A CHARACTERISTIC CANAL
the Queen of the Adriatic. Neither of the two men of the race who made it famous in the annals of literature was born here, but they were both of them visitors here, although neither of them has left any record as to where or when. Isaac D’Israeli, however, in a paper upon “Venice,” among his Curiosities, in refuting Byron’s statement that “In Venice Tasso’s Echoes are no more,” takes bodily and literally, without credit, Goethe’s description of how he “entered a gondola by moonlight. One singer placed himself forwards and the other aft, and then proceeded to S. Giorgio.” Then follow, in Goethe’s words, D’Israeli’s remarks upon the music of the gondoliers, closing, still in Goethe’s words, with an experience familiar to all subsequent visitors here: “The sleepy canals, the lofty buildings, the splendor of the moon, the deep shadows of the few gondolas that moved like spirits hither and thither, increased the striking peculiarity of the scene; and amidst all these circumstances it was easy to confess the character of this wonderful harmony.”
In another chapter of The Curiosities, which is entitled “The Origin of the Newspaper,” D’Israeli, stealing, perhaps, from somebody else, tells us that the first expression of Literature in the form of a periodical was made in Venice. It was, he says, a Government organ originally issued once a month; and even long after the invention of printing it appeared in manuscript. It was called La Gazetta, he adds, perhaps from “gazzera,” a magpie, or chatterer, or more likely from “gazzeta,” the small Venetian coin which was its price after it appeared in type. If this fact establishes another Literary Landmark for Venice, let Venice have all the credit of it.
Marino Sanudo, the younger and the greater of that name, was one of the early sons of Venice who found his mother neither nourishing, comforting, nor affectionate. He began to take notes, and to make notes, even as a child, his initial researches having commenced before he was ten years of age. He started his Diary when he was about seventeen; fifty-six volumes of it, covering a period of almost as many years, are still in existence, although not in Venice; and the larger portions of them have been printed. Besides these, he published voluminous works, all of them of the greatest value to the student of the history of his native state. Mrs. Oliphant calls him “one of the most gifted and astonishing of historical moles.” The height of his aspiration was the gratitude and appreciation of the world, by whom he was entirely forgotten for three centuries or more, until Rawdon Brown rescued his name, and his works, from oblivion, and shamed the Venetians into marking, in a suitable way, the house in which he lived; although there is no record of the grave in which he was laid.
Sanudo’s house is still standing on the corner of the Fondamenta and the Ponte del Megio, directly in the rear of, and not far from, the Fondaco dei Turchi. It is plain and substantial, what is called a genteel mansion, and it was a worthy home for a plain and substantial and modest Man of Letters. The tablet is weather-worn and stained, and it looks much older than the days of Rawdon Brown. The inscription, roughly translated, states that “Here dwelt Marino Leonardo F. Sanuto, who, while he well knew the history of the whole universe, still wrote with truth and fidelity of his own country and of his own times. He died here in April, 1536.”
According to tradition, says Signor Tassini, when Tasso came to Venice with Alfonso di Ferrara to meet Henry III. of France, he lodged in what is now known as the Fondaco dei Turchi, an Italo-Byzantine structure of the Ninth Century, and one of the oldest secular buildings in the city. It stands on the Grand Canal, on the left as one sails from St. Mark’s to the railway-station, and past the Rialto; but it was entirely modernized about a quarter of a century ago, and it now contains the collection of the Museo Civico. There is also a tradition that Tasso, in later years, found refuge in the Palazzo Contarini delle Figure, on the other side of the Grand Canal and on the other side of the Rialto Bridge. It is near to the Mocenigo Palace, once the home of Byron.
BYRON’S PALACE, VENICE