IX
"PAUSE, COURTEOUS SPIRIT!—BALBI SUPPLICATES"[A]
Published 1810[B]
Pause, courteous Spirit!—Balbi supplicates
That Thou, with no reluctant voice, for him
Here laid in mortal darkness, wouldst prefer
A prayer to the Redeemer of the world.
This to the dead by sacred right belongs; 5
All else is nothing.—Did occasion suit
To tell his worth, the marble of this tomb
Would ill suffice: for Plato's lore sublime,
And all the wisdom of the Stagyrite,
Enriched and beautified his studious mind: 10
With Archimedes also he conversed
As with a chosen friend; nor did he leave
Those laureat wreaths ungathered which the Nymphs
Twine near their loved Permessus.[1]—Finally,
Himself above each lower thought uplifting, 15
His ears he closed to listen to the songs[2]
Which Sion's Kings did consecrate of old;
And his Permessus found on Lebanon.[3]
A blessèd Man! who of protracted days
Made not, as thousands do, a vulgar sleep; 20
But truly did He live his life. Urbino,
Take pride in him!—O Passenger, farewell!
I have been unable to obtain any definite information in reference to the persons commemorated in these epitaphs by Chiabrera: Francesco Ceni, Titus, Ambrosio Salinero, Roberto Dati, Lelius, Francesco Pozzobonnelli, and Balbi. Mr. W. M. Rossetti writes to me that he "supposes all the men named by Chiabrera to be such as enjoyed a certain local and temporary reputation, which has hardly passed down to any sort of posterity, and certainly not to the ordinary English reader."
Chiabrera was born at Savona on the 8th of June 1552, and educated at Rome. He entered the service of Cardinal Cornaro, married in his 50th year, lived to the age of 85, and died October 14, 1637. His poetical faculty showed itself late. "Having commenced to read the Greek writers at home, he conceived a great admiration for Pindar, and strove successfully to imitate him. He was not less happy in catching the naïve and pleasant spirit of Anacreon; his canzonetti being distinguished for their ease and elegance, while his Lettere Famigliari was the first attempt to introduce the poetical epistle into Italian Literature. He wrote also several epics, bucolics, and dramatic poems. His Opere appeared at Venice, in 6 vols., in 1768."
Wordsworth says of him, in his Essay on Epitaphs, where translations of two of those Epitaphs of Chiabrera first appeared (see The Friend, February 22, 1810, and notes to The Excursion)—"His life was long, and every part of it bore appropriate fruits. Urbino, his birth-place, might be proud of him, and the passenger who was entreated to pray for his soul has a wish breathed for his welfare.... The Epitaphs of Chiabrera are twenty-nine in number, and all of them, save two, upon men probably little known at this day in their own country, and scarcely at all beyond the limits of it; and the reader is generally made acquainted with the moral and intellectual excellence which distinguished them by a brief history of the course of their lives, or a selection of events and circumstances, and thus they are individualized; but in the two other instances, namely, in those of Tasso and Raphael, he enters into no particulars, but contents himself with four lines expressing one sentiment, upon the principle laid down in the former part of this discourse, when the subject of the epitaph is a man of prime note...."
Compare the poem Musings near Aquapendente. In reference to the places referred to in these Epitaphs of Chiabrera, it may be mentioned that Savona (Epitaphs [III.], [IV.], [V.], [VII.], [VIII.]) is a town in the Genovese territory; Permessus (Epitaphs [V.] and [IX.]) a river of Bœotia, rising in Mount Helicon and flowing round it, hence sacred to the Muses; and that the fountain of Hippocrene—also referred to in Epitaph [V.]—was not far distant. Sebeto (Epitaph [VII.]), now cape Faro, is a Sicilian promontory.—Ed.