n independence. The Person of Quality is, of course, of the
aristocratic party.

47. _A sonnet._ Laudatory poetical tributes with ornamental borders were
posted in public places as a method of doing homage. In this case the
unknown "Reverend Don So-and-so" is ranked by his admirer with Dante,
Boccaccio, and Petrarch, the greatest Italian poets; with St. Jerome,
one of the most celebrated Fathers of the Latin Church; with Cicero, one
of the greatest of Roman orators; and with St. Paul, the greatest of
Christian preachers.

51. _Our Lady._ The seven swords represent symbolically the seven
sorrows of the Virgin Mary, but this Person of Quality regards the gilt
swords and the smart pink gowns merely as gay decorations. Religious
processions of the sort described here and in lines 60-64 are frequent
in European countries.

55. _It's dear._ According to the system of taxation in Italy, town dues
must be paid on all provisions brought into the city.

60. _Yellow candles._ Used at funerals and in penitential processions in
the Roman Church.

A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S

Mrs. Ireland says of this poem: "The Toccata as a form of composition is
not the measured, deliberate working-out of some central musical theme
as is the Sonata or _sound_-piece. The _Toccata_, in its early and pure
form, possessed no decided subject, made such by repetition, but bore
rather the form of a capricious Improvisation, or 'Impromptu.'" ("A
Toccata of Galuppi's" by Mrs. Alexander Ireland, published in _London
Browning Society Papers_.)

1. _Galuppi._ Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1784) was an Italian composer
born near Venice. He spent many years in England and Russia. In 1768 he
became organist at St. Mark's, Venice.

4. _Your old music._ At the sound of the music Browning imaginatively
re-creates the Venetian social life of the eighteenth century.

6. _St. Mark's._ The great cathedral. The Doge of Venice used to throw a
ring into the sea from the ship _Bucentaur_ to "denote that the Adriatic
was subject to the republic of Venice as a wife is subject to her
husband."

8. _Shylock's bridge._ The Rialto, a bridge over the Grand Canal. It has
two rows of shops under arcades.

18. _Clavichord._ An instrument with keys and strings, something like a
piano.

19-30. The musical terms in these lines show Browning's knowledge of the
technicalities of the art. To one without such expert knowledge the
exact musical connotation is doubtless obscure. But t