Italian Journeys | Page 7

French, and
Italian. Avventi mentions, among other interesting facts concerning the
Ferrarese Jews, that one of their Rabbins, Isaaco degli Abranelli, a man
of excellent learning in the Scriptures, claimed to be descended from
David. His children still abide in Ferrara; and it may have been one of
his kingly line that kept the tempting antiquarian's shop on the corner
from which you turn up toward the Library. I should think such a man
would find a sort of melancholy solace in such a place: filled with
broken and fragmentary glories of every kind, it would serve him for
that chamber of desolation, set apart in the houses of the Oriental
Hebrews as a place to bewail themselves in; and, indeed, this idea may
go far to explain the universal Israelitish fondness for dealing in relics
and ruins.
V.
The Ghetto was in itself indifferent to us; it was merely our way to the
Library, whither the great memory of Ariosto invited us to see his
famous relics treasured there.
We found that the dead literati of Ferrara had the place wholly to
themselves; not a living soul disputed the solitude of the halls with the
custodians, and the bust of Ariosto looked down from his monument
upon rows of empty tables, idle chairs, and dusty inkstands.
The poet, who was painted by Titian, has a tomb of abandoned ugliness,
and sleeps under three epitaphs; while cherubs frescoed on the wall
behind affect to disclose the mausoleum, by lifting a frescoed curtain,
but deceive no one who cares to consider how impossible it would be
for them to perform this service, and caper so ignobly as they do at the
same time. In fact this tomb of Ariosto shocks with its hideousness and
levity. It stood formerly in the Church of San Benedetto, where it was
erected shortly after the poet's death, and it was brought to the Library
by the French, when they turned the church into a barracks for their
troops. The poet's dust, therefore, rests here, where the worm, working
silently through the vellum volumes on the shelves, feeds upon the
immortality of many other poets. In the adjoining hall are the famed

and precious manuscripts of Ariosto and of Tasso. A special
application must be made to the librarian, in order to see the fragment
of the Furioso in Ariosto's hand, and the manuscript copy of the
Gerusalemma, with the corrections by Tasso. There are some pages of
Ariosto's Satires, framed and glazed for the satisfaction of the less
curious; as well as a letter of Tasso's, written from the Hospital of St.
Anna, which the poet sends to a friend, with twelve shirts, and in which
he begs that his friend will have the shirts mended, and cautions him
"not to let them be mixed with others." But when the slow custodian
had at last unlocked that more costly fragment of the Furioso, and
placed it in my hands, the other manuscripts had no value for me. It
seems to me that the one privilege which travel has reserved to itself, is
that of making each traveller, in presence of its treasures, forget
whatever other travellers have said or written about them. I had read so
much of Ariosto's industry, and of the proof of it in this manuscript,
that I doubted if I should at last marvel at it. But the wonder remains
with the relic, and I paid it my homage devoutly and humbly, and was
disconcerted afterward to read again in my Valery how sensibly all
others had felt the preciousness of that famous page, which, filled with
half a score of previous failures, contains in a little open space near the
margin, the poet's final triumph in a clearly written stanza. Scarcely
less touching and interesting than Ariosto's painful work on these
yellow leaves, is the grand and simple tribute which another Italian
poet was allowed to inscribe on one of them: "Vittorio Alfieri beheld
and venerated;" and I think, counting over the many memorable things
I saw on the road to Rome and the way home again, this manuscript
was the noblest thing and best worthy to be remembered.
When at last I turned from it, however, I saw that the custodian had
another relic of Messer Lodovico, which he was not ashamed to match
with the manuscript in my interest. This was the bone of one of the
poet's fingers, which the pious care of Ferrara had picked up from his
dust (when it was removed from the church to the Library), and neatly
bottled and labeled. In like manner, they keep a great deal of sanctity in
bottles with the bones of saints in Italy; but I found very little savor of
poesy hanging about this literary relic.

As if