LETTER SEVENTEENTH.

FLORENCE, August, 18—.

MY DEAR

THERE is nothing more characteristic of this classical, extraordinary country, than a class of gifted persons, not to be met with in any other part of the world, called improvisatori. Even in Italy they are raræ aves in terra; for though there are many minor stars, some of which undoubtedly shine, while others. merely glimmer, there is only at present one great luminary in the firmament of extempore song (for they call it cantare). I am informed that the improvisatori are all of superior, and generally of literary talents; of the sensitive poetical temperament-genus irritabile vatum-sentimental, excitable, passionate, and easily roused to that high elevation or fine frenzy, as some call it, when the soul is so surcharged with feeling, that it can hardly deliver itself with sufficient rapidity of the swelling accumulation of thought with which it is

fraught. It is a curious fact, though I believe it is the same with every description of poets, that it is only on particular occasions that they are in the vein di cantare -when the muse is propitious, when Apollo deigns to smile on them with benignity, when, as some rather profanely say, the inspiration falls upon them. They can be roused, it is said, to this high temperature by some of the most touching and interesting circumstances and scenes in nature; such as the sight and the fascinating manners of a beautiful woman; the power of histrionic combination and exhibition; the influence of love, religion, sudden passion, and, above all, the power of music; in which it seems to resemble the inspiration of prophecy, for you will remember that when Elisha's mind was agitated with holy indignation at the presence of Jehoram, the son of Jezebel, and unfit to exercise the spirit of prophecy, he cried, "Bring me now a minstrel; and it came to pass when the minstrel played, the inspiration came upon the prophet "—the soothing influence of music inducing that serenity of soul and heavenly frame of mind, from which alone the spirit of prophecy could emanate. I have no doubt, also, that David never could have written his immortal Psalms, had it not been for the influence of his lyre upon a poetical temperament. Alfieri rides English horses for hours; makes passionate addresses to the Countess of Albany, and exercises a dangerous ab

stinence to procure his inspiration-he, I should think, is a little cracked. Mozart requires a good sound sleep, and immediately afterwards is delivered of his inspired music, before getting up in the morning. Burns lies on his back on the top of a hay-stack, gazing at the brilliant firmament, and produces, without pen or paper, some of his incomparable pieces; among others, "Mary in Heaven," and "Tam o' Shanter."

The prince of Scottish poets seems also to have been most sensitively impressed by the influence of natural sounds, as is most curiously and eloquently described in one of his letters to Mrs. Dunlop:-"I never hear," he says, "the loud solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer moon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of grey plovers in an autumn morning, without feeling an elevation of soul, like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing. Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the Eolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to those awful realities; a God who made all things-man's immaterial and immortal nature-and a world of weal or of woe beyond death and the grave."

But of all the phases of genius, nothing appears so involuntary as the effusion of a poetical mind. With

some it moves insensibly over the imagination in the dark, solitary, wakeful midnight hour, when the mind is particularly solemnised, and one seems alone with God. When the power of religion, love, or other sentiment is more deeply dominant in the poetic soul, which relieves itself, as it were, in expending its essence in poetry.

I should suppose that a similar sort of inspiration descends upon all great orators, poets, painters, sculptors, and even singers; and that there is a similarity of temperament in all who are gifted with that indescribable attribute called genius. They, one and all, feel that the mind at particular seasons is in an elevated and excited state, when occupied by the objects of its natural bias; and it is at such seasons that the power of genius is most strikingly manifested. Sometimes they wait long for the moving of the waters, if I may use the expression. Leonardo da Vinci stood a whole day looking at his immortal fresco painting of the Last Supper, when, desirous to finish the head of the Saviour; and when his soul was become illumed with the conception of the God-man-when the inspiration at last came, he himself declares, that he found the hand incapable of executing what the imagination had painted. The head of the Saviour, you know, was never finished in this chef d'œuvre-which, though almost every great artist has attempted the same

scene-remains alone on the pinnacle of pre-eminence, and now is in general circulation as an engraving.

I cannot help mentioning to you, though a little foreign to the point at issue, that the prior of the dominican convent at Milan, in the chapel of which da Vinci was executing the celebrated fresco of the Last Supper, made loud complaints of the painter wasting his time gazing for hours at the work, when he ought to have been labouring, as the priest conceived, at his task. Da Vinci was too proud to give him reply, but when he met his patron, Sforza, informed him that he had intended to punish the prior's ignorance and impudence, by painting him as the Judas Iscariot of the piece, but found him too fat for the character. Francis I. of France was so intoxicated with this immortal fresco, that he made a bold attempt to remove the wall, but finding this impossible, took possession of the inspired painter himself, now advanced in years; bore him off in triumph to Paris, where they soon gave him the coup de grâce by a combination of adulation, excitement, and high living. He left, however, at Paris, that exquisite morceau, his Mona Lisa, which he had taken many years in finishing-still in the Louvre-so beautifully and minutely executed, that the liquid of the eye, and every eyelash is distinctly brought out.

The person whom I have called the luminary of