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Updated: May 2, 2025
Puff is an impudent trader in sham antiquities and objects of virtù; Carmine, an artist constrained by poverty to aid and abet him in his nefarious proceedings; Brush is another confederate. In the second act a sale by auction is represented. Carmine appears as Canto the auctioneer; Puff figures as the Baron de Groningen, who is travelling to purchase pictures for the Elector of Bavaria.
MY DEAR FRIEND: You are now, I suppose, at Naples, in a new scene of 'Virtu', examining all the curiosities of Herculaneum, watching the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, and surveying the magnificent churches and public buildings, by which Naples is distinguished. You have a court there into the bargain, which, I hope, you frequent and attend to.
The first coinage of silver had taken place subsequent to the war with the Samnites; the clumsy and heavy copper as was the current money, and the rich Grecian objects of virtu brought by the legions after the war with Sicily almost received adoration in the homes of the patricians, but were viewed askance by many as amulets which might corrupt the old sturdy Roman customs.
Vesey. The Captain's fingers are loaded with cameos, his tongue runs over with virtù, and that both may contribute to the improvement of their own country, they have introduced bouts-rimes as a new discovery. They hold a Parnassus fair every Thursday, give out rhymes and themes, and all the flux of quality at Bath contend for the prizes.
"Though quite unknown in the London world, this young lady cannot fail to excite some curiosity among our fashionables as the successful rival of one whom the greatest painter of the age has pronounced to be the fairest of the fair the Lady B. F. This new Helen is, we understand, of a respectable family, niece to a late dean, distinguished for piety much and virtu more.
MY DEAR FRIEND: You are now, I suppose, at Naples, in a new scene of 'Virtu', examining all the curiosities of Herculaneum, watching the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, and surveying the magnificent churches and public buildings, by which Naples is distinguished. You have a court there into the bargain, which, I hope, you frequent and attend to.
Some of the lines pleasantly set forth the embarrassment caused by the appearance of such an aristocratic delicacy in the humble kitchen of a poet, accustomed to look up to mutton as a treat: "Thanks, my lord, for your venison; for finer or fatter Never rang'd in a forest, or smok'd in a platter: The haunch was a picture for painters to study, The fat was so white, and the lean was so ruddy; Though my stomach was sharp, I could scarce help regretting, To spoil such a delicate picture by eating: I had thought in my chambers to place it in view, To be shown to my friends as a piece of virtu; As in some Irish houses where things are so-so, One gammon of bacon hangs up for a show; But, for eating a rasher, of what they take pride in, They'd as soon think of eating the pan it was fry'd in.
"Cornelius Lucius, | Scipio Barbatus, Gnaivod patre prognatus | fortis vir sapiensque, quoius forma virtu | tei parisuma fuit, consol censor aidilis | quei fuit apud vos, Taurasia Cisauna | Samnio cepit subigit omne Loucanam | opsidesque abdoucit." The next, the title of which is painted and the epitaph graven, refers to the son of Barbatus.
Then you will hardly be induced to pay much for what you do not set much store by, merely for the sake of calling it your own. Add to this the further consideration, that in towns the Antiquari keep their best things for the resident collectors, so that you never see them; whilst all hopes of finding sound windfalls on the road you are journeying, are rendered futile, since Italy is now infested by lines of antiquarian footpads, who tramp as regularly as a well-organized police, right across its instep from sea to sea, and measure it lengthways from Milan to Otranto, sweeping up and carrying away every thing that is worth the transport. After this, you need hardly feel nervous (as some we have known were) lest, in the event of falling in with something exquisitely beautiful, the government should interfere to prevent its leaving Italy. Such an event not being in question, you need make no provision to meet it. Of the brigands and brigandage of Italy, the public has had enough; of her cheats and cheating her virtuosi and their virtù nobody has enlightened us. Nor, to say the truth, does the subject, at first sight, appear to admit of more than a few not very promising details of a not very pleasing picture of the Dutch school the romance of the waylaid carriage in the mountain defile; the sudden report of fire-arms; the troop of gay-sashed cut-throats in sugar-loaf hats; the "faccia
A third makes the indecency pass for the depth of his researches and for a high gusto in virtu, till, from his seeing nothing in the finest remains of ancient art, the world by the merest accident find out that there is nothing in him.
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