VERONA. I HAVE been over Verona. The amphitheatre is wonderful— beats even Greece. Of the truth of Juliet's story they seem tenacious to a degree, insisting on the fact, giving a date (1303), and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden, once a cemetery, now ruined to the very graves. The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love. I have brought away a few pieces of the granite to give to my daughter and my nieces. Of the other marvels of this city, paintings, antiquities, &c., excepting the tombs of the Scaliger princes, I have no pretensions to judge. BYRON. The evening cleared up as we approached Verona, the environs of which are beautiful, and the town itself has a gay and pleasing appearance. DIARY OF AN INVALID. TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. ACT II. SCENE I. VERONA. Launce. Nay, 'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping; all the kind of the Launces have this very fault: I have received my proportion, like the prodigious son, and am going with sir Proteus to the Imperial's court. I think, Crab my dog be the sourest-natured dog that lives: my mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands, and all our house in a great perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear; he is a stone, a very pebble-stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog: a Jew would have wept to have seen our parting; why, my grandam having no eyes, look you, wept herself blind at my parting. Nay, I'll show you the manner of it: This shoe is my father ;no, this left shoe is my father;-no, no, this left shoe is my mother;-nay, that cannot be so neither :-yes, it is so, it is so; it hath the worser sole; This shoe, with the hole in it, is my mother, and this my father; A vengeance on't! there 'tis : now, sir, this staff is my sister; for, look you, she is as white as a lily, and as small as a wand: this hat is Nan, our maid; I am the dog-no, the dog is himself, and I am the dog,O, the dog is me, and I am myself; ay, so, so. Now come I to my father; Father, your blessing; now should not the shoe speak a word for weeping; now should I kiss my father; well, he weeps on:-now come I to my mother, (O, that she could speak now!) like a wood woman;-well, I kiss her;-why, there 'tis; here's my mother's breath up and down; now come I to my sister; mark the moan she makes: now the dog all this while sheds not a tear, nor speaks a word; but see how I lay the dust with my tears. |