Eminent literary and scientific men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Vol. 1 (of 3)Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
History
Eminent literary and scientific men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Vol. 1 (of 3)
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Authors -- Biography; Scientists -- Biography
As might be expected on the demise of one so celebrated for genius,
sonnets, elegies, and epitaphs in abundance were composed and published
to his honour. His body was buried in the church of the Benedictines at
Ferrara, when the monks of that order, contrary to their usual reserve,
accompanied the funeral procession: a plain slab of marble being laid
over the grave, was presently over-run with Greek, Latin, and Italian
verses, as the natural products of so poetical a spot. His son Virginio
afterwards prepared a chapel and sepulchre for his parent, in the garden
of the house which he had himself built, and where he had spent many of
his last and happiest days. But the good fathers had such reverence for
the relics of a poet, who certainly was any thing rather than a saint,
and whom no pope would canonise, that they would not allow their
removal. In process of time. Agostino Mosti, a man of letters, who in
early life was a disciple of the deceased, seeing no memorial worthy of
his master's fame erected, at his own expense caused a tablet (worthy at
least of himself) to be placed in the aforesaid church of the
Benedictines, with a bust upon the tomb beneath, and a Latin inscription
by Lorenzo Fiesoli. A monument more superb was erected, nearly a century
later, by Ludovico his grand-nephew, bearing also a Latin inscription.
Neither of these, nor even that which the poet composed in the same
language for himself, need be inserted here; the two former being in the
common-place style of posthumous panegyric, and the latter quaint and
puerile, though of sufficient significance to have been imitated by
Pope, with reckless profaneness, in the ribald lines which he wrote for
himself.
"Under this stone, or under this sill," &c.
The house which he built (as formerly mentioned), with its humble
inscription, is yet shown as a monument more interesting to the eye of
the enthusiastic admirer of the poet, than any marble effigies, however
gorgeously or exquisitely wrought, could be: it brings the spectator
into personal contact with himself, by local and domestic association.
But in this respect, the chair in which he was wont to meditate; and the
inkstand from which he filled his pen to disburthen his thoughts, when
they flowed, as they did at times, like the juice of full ripe grapes
from their own pressure,--if these relics are genuine,--must be
incomparably the most touching and inspiring memorials of his life and
his labours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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