As for the Ruspigliosi palace I left these lines in the room, written by
the same author, and think them more capable than any description I
could make, of giving some idea of Guido's Phoebus.
While yonder comes the powerful King of Day
Rejoicing in the East; the lessening cloud,
The kindling azure, and the mountains brow
Illum'd with fluid gold, his near approach
Betoken glad; lo, now apparent all
He looks in boundless majesty abroad,
And sheds the shining day.
So charming Thomson wrote from his lodgings at a milliner's in
Bond-street, whence he seldom rose early enough to see the sun do more
than glisten on the opposing windows of the street: but genius, like
truth, cannot be kept down. So he wrote, and so they painted! _Ut
pictura poesis_.
The music is not in a state so capital as we left it in the north of
Italy; we regret Nardini of Florence, Alessandri of Venice, and Ronzi of
Milan; and who that has heard Signior Marchesi sing, could ever hear a
successor (for rival he has none), without feeling total indifference to
all their best endeavours?
The conversations of Cardinal de Bernis and Madame de Boccapaduli are
what my countrywomen talk most of; but the Roman ladies cannot endure
perfumes, and faint away even at an artificial rose.
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