too much to say that the "Canterbury Tales" could not have existed, in their present form, if Boccaccio had not written the "Decameron;" and it is to Boccaccio we are told that the writers of his time were indebted for their first knowledge of Homer. Wyatt and Surrey transplanted what they could of grace from Petrarch into the rough England of Henry the Eighth. We know what the early dramatists owe to the Italian storytellers. They went to their novels for the plots of their plays, as the novelists of to-day go to the criminal calendar for the plots of their stories. Shakspeare appears so familiar with Italian life that Mr. Charles Armitage Brown, the author of a very curious work on Shakspeare's Sonnets, declares that he must have visited Italy, basing this conclusion on the minute knowledge of certain Italian localities shown in some of his later plays. At home in Verona, Milan, Mantua, and Padua, Shakspeare is nowhere so much so as in Venice.
It is impossible to think of Venice without remembering the poets; and the poet who is first remembered is Byron. If our thoughts are touched with gravity as they should be when we dwell upon the sombre aspects of Venice—when we look, as here, for example, on the Bridge of Sighs—we find ourselves repeating:
"I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs."
If we are in a gayer mood, as we are likely to be after looking at the brilliant carnival-scene which greets us at the threshold of the present number of THE ALDINE, we recall the opening passages of Byron's merry poem of "Beppo:"
"Of all the places where the Carnival
Was most facetious in the days of yore,
For dance, and song, and serenade, and ball,
And masque, and mime, and mystery, and more
Than I have time to tell now, or at all,
Venice the bell from every city bore."
"And there are dresses splendid, but fantastical,
Masks of all times, and nations, Turks and Jews,
And harlequins and clowns, with feats gymnastical,
Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles, and Hindoos
All kinds of dress, except the ecclesiastical,
All people, as their fancies hit, may choose,
But no one in these parts may quiz the clergy,
Therefore take heed, ye Freethinkers! I charge ye."
The Bridge of Sighs (to return to prose) is a long covered gallery, leading from the ducal palace to the old State prisons of Venice. It was frequently traversed, we may be sure, in the days of some of the Doges, to one of whom, our old friend, and Byron's—Marino Faliero—the erection of the ducal palace is sometimes falsely ascribed. Founded in the year 800, A.D., the ducal palace was afterwards destroyed five times, and each time arose from its ruins with increasing splendor until it became, what it is now, a stately marble building of the Saracenic style of architecture, with a grand staircase and noble halls, adorned with pictures by Titian, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, and other famous masters.
It would be difficult to find gloomier dungeons, even in the worst strongholds of despotism, than those in which the State prisoners of Venice were confined. These "pozzi," or wells, were sunk in the thick walls, under the flooring of the chamber at the foot of the Bridge of Sighs. There were twelve of them formerly, and they ran down three or four stories. The Venetian of old time abhorred them as deeply as his descendants, who, on the first arrival of the conquering French, attempted to block or break up the lowest of them, but were not entirely successful; for, when Byron was in Venice, it was not uncommon for adventurous tourists to descend by a trap-door, and crawl through holes, half choked by rubbish, to the depth of two stories below the first range. So says the writer of the Notes to the fourth canto of "Childe Harolde" (Byron's friend Hobhouse, if our memory serves), who adds, "If you are in want of consolation for the extinction of patrician power, perhaps you may find it there. Scarcely a ray of light glimmers into the narrow gallery which leads to the cells, and the places of confinement themselves are totally dark. A little hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the passages, and served for the introduction of the prisoner's food. A wooden pallet, about a foot or so from the ground, was the only furniture. The conductors tell you a light was not allowed. The cells are about five paces in length, two and a half in width, and seven feet in height. They are directly beneath one another, and respiration is somewhat difficult in the lower holes. Only one prisoner was found when the Republicans descended into these hideous recesses, and he is said to have been confined sixteen years." When the prisoner's hour came he was taken out and strangled in a cell upon the Bridge of Sighs!
And this was in Venice! The grand old Republic which was once the greatest Power of Eastern Europe; the home of great artists and architects, renowned the world over for arts and arms; the Venice of "blind old Dandolo," who led her galleys to victory at the ripe old age of eighty; the Venice of Doge Foscari, whose son she tortured, imprisoned and murdered, and whose own paternal, patriotic, great heart she broke; the Venice of gay gallants, and noble, beautiful ladies; the Venice of mumming, masking, and the carnival; the bright, beautiful Venice of Shakspeare, Otway, and Byron; joyous, loving Venice; cruel, fatal Venice!
MODERN SATIRE.—A satire on everything is a satire on nothing; it is mere absurdity. All contempt, all disrespect, implies something respected, as a standard to which it is referred; just as every valley implies a hill. The persiflage of the French and of fashionable worldlings, which turns into ridicule the exceptions and yet abjures the rules, is like Trinculo's government—its latter end forgets its beginning. Can there be a more mortal, poisonous consumption and asphyxy of the mind than this decline and extinction of all reverence?—Jean Paul.
WINTER PICTURES FROM THE POETS
Although English Poetry abounds with pictures of the seasons, its Winter pictures are neither numerous, nor among its best. For one good snow-piece we can readily find twenty delicate Spring pictures—twinkling with morning dew, and odorous with the perfume of early flowers. It would be easy to make a large gallery of Summer pictures; and another gallery, equally large, which should contain only the misty skies, the dark clouds, and the falling leaves of Autumn. Not so with Winter scenes. Not that the English poets have not painted the last, and painted them finely, but that as a rule they have not taken kindly to the work. They prefer to do what Keats did in one of his poems, viz., make Winter a point of departure from which Fancy shall wing her way to brighter days:
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