TRIBUTES TO GENIUS.
The Cuts represent unostentatious yet affectionate tributes to three of the most illustrious names in literature and art: DANTE, and PETRARCH, the celebrated Italian poets; and CANOVA, whose labours have all the freshness and finish of yesterday's chisel. Lord Byron, whose enthusiasm breathes and lives in words that "can never die," has enshrined these memorials in the masterpiece of his genius. Associating Dante and Petrarch with Boccaccio, he asks:
But where repose the all Etruscan three—
Dante and Petrarch, and scarce less than they,
The Bard of Prose, creative spirit! he
Of the Hundred Tales of Love—where did they lay
Their tones, distinguish'd from our common clay
In death as life? Are they resolved to dust,
And have their country's marbles naught to say?