must poise between his sculptured knees; the black basalt must contrast with the bas-relief in bronze below:—
“‘St. Praxed in a glory, and one Pan
Ready to twitch the Nymph’s last garment off’;
the inscription must be ‘choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully’s every word’.”
A Toccata of Galuppi’s.
The speaker is listening to a Toccata of Galuppi’s, and the music tells him of how they lived once in Venice, where the merchants were the kings. He was never out of England, yet it’s as if he SAW it all, through what is addressed to the ear alone.
But the music does more than reflect the life of mirth and folly which was led in the gay and voluptuous city. It has an undertone of sadness; its lesser thirds so plaintive, its sixths diminished, sigh on sigh, tell the votaries of pleasure something; its suspensions, its solutions, its commiserating sevenths, awaken in them the question of their hold on life. That question the music answers.
Abt Vogler.
(After he has been extemporizing upon the musical instrument of his invention.)