I Find I Have Said In My Notes That The Moses Is Improbable And
Unimpressive, And I Pretended A More Genuine Joy In The Heads Of The Two
Pollajuolo Brothers Which Startle You From Their Tomb As You Enter The
Church.
Is the true, then, better than the ideal, or is it only my
grovelling spirit which prefers it?
What I scarcely venture to say is
that those two men evidently lived and still live, and that
Michelangelo's prophet never lived; I scarcely venture, because I
remember with tenderness how certain clear and sweet spirits used to bow
their reason before the Moses as before a dogma of art which must be
implicitly accepted. Do they still do so, those clear and sweet spirits?
The archaeologist who was driving my cab that morning had pointed out to
me on the way to this church the tower on which Nero stood fiddling
while Rome was burning. It is a strong, square, mediaeval structure
which will serve the purpose of legend yet many centuries, if progress
does not pull it down; but the fiddle no longer exists, apparently, and
Nero himself is dead. When I came out and mounted into my cab, my driver
showed me with his whip, beyond a garden wall, a second tower, very
beautiful against the blue sky, above the slim cypresses, which he said
was the scene of the wicked revels of Lucrezia Borgia. I do not know why
it has been chosen for this distinction above other towers; but it was a
great satisfaction to have it identified.
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