[ For, bating Covent Garden, I can't hit on
A place," &c.-MS.]

The Carnival," says Mr. Rose, "though it is gayer or duller, according to the genius of the nations which celebrate it, is, in its general character, nearly the same all over the peninsula. The beginning is like any other season; towards the middle you begin to meet masques and mummers in sunshine in the last fifteen days the plot thickens; and during the three last all is hurly-burly. But to paint these, which may be almost considered as a separate festival, I must avail myself of the words of Messrs. William and Thomas Whistlecraft, in whose Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work' I find the description ready made to my hand, observing that, besides the ordinary dramatis per

'Beggars and vagabonds, blind, lame, and sturdy,

Minstrels and singers, with their various airs, The pipe, the tabor, and the hurdy-gurdy, Jugglers and mountebanks, with apes and bears, Continue, from the first day to the third day,

An uproar like ten thousand Smithfield fairs'

But why they usher Lent with so much glee in,
Is more than I can tell, although I guess
'Tis as we take a glass with friends at parting,
In the stage-coach or packet, just at starting.

VII.

And thus they bid farewell to carnal dishes, And solid meats, and highly spiced ragouts, To live for forty days on ill-dress'd fishes,

Because they have no sauces to their stews,

A thing which causes many "poohs” and “pishes," And several oaths (which would not suit the Muse), From travellers accustom'd from a boy

To eat their salmon, at the least, with soy;

VIII.

And therefore humbly I would recommend
"The curious in fish-sauce," before they cross
The sea, to bid their cook, or wife, or friend,
Walk or ride to the Strand, and buy in gross
(Or if set out beforehand, these may send
By any means least liable to loss),
Ketchup, Soy, Chili-vinegar, and Harvey,
Or, by the Lord! a Lent will well nigh starve ye;
IX.

That is to say, if your religion's Roman,

And you at Rome would do as Romans do,
According to the proverb, although no man,
If foreign, is obliged to fast; and you,
If Protestant, or sickly, or a woman,

Would rather dine in sin on a ragout-
Dine and be d-d! I don't mean to be coarse,
But that's the penalty, to say no worse.

They've pretty faces yet, those same Venetians,
Black eyes, arch'd brows, and sweet expressions still;
Such as of old were copied from the Grecians,
In ancient arts by moderns mimick'd ill;
And like so many Venuses of Titian's

(The best's at Florence 3- see it, if ye will,)

the shops are shut, all business is at a stand, and the drunken cries heard at night afford a clear proof of the pleasures to which these days of leisure are dedicated. These holydays may surely be reckoned amongst the secondary causes which contribute to the indolence of the Italian, since they reconcile this to his conscience, as being of religious institution. Now there is, perhaps, no offence which is so unproportionably punished by conscience as that of indolence. With the wicked man, it is an intermittent disease; with the idle man, it is a chronic one."-Letters from the North of Italy, vol. ii. p. 171.]

3 [" At Florence I remained but a day, having a hurry for Rome. However, I went to the two galleries, from which one returns drunk with beauty but there are sculpture and painting, which, for the first time, gave me an idea of what people mean by their cant about those two most artificial of the arts. What struck me most were,-the mistress of Ra phael, a portrait, the mistress of Titian, a portrait; a Venus of Titian, in the Medici gallery; the Venus; Canova's Venus, also in the other gallery," &c.- Byron Letters, 1817.]

L

Love in full life and length, not love ideal,
No, nor ideal beauty, that fine name,
But something better still, so very real,

That the sweet model must have been the same;
A thing that you would purchase, beg, or steal,
Wer't not impossible, besides a shame :
The face recalls some face, as 't were with pain,
You once have seen, but ne'er will see again;
XIV.

One of those forms which flit by us, when we
Are young, and fix our eyes on every face;
And, oh the loveliness at times we sce

In momentary gliding, the soft grace,
The youth, the bloom, the beauty which agree,
In many a nameless being we retrace,
Whose course and home we knew not, nor shall know,
Like the lost Pleiad seen no more below.

XV.

I said that like a picture by Giorgione
Venetian women were, and so they are,
Particularly seen from a balcony,

(For beauty 's sometimes best set off afar) And there, just like a heroine of Goldoni,

They peep from out the blind, or o'er the bar; And, truth to say, they 're mostly very pretty, And rather like to show it, more 's the pity!

XVI.

For glances beget ogles, ogles sighs,

Sighs wishes, wishes words, and words a letter,

["I know nothing of pictures myself, and care almost as little; but to me there are none like the Venetian above all, Giorgione. I remember well his Judgment of Solomon, in the Mariscalchi gallery in Bologna. The real mother is beautiful, exquisitely beautiful."-- Byron Letters, 1820.]

