"The plays of the different nations give a fairly correct image of their manners. Harlequin, the valet and the principal character in the Italian comedies, is always represented with a great desire for eating, which comes from an habitual need. Our own comedy valets are commonly drunkards, which may imply debauchery, but not penury."
The declamatory admiration of Dupaty[648] offers no compensation for the aridity of Duclos and Lalande; still it makes one feel the presence of Rome; one feels by reflex that eloquence of descriptive style is born under the breath of Rousseau, spiraculum vitæ. Dupaty approaches the new school which was soon to substitute sentimentality, obscurity and mannerism for the truthfulness, clarity and naturalness of Voltaire. Nevertheless, across his affected jargon, Dupaty observes correctly; he explains the patience of the people of Rome through the age of their successive pontiffs:
"A pope," he says, "is always to them a dying king[649]."
Dupaty sees night approach at the Villa Borghese:
"There remains but one ray of day... it is expiring on the brow of that Venus[650]."
Would the poets of our day say better? He takes leave of Tivoli:
"Adieu, thou valley!... I am a stranger; I do not inhabit your beautiful Italy; I shall never behold you more: but perhaps my children, some at least of my children, will come to visit you one day; appear but as charming in their eyes as you have to their father[651]."
"Some of the children" of the scholar and poet have visited Rome, and they could have seen the last ray of sunlight expire on the brow of the Venus Genitrix of Dupaty[652].
Dupaty, Goethe.