who was his intimate friend.  The Doria and Sciarra palaces contain the only Claudes I have seen in Rome.  Since the acquisition of the Altieri Claudes, we may boast of possessing the finest productions of this master in England.  I remember but one solitary Claude in the Florentine gallery; and I see none here equal to those at Lord Grosvenor’s and Angerstein’s.  We visited the church of San Pietro in Viscoli, to see Michel Angelo’s famous statue of Moses,—­of which, who has not heard?  I must confess I never was so disappointed by any work of art as I was by this statue, which is easily accounted for.  In the first place, I had not seen any model or copy of the original; and, secondly, I had read Zappi’s sublime sonnet, which I humbly conceive does rather more than justice to its subject.  The fine opening—­

    “Chi e costui che in dura pietra scolto
    Siede Gigante”—­

gave me the impression of a colossal and elevated figure:  my surprise, therefore, was great to see a sitting statue, not much larger than life, and placed nearly on the level of the pavement; so that, instead of looking up at it, I almost looked down upon it.  The “Doppio raggio in fronte,” I found in the shape of a pair of horns, which, at the first glance, gave something quite Satanic to the head, which disgusted me.  When I began to recover from this first disappointment—­although my eyes were opened gradually to the sublimity of the attitude, the grand forms of the drapery, and the lips, which unclose as if about to speak—­I still think that Zappi’s sonnet (his acknowledged chef-d’oeuvre) is a more sublime production than the chef-d’oeuvre it celebrates.

The mention of Zappi reminds me of his wife, the daughter of Carlo Maratti, the painter.  She was so beautiful that she was her father’s favourite model for his Nymphs, Madonnas, and Vestal Virgins; and to her charms she added virtue, and to her virtue uncommon musical and literary talents.  Among her poems, there is a sonnet addressed to a lady, once beloved by her husband, beginning

    “Donna! che tanto al mio sol piacesti,”

which is one of the most graceful, most feeling, most delicate compositions I ever read.  Zappi celebrates his beautiful wife under the name of Clori, and his first mistress under that of Filli:  to the latter he has addressed a sonnet, which turns on the same thought as Cowley’s well known song, “Love in thine eyes.”  As they both lived about the same time, it would be difficult to tell which of the two borrowed from the other; probably they were both borrowers from some elder poet.

The characteristics of Zappi’s style, are tenderness and elegance; he occasionally rises to sublimity; as in the sonnet on the Statue of Moses, and that on Good Friday.  He never emulates the flights of Guido or Filicaja, but he is more uniformly graceful and flowing than either; his happy thoughts are not spun out too far,—­and his points are seldom mere concetti.