308 THE STONES OF VENICE

singular increase of simplicity in all architectural ornamentation; the rich Byzantine capitals giving place to a pure and severe type hereafter to be described,* and the rich sculptures vanishing from the walls, nothing but the marble facing remaining. One of the most interesting examples of this transitional state is a palace at San Severo, just behind the Casa Zorzi. This latter is a Renaissance building, utterly worthless in every respect, but known to the Venetian Ciceroni; and by inquiring for it, and passing a little beyond it down the Fondamenta San Severo, the traveller will see, on the other side of the canal, a palace which the Ciceroni never notice, but which is unique in Venice for the magnificence of the veined purple alabasters with which it has been decorated, and for the manly simplicity of the foliage of its capitals. Except in these, it has no sculpture whatever, and its effect is dependent entirely on colour. Disks of green serpentine are inlaid on the field of purple alabaster; and the pillars are

* See final Appendix, Vol. III., under head “Capitals.”

by the best possible words and metaphors, Milton beats them both. I know nothing in Shakespeare or Dante so grandly painted as the two scenes of preparation for battle-between Satan and Death [ii. 704] and Satan and Gabriel [iv. 977]. The Death scene every one knows, but I don’t so much care for the first mysterious sketch of the shadows as for the opposition of Dark and Light, in their most appalling forms, when they prepare for battle, like the two clouds ‘over the Caspian’-Satan burning like a comet, Death wrapped in darkness. The other passage is in the end of the fourth book, where the angelic squadron ‘Turned fiery red, sharpening in mooned horns.’ That change of colour is very like Dante, and the rest of it is finer than Dante-in its kind, as a piece of painting.

“I would infinitely rather have written the passage where the Angel opens hell gates to Dante [Inferno, ix. 76], the evil spirits leaping out of his way like frogs, than either of these-the best in Milton; but still in their way they are finer than anything in anybody else. Dante thinks immeasurably finer things than Milton, but draws them more hastily; in this respect he is a good deal like Tintoret beside Titian.

“P.S.-When I say that Dante paints more hastily, I don’t mean less distinctly. Far more so. Dante would never write a piece of rank nonsense-like the expression ‘Sat honor, plumed’ [iv. 989]. He would have either told you nothing, or told you that the crest was of such and such a shape. But for this very reason, he often does not excite the imagination to help him out, as Milton does.”

One of the passages from Milton noted in this letter is quoted also and commented on in Modern Painters, ii. (Vol. IV. pp. 227, 291; and cf. pp. 327, 330). For another reference to the high praise here given to Cary’s translation, see a letter to The Builder in Arrows of the Chace, 1880, ii. 255.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]