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But if I read an entire poem I never escape that sensation of the ennui which is inherent in the gaud and the glitter of the Italian or Spanish improvisatore. There never was anything French about Hugo's genius. Hugo was a cross between an Italian improvisatore and a metaphysical German student. Take another verse "Le clair de lune bleu qui baigne l'horizon."
O. T. and the Fiddler soon followed, and met with, as it seemed, the same reception. After that appeared a Dutch, and lastly a Russian translation of the Improvisatore. That which should never have ventured to have dreamed of was accomplished; my writings seem to come forth under a lucky star; they fly over all lands.
Here the wild roses shoot forth from the crevices in the rock; the sunbeams fall prettily between the splendid pines and the graceful birches, upon the high grass before the colossal bronze bust of Bellmann. This place was the favourite one of that Scandinavian improvisatore.
But we must not expatiate on its effects; we must only give a little attention to the means by which they are achieved. Another of the common errors about Scott is to represent perhaps really to regard him as a hit-or-miss and hand-to-mouth improvisatore, who bundled out his creations anyhow, and did not himself know how he created them.
Quintilian, Statius, and Pliny the younger, represent a more restricted development; the first of them is the typical rhetorician, but of the better class; the second is the brilliant improvisatore and ingenious word-painter; the third the cultivated and amiable but vain, common-place, and dwarfed type of genius which under the Empire took the place of the "fine gentlemen" of the free Republic.
A low Dutch professor, whose luminous genius rendered unnecessary the ceremony of shaving; and a dumb dwarf, in whose interesting appearance was forgotten its perfect idiocy, prosy improvisatore, and a South American savage, were all superseded by the appearance of Vivian Grey.
The habit of discussing questions in this way necessarily reacts on the intellects of our ablest men, particularly of those who are introduced into Parliament at a very early age, before their minds have expanded to full maturity. The talent for debate is developed in such men to a degree which, to the multitude, seems as marvellous as the performance of an Italian Improvisatore.
The Italian, with her glibness of tongue and ready fund of anecdote, was transformed in her imaginative mind into a veritable improvisatore. Talila was not by any means the only heroine of the little tales. Mae had made the acquaintance of many youths and maidens, and to-day Lisetta, after thinking over her list of important personages, chose the Madre Ilkana as the heroine of the occasion.
A lad who held by his arm stopped suddenly on hearing the name of Francisco, which the people were repeating with so much enthusiasm. "Ha! I have found at last a story that interests you more than that of Cornaro the Turk," cried the Improvisatore, looking in the face of the youth, who had stopped so suddenly. "You are the young man who, last summer, had liked to have tricked me out of my new hat.
"Why, my dear sir, you are an improvisatore of the first quality." We rowed ashore, and nothing particular happened that day, until we sat down to dinner at Mr S 's. We had a very agreeable party.
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