"Shivers every feather with desire,"
is painted with the precision as well as the force of the Flemish pencil. Yet he has personified Autumn as
"Crowned with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf,"
thus putting on his head what should have been in his hand, and presenting us a ludicrous figure surmounted by a "crumpled horn." No Italian poet would have painted from nature with Thomson's marvellous precision; and no Italian poet would have committed such gross offences against propriety as he has, in his imaginary pictures.
BOOK III. CANTO VII.
36.
A boon companion to increase this crew
By chance, a gentle Florentine, was led;
A Florentine, altho' the father who
Begot him, in the Casentine was bred;
Who nigh become a burgher of his new
Domicile, there was well content to wed;
And so in Bibbiena wived, which ranks
Among the pleasant towns on Arno's banks.
37.
At Lamporecchio, he of whom I write
Was born, for dumb Masetto* fam'd of yore,
Thence roam'd to Florence; and in piteous plight
There sojourned till nineteen, like pilgrim poor;
And shifted thence to Rome, with second flight
Hoping some succour from a kinsman's store;
A cardinal allied to him by blood.
And one that neither did him harm nor good.
* See Boccaccio.
38.
He to the nephew passed, this patron dead,
Who the same measure as his uncle meted;
And then again in search of better bread,
With empty bowels from his house retreated;
And hearing, for his name and fame were spread,
The praise of one who serv'd the pope repeated,
And in the Roman court Datario hight,
He hired himself to him to read and write.
39.
This trade the unhappy man believed he knew;
But this belief was, like the rest, a bubble,
Since he could never please the patron, who
Fed him, nor ever once was out of trouble.
The worse he did, the more he had to do,
And only made his pain and penance double:
And thus, with sleeves and bosom stuffed with papers,
Wasted his wits, and lived oppressed with vapours.