The face of my friend with the great Venetian name was like one of Giorgione's pictures,—of that soft and mellow colorlessness that recalls the poet's line,—
"E smarrisce 'l bel volto in quel colore
Che non è pallidezza, ma candore,"—
or the Englishman's version of the same thought,—
"Her face,—oh, call it fair, not pale!"
It seemed to me, as I remember it, cream-colored; and her eyes, like clear water over brown rocks, where the sun is shining. But though the fair visage was like one of the great Venetian master's portraits, her voice was purely English, low, distinct, full, and soft,—and in this enchanting voice she used to tell me the story of the one large picture which adorned the room.
Over and over again, at my importunate beseeching, she told it,—sometimes standing before it, while I held her hand and listened with upturned face, and eyes rounding with big tears of wonder and pity, to a tale which shook my small soul with a sadness and strangeness far surpassing the interest of my beloved tragedy, "The Babes in the Wood,"—though at this period of my existence it has happened to me to interrupt with frantic cries of distress, and utterly refuse to hear, the end of that lamentable ballad.
But the picture.—In the midst of a stormy sea, on which night seemed fast settling down, a helmless, mastless, sailless bark lay weltering giddily, and in it sat a man in the full flower of vigorous manhood. His attitude was one of miserable dejection, and, oh, how I did long to remove the hand with which his eyes were covered, to see what manner of look in them answered to the bitter sorrow which the speechless lips expressed! His other hand rested on the fair curls of a girl-baby of three years old, who clung to his knee, and, with wide, wondering blue eyes and laughing lips, looked up into the half-hidden face of her father.—"And that," said the sweet voice at my side, "was the good Duke of Milan, Prospero,—and that was his little child, Miranda."
There was something about the face and figure of the Prospero that suggested to me those of my father; and this, perhaps, added to the poignancy with which the representation of his distress affected my childish imagination. But the impression made by the picture, the story, and the place where I heard the one and saw the other, is among the most vivid that my memory retains. And never, even now, do I turn the magic page that holds that marvellous history, without again seeing the lovely lady, the picture full of sad dismay, and my own six-year-old self listening to that earliest Shakspearian lore that my mind and heart ever received. I suppose this is partly the secret of my love for this, above all other of the poet's plays;—it was my first possession in the kingdom of unbounded delight which he has since bestowed upon me.
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