[The following is Lord Byron's account of his visit to this palace, in April, 1817.-" To-day, I have been over the Manfrini palace, famous for its pictures. Amongst them, there is a portrait of Ariosto, by Titian, surpassing all my antici pation of the power of painting or human expression: it is the poetry of portrait, and the portrait of poetry. There was also one of some learned lady centuries old, whose name I forget, but whose features must always be remembered. I never saw greater beauty, or sweetness, or wisdom; - it is the kind of face to go mad for, because it cannot walk out of its frame. There is also a famous dead Christ and live Apostles, for which Buonaparte offered in vain five thousand louis; and of which, though it is a capo d' opera of Titian, as I am no connoisseur, I say little, and thought less, except of one figure in it. There are ten thousand others, and some very fine Giorgiones amongst them. There is an original Laura and Petrarch, very hideous both. Petrarch has not only the dress, but the features and air of an old woman; and Laura looks by no means like a young one, or a pretty What struck most in the general collection, was the extreme resemblance of the style of the female faces in the mass of pictures, so many centuries or generations old, to those you see and meet every day among the existing Italians. The Queen of Cyprus and Giorgione's wife, particularly the latter, are Venetians as it were of yesterday; the same eyes and expression, and, to my mind, there is none finer. You

one.

Which flies on wings of light-heel'd Mercuries,
Who do such things because they know no better:
And then, God knows, what mischief may arise,

When love links two young people in one fetter,
Vile assignations, and adulterous beds,
Elopements, broken vows, and hearts, and heads.
XVIL

Shakspeare described the sex in Desdemona
As very fair, but yet suspect in fame,
And to this day from Venice to Verona

Such matters may be probably the same,
Except that since those times was never known a
Husband whom mere suspicion could inflame
To suffocate a wife no more than twenty,
Because she had a " cavalier servente."

XVIII

Their jealousy (if they are ever jealous)
Is of a fair complexion altogether,
Not like that sooty devil of Othello's

Which smothers women in a bed of feather,
But worthier of these much more jolly fellows,
When weary of the matrimonial tether
His head for such a wife no mortal bothers,
But takes at once another, or another's. 6

XIX.

Didst ever see a Gondola ? For fear

You should not, I'll describe it you exactly:
'Tis a long cover'd boat that's common here,
Carved at the prow, built lightly, but compactly,
Row'd by two rowers, each call'd " Gondolier,"
It glides along the water looking blackly,
Just like a coffin clapt in a canoe,
Where none can make out what you say or do.
XX.

And up and down the long canals they go,
And under the Rialto 7 shoot along,
By night and day, all paces, swift or slow,
And round the theatres, a sable throng,
They wait in their dusk livery of woe,-

But not to them do woeful things belong,
For sometimes they contain a deal of fun,
Like mourning coaches when the funeral's done.

must recollect, however, that I know nothing of painting, and that I detest it, unless it reminds me of something I have seen, or think it possible to see."]

3 [This appears to be an incorrect description of the picture; as, according to Vasari and others, Giorgione never was married, and died young.]

4" Quæ septem dicí sex tamen esse solent." — OVID. ["Look to 't:

6

In Venice they do let heaven see the pranks They dare not show their husbands; their best conscience Is not to leave undone, but keep unknown."-Othello.] ["Jealousy is not the order of the day in Venice, and daggers are out of fashion, while duels on love matters are unknown at least, with the husbands."- Byron Letters.] 7 [An English abbreviation. Rialto is the name, not of the bridge, but of the island from which it is called; and the Venetians say, il ponte di Rialto, as we say Westminster Bridge. In that island is the Exchange; and I have often walked there as on classic ground. In the days of Antonio and Bassanio it was second to none. "I sotto portichi," says Sansovino, writing in 1580, " sono ogni giorni frequentati da i mercatanti Fiorentini, Genovesi, Milanesi, Spagnuoli, Turchi, e d'altre nationi diverse del mondo, i quali vi concorrono in tanta copia, che questa piazza è annoverata fra le prime dell' universo.' It was there that the Christian held discourse with the Jew; and Shylock refers to it, when he says, "Signor Antonio, many a time and oft, In the Rialto, you have rated me." Andiamo à Rialto'-'l'ora di Rialto'-were on every tongue; and continue so to the present day. — ROGERS.)

And glancing at Mamma, for fear there 's harm in
What you, she, it, or they, may be about,
The Nursery still lisps out in all they utter-
Besides, they always smell of bread and butter.
XL.

But "Cavalier Servente" is the phrase
Used in politest circles to express
This supernumerary slave, who stays
Close to the lady as a part of dress,
Her word the only law which he obeys.
His is no sinecure, as you may guess;
Coach, servants, gondola, he goes to call,
And carries fan and tippet, gloves and shawl.

