“I have had the pleasure of receiving your obliging letter, accompanying the copies of your two beautiful ‘Canzoni Toscane,’ and cannot sufficiently express how greatly I feel myself indebted to you for this additional instance of your kind partiality. The Canzone which you have been so good as to address to me, I shall be proud to prefix to my ‘Life of Leo,’ and to enable a few of my friends, devoted to Italian literature, to do the same. I shall thus, in some degree, gratify a desire which I always had, to see this elegant production precede my work; and which, indeed, nothing could have prevented (had you consented to it), but an apprehension that I might be considered as publishing my own praise, in having my name thus permanently united with yours in this favourite object of our common pursuit.
‘Che andrian le Muse lagrimose e sole Senza onor di ghirlande e d’auree cetre, E muti si starian gli inni canori Senza Te che Parnaso ami ed onori.’ |
“I continue to flatter myself, that at some period not
far distant, I may have an opportunity of renewing our very interesting
conversations on the literature and writers of Italy. If this should happen
under my own roof, it would be doubly pleasant to me; and as it is probable
that you may make an excursion during the summer, allow me to prevail upon you
to direct your
| LIFE OF WILLIAM ROSCOE. | 277 |
