Chapter 14

1.

I stood in Venice, on the "Bridge of Sighs;" A Palace and a prison on each hand. Stanza i. lines 1 and 2.

The communication between the ducal palace and the prisons of Venice is by a gloomy bridge, or covered gallery, high above the water, and divided by a stone wall into a passage and a cell. The state dungeons called _pozzi_, or wells, were sunk in the thick walls of the palace: and the prisoner, when taken out to die, was conducted across the gallery to the other side, and being then led back into the other compartment, or cell, upon the bridge, was there strangled. The low portal through which the criminal was taken into this cell is now walled up; but the passage is still open, and is still known by the name of the "Bridge of Sighs." The _pozzi_ are under the flooring of the chamber at the foot of the bridge. They were formerly twelve; but on the first arrival of the French, the Venetians hastily blocked or broke up the deeper of these dungeons. You may still, however descend by a trap-door, and crawl down through holes, half choked by rubbish, to the depth of two stories below the first range. If you are in want of consolation for the extinction of patrician power, perhaps you may find it there; scarcely a ray of light glimmers into the narrow gallery which leads to the cells, and the places of confinement themselves are totally dark. A small hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the passages, and served for the introduction of the prisoner's food. A wooden pallet, raised a foot from the ground, was the only furniture. The conductors tell you that a light was not allowed. The cells are about five paces in length, two and a half in width, and seven feet in height. They are directly beneath one another, and respiration is somewhat difficult in the lower holes. Only one prisoner was found when the republicans descended into these hideous recesses, and he is said to have been confined sixteen years. But the inmates of the dungeons beneath had left traces of their repentance, or of their despair, which are still visible, and may, perhaps, owe something to recent ingenuity. Some of the detained appear to have offended against, and others to have belonged to, the sacred body, not only from their signatures, but from the churches and belfries which they have scratched upon the walls. The reader may not object to see a specimen of the records prompted by so terrific a solitude. As nearly as they could be copied by more than one pencil, three of them are as follows:--

1. NON TI FIDAR AD ALCUNO PENSA e TACI SE FUGIR VUOI DE SPIONI INSIDIE e LACCI IL PENTIRTI PENTIRTI NULLA GIOVA MA BEN DI VALOR TUO LA VERA PROVA

1607. ADI 2. GENARO. FUI RETENTO P' LA BESTIEMMA P' AVER DATO DA MANZAR A UN MORTO IACOMO. GRITTI. SCRISSE.

2. UN PARLAR POCHO et NEGARE PRONTO et UN PENSAR AL FINE PUO DARE LA VITA A NOI ALTRI MESCHINI

1605. EGO IOHN BAPTISTA AD ECCLESIAM CORTELLARIUS.

3. DE CHI MI FIDO GUARDAMI DIO DE CHI NON MI FIDO MI GUARDARO IO A TA H A NA V. LA S. C. K. R.

The copyist has followed, not corrected, the solecisms; some of which are, however, not quite so decided since the letters were evidently scratched in the dark. It only need be observed, that _bestemmia_ and _mangiar_ may be read in the first inscription, which was probably written by a prisoner confined for some act of impiety committed at a funeral; that _Cortellarius_ is the name of a parish on terra firma, near the sea; and that the last initials evidently are put for _Viva la santa Chiesa Kattolica Romana_.

2.

In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more. Stanza iii. line 1.

["I cannot forbear mentioning a custom in Venice, which they tell me is particular to the common people of this country, of singing stanzas out of Tasso. They are set to a pretty solemn tune, and when one begins in any part of the poet, it is odds but he will be answered by somebody else that overhears him; so that sometimes you have ten or a dozen in the neighbourhood of one another, taking verse after verse, and running on with the poem as far as their memories will carry them."--Addison, A.D. 1700.]

The well-known song of the gondoliers, of alternate stanzas from Tasso's _Jerusalem_, has died with the independence of Venice. Editions of the poem, with the original in one column, and the Venetian variations on the other, as sung by the boatmen, were once common, and are still to be found. The following extract will serve to show the difference between the Tuscan epic and the _Canta alia Barcariola:_--

ORIGINAL.