XLI.

With all its sinful doings, I must say,
That Italy's a pleasant place to me,
Who love to see the Sun shine every day,
And vines (not nail'd to walls) from tree to tree
Festoon'd, much like the back scene of a play,

Or melodrame, which people flock to see,
When the first act is ended by a dance

In vineyards copied from the south of France.

XLII.

I like on Autumn evenings to ride out,
Without being forced to bid my groom be sure
My cloak is round his middle strapp'd about,
Because the skies are not the most secure ;
I know too that, if stopp'd upon my route,
Where the green alleys windingly allure,
Reeling with grapes red waggons choke the way,
In England 't would be dung, dust, or a dray.
XLIII.

I also like to dine on becaficas,

To see the Sun set, sure he 'll rise to-morrow, Not through a misty morning twinkling weak as

A drunken man's dead eye in maudlin sorrow, But with all Heaven t'himself; that day will break as Beauteous as cloudless, nor be forced to borrow That sort of farthing candlelight which glimmers Where reeking London's smoky caldron simmers.

XLIV.

I love the language, that soft bastard Latin,
Which melts like kisses from a female mouth,
And sounds as if it should be writ on satin,
With syllables which breathe of the sweet South,
And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in,

That not a single accent seems uncouth,
Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural,
Which we're obliged to hiss, and spit, and sputter all.

XLV.

I like the women too (forgive my folly),
From the rich peasant-cheek of ruddy bronze,
And large black eyes that flash on you a volley
Of rays that say a thousand things at once,
To the high dama's brow, more melancholy,
But clear, and with a wild and liquid glance,
Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes,
Soft as her clime3, and sunny as her skies.4

2["From the tall peasant with her ruddy bronze."-MS.] Like her own clime, all sun, and bloom, and skies.” MS.]

[“In these lines the author rises above the usual and

XLVI.

Eve of the land which still is Paradise!
Italian beauty! didst thou not inspire
Raphael', who died in thy embrace, and vies
With all we know of Heaven, or can desire,
In what he hath bequeath'd us?—in what guise,
Though flashing from the fervour of the lyre,
Would words describe thy past and present glow,
While yet Canova can create below? 2

XLVII.

"England! with all thy faults I love thee still," I said at Calais, and have not forgot it;

I like to speak and lucubrate my fill;

I like the government (but that is not it); I like the freedom of the press and quill;

I like the Habeas Corpus (when we've got it);

I like a parliamentary debate,
Particularly when 't is not too late;

XLVIII.

I like the taxes, when they 're not too many;
I like a seacoal fire, when not too dear;

I like a beef-steak, too, as well as any;
Have no objection to a pot of beer;

I like the weather, when it is not rainy,

That is, I like two months of every year. And so God save the Regent, Church, and King! Which means that I like all and every thing.

XLIX.

Our standing army, and disbanded seamen,

Poor's rate, Reform, my own, the nation's debt, Our little riots just to show we are free men, Our trifling bankruptcies in the Gazette, Our cloudy climate, and our chilly women, All these I can forgive, and those forget, And greatly venerate our recent glories, And wish they were not owing to the Tories.

L.

But to my tale of Laura,- for I find

Digression is a sin, that by degrees Becomes exceeding tedious to my mind,

And, therefore, may the reader too displease— The gentle reader, who may wax unkind,

And caring little for the author's ease, Insist on knowing what he means, a hard And hapless situation for a bard.

LI.

Oh that I had the art of easy writing
What should be easy reading! could I scale
Parnassus, where the Muses sit inditing

Those pretty poems never known to fail,

appropriate pitch of his composition, and is betrayed into something too like enthusiasm and deep feeling for the light and fantastic strain of his poetry. Neither does the fit go off, for he rises quite into rapture in the succeeding stanza. This is, however, the only slip of the kind in the whole workthe only passage in which the author betrays the secret (which might, however, have been suspected) of his own genius, and his affinity to a higher order of poets than those to whom he has here been pleased to hold out a model." — JEFFREY.]

1 For the received accounts of the cause of Raphael's death, see his lives.

3 ["The expressions blue-stocking' and ' dandy' may furnish matter for the learning of a commentator at some future period. At this moment, every English reader will understand them. Our present ephemeral dandy is akin to the maccaroni of my earlier days. The first of those expressions has become classical, by Mrs. Hannah More's poem of BasBleu,' and the other by the use of it in one of Lord Byron's poems. Though now become familiar and trite, their day may not be long.

- Cadentque Quæ nunc sunt in honore vocabula.'" — Lord GLENBERVIE, Ricciardetto, 1822.]