This folly made me smile again. Each of the sonnets was a dull diatribe ending with “l’abbate Chiari e un coglione.” He did not prove that he was one, but he said so over and over again, making use of the poet’s privilege to exaggerate and lie. What he wanted to do was to annoy the abbé, who was by no means what Passano called him, but on the contrary, a wit and a poet; and if he had been acquainted with the requirements of the stage he would have written better plays than Goldoni, as he had a greater command of language.
I told Passano, for civility’s sake, that he ought to get his Chiareide printed.
“I would do so,” said he, “if I could find a publisher, for I am not rich enough to pay the expenses, and the publishers are a pack of ignorant beggars. Besides, the press is not free, and the censor would not let the epithet I give to my hero pass. If I could go to Switzerland I am sure it could be managed; but I must have six sequins to walk to Switzerland, and I have not got them.”
“And when you got to Switzerland, where there are no theatres, what would you do for a living?”
“I would paint in miniature. Look at those.”
He gave me a number of small ivory tablets, representing obscene subjects, badly drawn and badly painted.
“I will give you an introduction to a gentleman at Berne,” I said; and after supper I gave him a letter and six sequins. He wanted to force some of his productions on me, but I would not have them.
I was foolish enough to give him a letter to pretty Sara’s father, and I told him to write to me at Rome, under cover of the banker Belloni.
I set out from Leghorn the next day and went to Pisa, where I stopped two days. There I made the acquaintance of an Englishman, of whom I bought a travelling carriage. He took me to see Corilla, the celebrated poetess. She received me with great politeness, and was kind enough to improvise on several subjects which I suggested. I was enchanted, not so much with her grace and beauty, as by her wit and perfect elocution. How sweet a language sounds when it is spoken well and the expressions are well chosen. A language badly spoken is intolerable even from a pretty mouth, and I have always admired the wisdom of the Greeks who made their nurses teach the children from the cradle to speak correctly and pleasantly. We are far from following their good example; witness the fearful accents one hears in what is called, often incorrectly, good society.
Corilla was ‘straba’, like Venus as painted by the ancients—why, I cannot think, for however fair a squint-eyed woman may be otherwise, I always look upon her face as distorted. I am sure that if Venus had been in truth a goddess, she would have made the eccentric Greek, who first dared to paint her cross-eyed, feel the weight of her anger. I was told that when Corilla sang, she had only to fix her squinting eyes on a man and the conquest was complete; but, praised be God! she did not fix them on me.