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In his youth he had travelled much, and spent a long time in Spain and Italy, He read my "Improvisatore" in the original; his imagination was powerfully seized by it, and he spoke both at court and in his own private circles of my book in the warmest manner. He did not stop here; he sought me out, and became my benefactor and friend.
He was amiable and winning, full of quips and cranks, and with an inexhaustible fund of stories. Astonishing tales of adventure, related with great circumstantiality of detail, and of which he himself was the hero, played an important part in his conversation. Tieck once said he had never known a better improvisatore than Brentano, nor one who could "lie more gracefully."
Frau von Goethe, who was in Rome, and who chanced to be living in the very house where I brought my Improvisatore into the world, and made him spend his first years of childhood, sent me from thence a large, true Roman bouquet, a fragrant mosaic. The Swedish painter, S/dermark, proposed my health to the company whom the Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians had invited me to meet.
Nobody called his attention to my better lyrical writings; I was described to him as a spoiled, petulant child of fortune. He now read my Improvisatore, and feeling that there was something good in me, his noble character evinced itself by his writing a cordial letter to me, in which he said, that he had done me an injustice, and offered me now the hand of reconciliation.
But the men stepped out merrily, and joke and song lightened the way. There was an improvisatore in the Blankshire, whose comrades considered him a wonderful genius, though, as a matter of fact, his extempore effusions only consisted of taking some well-known song, and altering certain words or lines to suit a particular occasion.
It is no novel, but a poetical essay, fantastically conceived and executed with the sans gêne of an improvisatore. For those who admire the genius of George Sand its interest as a psychological revelation remains unabated.
Yes, I dare say I had; I meant; I meant; do you think it will rain to-day?" "Every prospect of a hard frost. I never knew before that I was an improvisatore." "Nor I. Have you heard from papa lately? I suppose he is quite in spirits at your success?" "My father is a man who seldom gives way to any elation of mind." "Ah, indeed! a philosopher, I have no doubt, like his son."
That he was not an improvisatore, however, any one can see who will take the trouble to compare the first edition of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ with the received text, the first sketch of ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ with the play as we now have it, and the ‘Hamlet’ of 1603 with the ‘Hamlet’ of 1604, and with the still further varied version of the play given by Heminge and Condell in the Folio of 1623.
"I know you now perfectly well," cried Francisco; "you are the Improvisatore who, one fine moonlight night last summer, told us the story of Cornaro the Turk."
"When I was sixteen," said he, "I used to think to myself, 'when I am twenty-four, then will I be old indeed' but now I am fifty-two, and I have just the same feeling of youth as at twenty." He was greatly delighted when Braisted, who was in the room with me, spoke of having read his "Improvisatore" in the Sandwich Islands.
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