Othello, act iii. sc. 3, lines 206-208.]
[203] {165}[Compare—
"An English lady asked of an Italian,
What were the actual and official duties
Of the strange thing, some women set a value on,
Which hovers oft about some married beauties,
Called 'Cavalier Servente,' a Pygmalion
Whose statues warm (I fear, alas! too true 't is)
Beneath his art. The dame, pressed to disclose them,
Said—'Lady, I beseech you to suppose them.'"
Don Juan, Canto IX. stanza li.
A critic, in the Monthly Review (March, 1818, vol. lxxxv. p. 286), took Byron to task for omitting the e in Cavaliere. In a letter to Murray, April 17, 1818, he shows that he is right, and takes his revenge on the editor (George Edward) Griffiths, and his "scribbler Mr. Hodgson."—Letters, 1900, iv. 226.]
[204] ["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 ponti di Rialto, as we say Westminster Bridge. In that island is the Exchange; and I have often walked there as on classic ground.... 'I Sopportichi,' says Sansovino, writing in 1580 [Venetia, 1581, p. 134], 'sono ogni giorno 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—
"'Signer Antonio, many a time and oft,
In the Rialto you have rated me.'
'Andiamo a Rialto,'—' L'ora di Rialto,' were on every tongue; and continue so to the present day, as we learn from the Comedies of Goldoni, and particularly from his Mercanti."—Note to the Brides of Venice, Poems, by Samuel Rogers, 1852, ii. 88, 89. See, too, Childe Harold, Canto IV. stanza iv. line 6, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 331.]
[205] {166}[Compare "At the epoch called a certain age she found herself an old maid."—Jane Porter, Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803), cap. xxxviii. (See N. Eng. Dict., art. "Certain.")
Ugo Foscolo, in his article in the Quarterly Review, April, 1819, vol. xxi. pp. 486-556, quotes these lines in illustration of a stanza from Forteguerri's Ricciardetto, iv. 2—