Stupid of me; I thought I knew it." He very well may have done
so, but I am bound to say that I did not see this.
Near to Cama is Grono, where Baedeker says there is a chapel
containing some ancient frescoes. I searched Grono in vain for any
such chapel. A few miles higher up, the church of Soazza makes its
appearance perched upon the top of its hill, and soon afterwards
the splendid ruin of Mesocco on another rock or hill which rises in
the middle of the valley.
The mortuary chapel of Soazza church is the subject my friend Mr.
Gogin has selected for the etching at the beginning of this volume.
There was a man mowing another part of the churchyard when I was
there. He was so old and lean that his flesh seemed little more
than parchment stretched over his bones, and he might have been
almost taken for Death mowing his own acre. When he was gone some
children came to play, but he had left his scythe behind him.
These children were beyond my strength to draw, so I turned the
subject over to Mr. Gogin's stronger hands. Children are
dynamical; churches and frescoes are statical. I can get on with
statical subjects, but can do nothing with dynamical ones. Over
the door and windows are two frescoes of skeletons holding mirrors
in their hands, with a death's head in the mirror. This reflected
head is supposed to be that of the spectator to whom death is
holding up the image of what he will one day become. I do not
remember the inscription at Soazza; the one in the Campo Santo at
Mesocco is, "Sicut vos estis nos fuimus, et sicut nos sumus vos
eritis." {30}
On my return to England I mentioned this inscription to a friend
who, as a young man, had been an excellent Latin scholar; he took a
panic into his head that "eritis" was not right for the second
person plural of the future tense of the verb "esse." Whatever it
was, it was not "eritis." This panic was speedily communicated to
myself, and we both puzzled for some time to think what the future
of "esse" really was. At last we turned to a grammar and found
that "eritis" was right after all. How skin-deep that classical
training penetrates on which we waste so many years, and how
completely we drop it as soon as we are left to ourselves.
On the right-hand side of the door of the mortuary chapel there
hangs a wooden tablet inscribed with a poem to the memory of Maria
Zara. It is a pleasing poem, and begins:-
"Appena al trapassar il terzo lustro
Maria Zara la sua vita fini.
Se a Soazza ebbe la sua colma
A Roveredo la sua tomba . . .
she found," or words to that effect, but I forget the Italian.
This poem is the nearest thing to an Italian rendering of
"Affliction sore long time I bore" that I remember to have met
with, but it is longer and more grandiose generally.
