BEPPO; A VENETIAN STORY. ROSALIND. Farewell, Monsieur Traveller: look you, lisp, and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think that you have swam in a GONDOLA. As You Like It, Act IV. Scene I. Annotation of the Commentators. That is, been at Venice, which was much visited by the young English gentlemen of those times, and was then what Parts is now-the seat of all dissoluteness.-S. A. Lu ВЕРРО; A VENETIAN STORY. 'T is known, at least it should be, that throughout However high their rank or low their station, With fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masking And other things that may be had for asking. II. The moment night with dusky mantle covers Giggling with all the gallants who beset her; III. 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 clergyTherefore take heed, ye freethinkers! I charge ye. IV. You'd better walk about begirt with briars, Although you swore it only was in fun : V. But, saving this, you may put on whate'er With prettier names in softer accents spoke, No place that 's call'd "Piazza" in Great Britain. VI. This feast is named the Carnival, which, being VII. And thus they bid farewell to carnal dishes, Because they have no sauces to their stews, To eat their salmon, at the least, with soy: VIII. And therefore humbly I would recommend "The curious in fish-sauce," before they cross The sea, to bid their cook, or wife, or friend, Walk or ride to the Strand, and buy in gross (Or if set out beforehand, these may send By any means least liable to loss), Ketchup, Soy, Chili-vinegar, and Harvey, Or, by the Lord! a Lent will well nigh starve ye; IX. That is to say, if your religion 's Roman, Would rather dine in sin on a ragout— Dine, and be d-d!-I don't mean to be coarse-- X. Of all the places where the Carnival Was most facetious in the days of yore, Venice the bell from every city bore; XI. They 've pretty faces yet, those same Venetians, Such as of old were copied from the Grecians, In ancient arts by moderns mimick'd ill; And like so many Venuses of Titian's (The best 's at Florence-see it, if ye will) They look when leaning over the balcony, Or stepp'd from out a picture by Giorgione, XII. Whose tints are truth and beauty at their best: That picture (howsoever fine the rest) Is loveliest to my mind of all the show : It may perhaps be also to your zest, And that's the cause I rhyme upon it so : 'T is but a portrait of his son, and wife, And self: but such a woman! love in life! XIII. Love in full life and length, not love ideal, But something better still, so very real, That the sweet model must have been the same: A thing that you would purchase, beg, or steal, Were 't not impossible, besides a shame : The face recals some face, as 't were with pain, You once have seen, but ne'er will see again : |