In his Italienische Reise, Goethe tells that at one moment of his life the desire for Italy became to him a scarce endurable suffering; at length he could not bear to hear or to read of things Italian, even the sight of a Latin book so tortured him that he turned away from it; and the day arrived when, in spite of every obstacle, he yielded to the sickness of longing, and in secret stole away southward. When first I read that passage, it represented exactly the state of my own mind; to think of Italy was to feel myself goaded by a longing which, at times, made me literally ill; I, too, had put aside my Latin books, simply because I could not endure the torment of imagination they caused me. And I had so little hope (nay, for years no shadow of reasonable hope) that I should ever be able to appease my desire. I taught myself to read Italian; that was something. I worked (half-heartedly) at a colloquial phrase-book. But my sickness only grew towards despair.
Then came into my hands a sum of money (such a poor little sum) for a book I had written. It was early autumn. I chanced to hear someone speak of Naples—and only death would have held me back.
XX
Truly, I grow aged. I have no longer much delight in wine.
But then, no wine ever much rejoiced me save that of Italy. Wine-drinking in England is, after all, only make-believe, a mere playing with an exotic inspiration. Tennyson had his port, whereto clings a good old tradition; sherris sack belongs to a nobler age; these drinks are not for us. Let him who will, toy with dubious Bordeaux or Burgundy; to get good of them, soul’s good, you must be on the green side of thirty. Once or twice they have plucked me from despair; I would not speak unkindly of anything in cask or bottle which bears the great name of wine. But for me it is a thing of days gone by. Never again shall I know the mellow hour cum regnat rosa, cum madent capilli. Yet how it lives in memory!
“What call you this wine?” I asked of the temple-guardian at Paestum, when he ministered to my thirst. “Vino di Calabria,” he answered, and what a glow in the name! There I drank it, seated against the column of Poseidon’s temple. There I drank it, my feet resting on acanthus, my eyes wandering from sea to mountain, or peering at little shells niched in the crumbling surface of the sacred stone. The autumn day declined; a breeze of evening whispered about the forsaken shore; on the far summit lay a long, still cloud, and its hue was that of my Calabrian wine.
How many such moments come back to me as my thoughts wander! Dim little trattorie in city byways, inns smelling of the sun in forgotten valleys, on the mountain side, or by the tideless shore, where the grape has given me of its blood, and made life a rapture. Who but the veriest fanatic of teetotalism would grudge me those hours so gloriously redeemed? No draught of wine amid the old tombs under the violet sky but made me for the time a better man, larger of brain, more courageous, more gentle. ’Twas a revelry whereon came no repentance. Could I but live forever in thoughts and feelings such as those born to me in the shadow of the Italian vine! There I listened to the sacred poets; there I walked with the wise of old; there did the gods reveal to me the secret of their eternal calm. I hear the red rillet as it flows into the rustic glass; I see the purple light upon the hills. Fill to me again, thou of the Roman visage and all but Roman speech! Is not yonder the long gleaming of the Appian Way? Chant in the old measure, the song imperishable
dum Capitolium
Scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex—
aye, and for how many an age when Pontiff and Vestal sleep in the eternal silence. Let the slave of the iron gods chatter what he will; for him flows no Falernian, for him the Muses have no smile, no melody. Ere the sun set, and the darkness fall about us, fill again!
XXI
Is there, at this moment, any boy of twenty, fairly educated, but without means, without help, with nothing but the glow in his brain and steadfast courage in his heart, who sits in a London garret, and writes for dear life? There must be, I suppose; yet all that I have read and heard of late years about young writers, shows them in a very different aspect. No garretteers, these novelists and journalists awaiting their promotion. They eat—and entertain their critics—at fashionable restaurants; they are seen in expensive seats at the theatre; they inhabit handsome flats—photographed for an illustrated paper on the first excuse. At the worst, they belong to a reputable club, and have garments which permit them to attend a garden party or an evening “at home” without attracting unpleasant notice. Many biographical sketches have I read, during the last decade, making
