CANTO IV.]
CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE.
365
Her corn, and wine, and oil—and Plenty leaps
To laughing life, with her redundant Horn.
Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps
Was modern Luxury of Commerce born,[1][2]
And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new Morn.
XLIX.
There, too, the Goddess loves in stone, and fills[3][4]N14
- ↑
Where Luxury might willingly be born,
And buried Learning looks forth into fresher morn.—[MS. M. erased.] - ↑ [The wealth which permitted the Florentine nobility to indulge their taste for modern, that is, refined luxury was derived from success in trade. For example, Giovanni de' Medici (1360-1428), the father of Cosmo and great-grandfather of Lorenzo de' Medici, was a banker and Levantine merchant. As for the Renaissance, to say nothing of Petrarch of Florentine parentage, two of the greatest Italian scholars and humanists—Ficino, born A.D. 1430, and Poliziano, born 1454—were Florentines; and Poggio was born A.D. 1380, at Terra Nuova on Florentine soil.]
- ↑ There, too, the Goddess breathes in stone and fills.—[MS. M.]
- ↑ [The statue of Venus de' Medici, which stands in the Tribune of the Uffizzi Gallery at Florence, is said to be a late Greek (first or second century B.C.) copy of an early reproduction, of the Cnidian Aphrodite, the work, perhaps, of one of his sons, Kephisodotos or Timarchos. (See Histoire de la Sculpture Grecque, par Maxime Collignon, Paris, 1897, ii. 641.) In a Catalogue Raissonné of La Galerie de Florence, 1804, in the editor's possession, which opens with an eloquent tribute to the enlightenment of the Medici, la fameuse Vénus is conspicuous by her absence. She had been deported to Paris by Napoleon, but when Lord Byron spent a day in Florence in April, 1817, and returned "drunk with Beauty" from the two galleries, the lovely lady, thanks to the much-abused "Powers," was once more in her proper shrine.]
- ↑
——and we draw
As from a fountain of immortal hills.—[MS. M. erased.]
