a mossy stone, dimly showing her former woman's shape; the style of
thing, charming, graceful, insipid, of which every one can remember a
dozen instances, and which immediately brings up to the mind a vision of
grand-ducal gardens, where, among the clipped ilexes and the cypress
trunks, great lumbering water-gods and long-limbed nymphs splash,
petrified and covered with melancholy ooze and yellow lichen, among the
stagnant grotto waters. In some respects, therefore, there is in the
"Ambra" somewhat more artificial, more _barrocco_ than that early
Renaissance of Politian and Pontano would warrant. There also several
bits, half graceful, half awkward, pedantic, constrained, childish,
delightful, like the sedge-crowned rivers telling each other anecdotes
of the ways and customs of their respective countries, and especially
the charming dance of zephyr with the flowers on the lawns of Cyprus,
which must immediately suggest pictures by Piero di Cosimo and by
Botticelli. So far, therefore, there is plenty to enjoy, but nothing to
astonish, in the "Ambra." But the Magnificent Lorenzo has had the
extraordinary whim of beginning his allegory with a description,
twenty-one stanzas long, of the season of floods. A description, full of
infinitely delicate minute detail: of the plants which have kept their
foliage while the others are bare--the prickly juniper, the myrtle and
bay; of the flocks of cranes printing the sky with their queer shapes,
of the fish under the ice, and the eagle circling slowly round the
ponds--little things which affect us mixed up as they are with all
manner of stiff classic allusions, very much as do the carefully painted
daisies and clover among the embossed and gilded unrealities of certain
old pictures. From these rather finikin details, Lorenzo passes,
however, to details which are a good deal more than details, things
little noticed until almost recently: the varying effect of the olives
on the hillside--a grey, green mass, a silver ripple, according as the
wind stirs them; the golden appearance of the serene summer air, and so
forth; details no longer, in short, but essentially, however minute,
effects. And then, suddenly leaving such things behind, he rushes into
the midst of a real picture, a picture which you might call almost
impressionistic, of the growth of rivers and the floods. The floods are
a grand sight; more than a sight--a grand performance, a drama;
sometimes, God knows, a tragedy. Last n