[22]. Evelyn, who visited Naples about this time, observes that ‘the country people are so jovial and so addicted to music, that the very husbandmen almost universally play on the guitar, singing and accompanying songs in praise of their sweethearts, and will commonly go to the field with their fiddle. They are merry, witty, and genial, all of which I attribute to their ayre.’—Memoirs, vol. I.
[23]. ‘Among the women were the Signorine Leonora and Caterina, who were never heard but with rapture’ (says Della Valle, a contemporary of Salvator, in speaking of the female musicians of this time) ‘particularly the elder who accompanied herself on the arch lute. I remember their mother in her youth, when she sailed in her felucca near the grotto of Pausilippo, with her golden harp in her hand; but in our times these shores were inhabited by syrens, not only beautiful and tuneful, but virtuous and beneficent.’
[24]. Burney’s History of Music. Dr. Burney purchased an old music book of Salvator’s compositions, of his granddaughter, in 1773, and brought it over with him to England.
[25]. He was thrown into gaol and executed, for his concern in some desperate enterprise.
[26]. Why so? Was it not said just before, that this painter was deep in the Neapolitan school? But Lady Morgan will have it so, and we cannot contradict her.
[27]. We might refer to the back-ground of the St. Peter Martyr. Claude, Gaspar, and Salvator could not have painted this one back-ground among them! but we have already remarked, that comparisons are odious.
[28]. The Cardinal Sforza Pallavicini, having been present by his own request at the recitation of one of these pieces, and being asked his opinion, declared, that ‘Salvator’s poetry was full of splendid passages, but that, as a whole, it was unequal.’
[29]. Lady Morgan is always quarrelling with Passeri’s style, because it is not that of a modern Blue-stocking.
[30]. Hector St. John.
[31]. Verse and poetry has its source in this principle: it is the harmony of the soul imparted from the strong impulse of pleasure to language and to indifferent things; as a person hearing music walks in a sustained and measured step over uneven ground.