Not long before
his death he was addressed by one that wished to write his life.
He made answer that he had been a versifier and nothing more,
epigrammatically recounted the chief facts of his career, and ended by
saying, "of what I have written it is not worth while to speak"; and
posterity has upon the whole agreed with him, though, of course, no
edition of the Italian classics would be perfect without him. We know
this from the classics of our own tongue, which abound in marvels of
insipidity and emptiness.
But all this does not make him less interesting as a figure in that
amusing literarified society; and we may be glad to see him in Parma
with Signor Torelli's eyes, as he "issues smug, ornate, with his
well-fitting, polished shoe, his handsome leg in its neat stocking,
his whole immaculate person, and his demure visage, and, gently
sauntering from Casa Caprara, takes his way toward Casa Landi."
I do not know Casa Landi; I have never seen it; and yet I think I can
tell you of it: a gloomy-fronted pile of Romanesque architecture, the
lower story remarkable for its weather-stained, vermiculated stone,
and the ornamental iron gratings at the windows. The _porte-cochere_
stands wide open and shows the leaf and blossom of a lovely garden
inside, with a tinkling fountain in the midst.
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