Ecco da mille voci unitamente
Gerusalemme salutar si sente.—”
his eager eye glanced at the wall at the side of the lecture-room with such realistic animation, and with such power over his hearers, that some of the audience turned to gaze on the vacant space as though the veritable towers and walls of Jerusalem had been thereon depicted.
These lectures were never published. The following extracts, expressive of his personal feelings towards his auditors may, even at this distance of time, be not altogether devoid of interest.
The first quotation is from the first of the lectures, written in the summer of 1824, and the second is from the concluding lecture of the series, delivered three years afterwards.
I.
If I dare to address you in your own language, it is neither because I have a vast confidence in my limited knowledge of it, nor because I am unaware how awkwardly a foreigner is situated on such an occasion. But since you do not honour me with your presence to ascertain how I am acquainted with your language, but to hear what my opinion is with respect to some poems written in my own, it is after all of very little consequence whether my diction be so correct and my pronunciation be pure, if I am but intelligible. Having to speak of a foreign literature, I had still more reason to expect that the audience would liberally overlook my blunders; for the Italian quotations would remind those whose keen sense of the beauties of their own tongue might perchance dispose to pass a vigorous sentence on my English, how difficult it is to speak a foreign language tolerably.
These reasons alone might perhaps have induced me to trust to the liberality of an English public; but even without them, and with far more confidence would I have presented myself before you. Your kindness to me on former occasions, to which I shall only allude as no language at any length could do justice to it, would have been a sufficient encouragement to me. It was in this same place that without any claim to your favour, I met the most flattering reception. The repeated proofs of benevolence which I have received from you warrant me in expecting that you would continue to me the same support. I know you so well that I am as certain that you cannot be unkind, as I am conscious that I cannot be ungrateful.
The Lectures which I purpose delivering will form an appendix to those which you have already heard on Ariosto, on whose poem I shall not lecture this time. I am sensible of the disadvantage of such an omission.
II.