Verocchio's idea of David is charming: he is a saucy fellow who has gone in for it for the fun of the thing—knew he could bring down a hawk with his catapult, and therefore why not a Goliath also? If he failed, he need but cut and run, and everybody would laugh and call him plucky for doing even that much. So he does it, brings down his big game by good luck, and stands posing with a sort of irresistible stateliness to suit the result. He has a laugh something like "little Dick's," only more full of bubbles, and is saying to himself, "What a hero they all think me!" He is the merriest of sly-dog hypocrites, and has thin, wiry arms and a craney neck. He is a bit like Tom Sawyer in character, more ornate and dramatic than Huckleberry Finn, but quite as much a liar, given a good cause.
Another thing that has seized me, more for its idea than actual carrying out, is an unnamed terra-cotta Madonna and Child. He is crushing himself up against her neck, open-mouthed and terrified, and she spreading long fingers all over his head and face. My notion of it is that it is the Godhead taking his first look at life from the human point of view; and he realizes himself "caught in his own trap," discovering it to be ever so much worse than it had seemed from an outside view. It is a fine modern zeit-geist piece of declamation to come out of the rather over-sweet della Robbia period of art.
There seems to have been a rage at one period for commissioning statues of David: so Donatello and others just turned to and did what they liked most in the way of budding youth, stuck a Goliath's head at its feet, and called it "David." Verocchio is the exception.
We are going to get outside Florence for a week or ten days; it is too hot to be borne at night after a day of tiring activity. So we go to the D——s' villa, which they offered us in their absence; it lies about four miles out, and is on much higher ground: address only your very immediately next letter there, or it may miss me.
There are hills out there with vineyards among them which draw me into wishing to be away from towns altogether. Much as I love what is to be found in this one, I think Heaven meant me to be "truly rural"; which all falls in, dearest, with what I mean to be! Beloved, how little I sometimes can say to you! Sometimes my heart can put only silence into the end of a letter; and with that I let this one go.—Yours, and so lovingly.
LETTER XXXIII.
Beloved: I had your last letter on Friday: all your letters have come in their right numbers. I have lost count of mine; but I think seven and two postcards is the total, which is the same as the numbers of clean and unclean beasts proportionately represented in the ark.