr. Murray, grandson of Byron's publisher. "I was much pleased with Verona. and a sarcophagus in a Convent garden, which they show as Juliet's: they insist on the truth of her history." See Letter to John Murray, p. 8. the truth of her history. Since my arrival at Venice, the lady of the Austrian governor told me that between Verona and Vicenza there are still ruins of the castle of the Montecchi, and a chapel once appertaining to the Capulets. Romeo seems to have been of Vicenza by the tradition; but I was a good deal surprised to find so firm a faith in Bandello's novel, which seems really to have been founded on a fact. Venice pleases me as much as I expected, and I expected much. It is one of those places which I know before I see them, and has always haunted me the most after the East. I like the gloomy gaiety of their gondolas, and the silence of their canals. I do not even dislike the evident decay of the city, though I regret the singularity of its vanished costume; however, there is much left still; the Carnival, too, is coming. St. Mark's, and indeed Venice, is most alive at night. The theatres are not open till nine, and the society is proportionably late. All this is to my taste; but most of your countrymen miss and regret the rattle of hackney coaches, without which they can't sleep. I have got remarkably good apartments in a private house: I see something of the inhabitants (having had a good many letters to some of them): I have got my gondola; I read a little, and luckily could speak Italian (more fluently though than accurately) long ago. I am studying, out of curiosity, the Venetian dialect, which is very naive, and soft, and peculiar, though not at all classical; I go out frequently, and am in very good contentment. The Helen of Canova (a bust which is in the house of Madame the Countess d' Albrizzi, whom I know) is, without exception, to my mind, the most perfectly beautiful of human conceptions, and far beyond my ideas of human execution. In this beloved marble view Above the works and thoughts of Man, Beyond the Bard's defeated art, Behold the Helen of the heart! The general race of women appear to be handsome; but in Italy, as on almost all the Continent, the highest orders are by no means a well-looking generation, and indeed reckoned by their countrymen very much otherwise. Some are exceptions, but most of them as ugly as Virtue herself. TO JOHN MURRAY VENICE, February 15, 1817. I have been uneasy because Mr. Hobhouse told me that his letter or preface1 was to be addressed to me. Now, he and I are friends of many years; I have many obligations to him, and he none to me which have not been cancelled and more than repaid; but Mr. G[ifford] and I are friends also, and he has moreover been literarily so, through thick 1 "Letters written by an Englishman resident at Paris during the last reign of Napoleon," by John Hobhouse. |
