Gifford says it is good 'sterling genuine English,' and Foscolo says that the characters are right Venetian. Shakspeare and Otway had a million of advantages over me, besides the incalculable one of being dead from one to two centuries, and having been both born blackguards (which ARE such attractions to the gentle living reader); let me then preserve the only one which I could possibly have—that of having been at Venice, and entered more into the local spirit of it. I claim no more.
"I know what Foscolo means about Calendaro's spitting at Bertram; that's national—the objection, I mean. The Italians and French, with those 'flags of abomination,' their pocket handkerchiefs, spit there, and here, and every where else—in your face almost, and therefore object to it on the stage as too familiar. But we who spit nowhere—but in a man's face when we grow savage—are not likely to feel this. Remember Massinger, and Kean's Sir Giles Overreach—
"Lord! thus I spit at thee and at thy counsel!
Besides, Calendaro does not spit in Bertram's face; he spits at him, as I have seen the Mussulmans do upon the ground when they are in a rage. Again, he does not in fact despise Bertram, though he affects it—as we all do, when angry with one we think our inferior. He is angry at not being allowed to die in his own way (although not afraid of death); and recollect that he suspected and hated Bertram from the first. Israel Bertuccio, on the other hand, is a cooler and more concentrated fellow: he acts upon principle and impulse; Calendaro upon impulse and example.
"So there's argument for you.
"The Doge repeats;—true, but it is from engrossing passion, and because he sees different persons, and is always obliged to recur to the cause uppermost in his mind. His speeches are long:—true, but I wrote for the closet, and on the French and Italian model rather than yours, which I think not very highly of, for all your old dramatists, who are long enough too, God knows:—look into any of them.
"I return you Foscolo's letter, because it alludes also to his private affairs. I am sorry to see such a man in straits, because I know what they are, or what they were. I never met but three men who would have held out a finger to me: one was yourself, the other William Bankes, and the other a nobleman long ago dead: but of these the first was the only one who offered it while I really wanted it; the second from good will—but I was not in need of Bankes's aid, and would not have accepted it if I had (though I love and esteem him); and the third —— ——.[82]
"So you see that I have seen some strange things in my time. As for your own offer, it was in 1815, when I was in actual uncertainty of five pounds. I rejected it; but I have not forgotten it, although you probably have.
"P.S. Foscolo's Ricciardo was lent, with the leaves uncut, to some Italians, now in villeggiatura, so that I have had no opportunity of hearing their decision, or of reading it. They seized on it as Foscolo's, and on account of the beauty of the paper and printing, directly. If I find it takes, I will reprint it here. The Italians think as highly of Foscolo as they can of any man, divided and miserable as they are, and with neither leisure at present to read, nor head nor heart to judge of any thing but extracts from French newspapers and the Lugano Gazette.