We have now seen this enchanting spot in spring, summer, and autumn; nor could winter’s self render it undelightful, while uniting every charm, and gratifying every sense. Greek and Roman antiquities salute one at the gates; Gothic remains render each place of worship venerable: Nature in her holiday dress decks the environs, and society animates with intellectual fire the amiable inhabitants. Oh! were I to live here long, I should not only excuse, but applaud the Scaligers for straining probability, and neglecting higher praise, only to claim kindred with the Scalas of Verona. Improvisation at this place pleases me far better than it did in Tuscany. Our truly-learned Abate Lorenzi astonishes all who hear him, by repeating, not singing, a series of admirably just and well-digested thoughts, which he, and he alone, possesses the power of arranging suddenly as if by magic, and methodically as if by study, to rhymes the most melodious, and most varied; while the Abbé Bertola, of the university at Pavia, gives one pleasure by the same talent in a manner totally different, singing his unpremeditated strains to the accompaniment of a harpsichord, round which stand a little chorus of friends, who interpolate from time to time two lines of a well-known song, to which he pleasingly adapts his compositions, and goes on gracing the barren subject, and adorning it with every possible decoration of wit, and every desirable elegance of sentiment. Nothing can surely surpass the happy promptitude of his expression, unless it is the brilliancy of his genius.
We were in a large company last night, where a beautiful woman of quality came in dressed according to the present taste, with a gauze head-dress, adjusted turbanwise, and a heron’s feather; the neck wholly bare. Abate Bertola bid me look at her, and, recollecting himself a moment, made this Epigram improviso:
Volto e Crin hai di Sultana,
Perchè mai mi vien disdetto,
Sodducente Mussulmana
Di gittarti il Fazzoletto?
of which I can give no better imitation than the following:
While turban’d head and plumage high
A Sultaness proclaims my Cloe;
Thus tempted, tho’ no Turk, I’ll try