Tarpeia’s rock, or Tyber’s fane-full shore;
While human hands those glittering fabrics frame,
By touch celestial beauteous Venice came.
It is a sweet place sure enough, and the caged[34] nightingales who, when men are most silent, answer each other across the canals, increase the enchantments of Venetian moonlight; while the full gondolas skimming over the tide with a lanthorn in their stern, like glow-worms of a dark evening, dashing the cool wave too as they glide along, leave no moments unmarked by peculiarity of pleasure. The Doge’s wedding has however been less brilliant this year; his galleys have been sent to fight the Turks and Corsairs, and the splendor at home of course suffers some temporary diminution; but the corso of boats in the evening must be for ever charming, and the musical parties upon the water delightful. We passed this morning in Pinelli’s library, a collection so valuable from the frequence of old editions, particularly the old fourteen hundreds as we call them, that it is supposed they will be purchased by some crowned head; and here are specimens of Aldus’s printing too, very curious; but there are too many curiosities,
I’m strangled with the waste fertility,
as Milton says. Pinelli had an excellent taste for pictures likewise, and here at Venice there are paintings to satisfy, nay satiate connoisseurship herself. Tintoret’s force of colouring at St. Rocque’s, displayed in the crucifixion, can surely be exceeded by no disposition of light and shade; but the Scuola Bolognese has hardened my heart against merit of any other sort, so much more easy to be obtained, than that of character, dignity, and truth. Paul Veronese forgets too seldom his original trade of orefice, there is too much gold and silver in his drapery; and though Darius’s ladies are judiciously adorned with a great deal of it here at Palazzo Pisani, I would willingly have abated some brocade, for an addition of expressive majesty in the Alexander. What a striking difference there is too between Guercino’s prodigal returned, and a picture at some Venetian palace of the same story treated by Leandro Bassano! yet who can forbear crying out Nature, nature! when in the last named work one sees the faithful spaniel run out to meet and acknowledge his poor young master though in rags, while the cook admiring the uncommon fatness of the calf, seems to anticipate the pleasure of a jolly day: so if the old father does look a little like pantaloon, why one forgives him, for we are not told that the fable had to do with nobiltà, though Guercino has made his master of the house a rich and stately oriental, who meets and consoles, near a column of Grecian architecture, his penitent son, whose half-uncovered form exhibits beauty sunk into decay, and whose graceful expression of shame and sorrow shew the dignity of his original birth, and little expectation of the ill-endured pains his poverty has caused: the elder brother, meantime, glowing with resentment, and turning with apparent scorn away from the sight of a scene so little to the honour of the family. Basta! as the Italians say; when we were at Rome we purchased a fine view of St. Mark’s Place Venice; now we are at Venice we have bought a sketch of Guido’s Aurora. The Doge’s dinner was magnificent, the plate older and I think finer than the Pope’s; I forget on what occasion it was given, I mean the feast, but had it been an annual ceremony our kind friends would have shewn it us last year. We must leave them once more, for a long time I fear, but I part with less regret because the heat grows almost insupportable; and either the stench of the small canals, or else the too great abundance of sardelline, a fresh anchovy with which these seas abound, keep me unwell and in perpetual fear of catching a putrid fever, should I indulge in eating once again of so rich but dangerous a dainty. Besides that one may be tired of exertion, and fatigued with festivity, purchased at the price of sleep and quiet.
Non Hybla non me specifer capit Nilus,
Nec quæ paludes delicata Pomptinus
Ex arce clivi spectat uva Sestini.
Quid concupiscam? quæris ergo,—dormire[35].