expressed. There is something very dramatic and picturesque in the apostrophe which Faustina addresses to her rival, and in the image of the lady "casting down her large bright eyes:" as well as affecting in the abrupt recoil of feeling in the last lines. SONETTO. Donna! che tanto al mio bel sol piacesti! Dimmi, quando le voci a lui volgesti (Come a me volge) a te volger vedesti? De tuoi bei lumi, a le due chiare faci Veggo il rossor che le tue guance infiora ; TRANSLATION. Lady, that once so charm'd my life's fair Sun,* That of thy beauties still he talketh oft,— Thy mouth, fair hair, and words discreet and soft. Or, did he turn those sweet and troubled eyes On thee, and gaze as now on me he gazeth? That he who once adored thee, loves thee still.† Neither Zappi nor his wife were authors by profession: her poems are few; and all seem to flow from some incident or feeling, which awakened her genius, and caused that "craving of the heart and the fancy to break out into voluntary song, which men call inspiration." She became a member of * "Il mio bel sol" is a poetical term of endearment, which it is not easy to reduce gracefully into English. + Translated by a friend. the Arcadia, under the pastoral name of Aglaura Cidonia; and it is remarkable, that though she survived her husband many years, I cannot find any poem referring to her loss, nor of a subsequent date: neither did she marry again, though in the prime of her life and beauty. Zappi was a great and celebrated lawyer, and his legal skill raised him to an office of trust, under the Pontificate of Clement XI. In one of his Sonnets, which has great sweetness and picturesque effect, he compares himself to the Venetian Gondolier, who in the calm or the storm pours forth his songs on the Lagune, careless of blame or praise, asking no auditors but the silent seas and the quiet moon, and seeking only to "unburthen his full soul" in lays of love and joy Il Gondolier, sebben la notte imbruna, That Zappi could be sublime, is proved by his well-known Sonnet on the Moses of Michel Angelo; but his forte is the graceful and the gay. His Anacreontics, and particularly his little drinking song, Come farò? Farò così! are very elegant, and almost equal to Chiabrera. It is difficult to sympathize with English drinking songs, and all the vulgar associations of flowing bowls, taverns, three times three, and the table in a roar. An Italian Brindisi transports us at once among flasks and vineyards, guitars and dances, a dinner al fresco, a group à la Stothard. It is all the difference between the ivy-crowned Bacchus, and the bloated Silenus. 66 Bumper, Squire Jones," or, "Waiter, bring clean glasses," do not sound so well as Damigella Tutta bella Versa, versa, il bel vino ! &c. 139 CHAPTER IX. CONJUGAL POETRY CONTINUED. LORD LYTTELTON. LORD Lyttelton has told us in a very sweet line, How much the wife is dearer than the bride. But his Lucy Fortescue deserves more than a mere allusion, en passant. That Lord Lyttelton is still remembered and read as a poet, is solely for her sake: it is she who has made the shades of Hagley classic ground, and hallowed its precincts by the remembrance of the fair and gentle being, the tender woman, wife, and mother, who in the prime of youth and loveliness, melted like a |