"With this last extemporaneous poem, the poetess determined to put the seal to her glory, by running over with wonderful rapidity all the philosophical systems of ancient and modern times (!), and finally awarding the pre–eminence to the present age. In the whole course of this last song, the sensibility and gratitude of the poetess for the honour she had received carried her away; and in it the praises of Rome, for the protection it accords to talent and the fine arts, held the foremost place."
THE LAST LAUREL.
Then came universal congratulations from "the princes and princesses, cavaliers, and noble foreigners, especially the magnanimous Duke of Gloucester."
And so terminated the last adjudication of the laurel crown on the hill of the Capitol; a symbol which, once invested with true and high significance, had dwindled in perfect sympathy with all around it, till, like so many another superannuated embodiment of human thought, it had become a mere trading imposture, symbolising nothing but the utter hollowness and intense falsity of the social system, of which it was an unhealthy excrescence.
But it must not be imagined, that even in Rome in 1776, the decorous farce with which princes, and eminences, and Arcadian bishops, and "renowned monks," amused themselves, was universally accepted at more than its real worth in less polite circles outside the official and Arcadian world. Old Pasquin asserted his immemorial privileges on the occasion. An immense number of satires and libels were current in Rome, in which our poor Corilla was treated in a way that she at least seems in no degree to have deserved, for all that we hear of her private life, represents her to have been a good and estimable woman. Among other lampoons, the following is to be found recorded by Signor Vannucci in an article on Corilla in the "Raccolta Biographica" of Tipaldo. It marks the popular estimate of the value of Senator Ginori's forty–thousand scudi bargain:—
"Ordina e vuole Monsignor Missei
Che se passa Corilla coll'alloro,
Non le si tirin bucce o pomidoro,
Sotto la pena di baiocchi sei."
Monsignor Missei was governor of Rome. And the ordinance attributed to him by Pasquin, may be read somewhat thus:—
"By Monsignor Missei's decree, whoever
Shall pelt Corilla in her laurel crown
With love–apples or parings whatsoever,
Must pay the penalty of threepence down."
The innocent pastorella, however, soon withdrew herself from the Arcadian honours and popular gibes of the Eternal City; and carried her crown and her reputation home to her native Tuscany. The former she devoutly dedicated to the Virgin, over one of whose altars, in the city of Pistoja, it may yet be seen. The latter, as has been said, had not been barren; but had procured for her the means of making a comfortable home for herself and her husband in the Via della Forca in fair Florence. She had one child, who died in its infancy. As for her husband, it may be remarked, that on the great day of the coronation, among all the detail of seats set apart for this and the other functionary and notability, we do not meet with any mention of the smallest stool appropriated to the Arcadian king–consort. He rises to the surface no more, except to have his death chronicled in 1790. His wife survived him only two years. But she had lived long enough to see Arcadia desolate, and the literary fashions and traditions of her palmy day, scattered before the morning wind of another epoch.