Note 247 — Chapter LV

The rules of syntax are in these often overstepped, and conjecture left to eke out the sense. My reading is literal, of basta la fe del povere sevedore, which is intelligible, and rhymes, as is not the case with basta la fede, e 'l povere se vedo, the version of Passeri. This author tells us of a certain coy or mischievous Philomela who pierced her lover's present with holes and made of it a mouse-trap! Also of an exquisite Gubbian plate, portraying the Daniella Diva, who displays a wounded heart with the legend Oimè! "Ah me." A drug-bottle in Mr. Marryat's collection, and engraved in his work, has the portrait of a lady whose squint is given to the life.