As I Sat Reading In The Great Armchair, I Kept
Looking Round With The Tail Of My Eye At The Quaint, Bright Picture
That Was About Me, And Could Not Help Some Pleasure And A Certain
Childish Pride In Forming Part Of It.
The book I read was about
Italy in the early Renaissance, the pageantries and the light loves
of princes,
The passion of men for learning, and poetry, and art;
but it was written, by good luck, after a solid, prosaic fashion,
that suited the room infinitely more nearly than the matter; and
the result was that I thought less, perhaps, of Lippo Lippi, or
Lorenzo, or Politian, than of the good Englishman who had written
in that volume what he knew of them, and taken so much pleasure in
his solemn polysyllables.
I was not left without society. My landlord had a very pretty
little daughter, whom we shall call Lizzie. If I had made any
notes at the time, I might be able to tell you something definite
of her appearance. But faces have a trick of growing more and more
spiritualised and abstract in the memory, until nothing remains of
them but a look, a haunting expression; just that secret quality in
a face that is apt to slip out somehow under the cunningest
painter's touch, and leave the portrait dead for the lack of it.
And if it is hard to catch with the finest of camel's-hair pencils,
you may think how hopeless it must be to pursue after it with
clumsy words.
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