Note 17 — BOOK III.
Reading edition
—Page 251, stanza cvii.
Those forms of dark yet lustrous loveliness.
Whatever the original cradle of the mysterious Etrurians, scholars, with one or two illustrious exceptions, are pretty well agreed that it must have been somewhere in the East; and the more familiar we become with the remains of their art, the stronger appears the evidence of their early and intimate connection with the Egyptians, though in themselves a race decidedly not Egyptian. See Micali, Stor. deg. Antich. Pop. But in referring to this delightful and learned writer, to whom I am under many obligations in this part of my poem, I must own, with such frankness as respect for so great an authority will permit, that I think many of his assumptions are to be taken with great qualification and reserve.