Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare02fullrich).pdf/145

Rh that one mood. The last lines of the last sonnet are a fit motto for Boccaccio’s dream.

‘In copying both together, I find the prose of the Englishman worthy of the verse of the Italian. It is a happiness to see such marble beauty in the halls of a contemporary.

‘How fine it is to see the terms “onesto,” “gentile,” used in their original sense and force.

Margaret was reading, in these weeks, the Four Books of Confucius, the Desatir, some of Taylor’s translations from the Greek, a work on Scandinavian Mythology, Mœhler’s Symbolism, Fourier’s Noveau Monde Industriel, and Landor’s Pentameron, — but she says, in her journal, ‘No book is good enough to read in the open air, among these mountains; even the best seem partial, civic, limiting, instead of being, as man’s voice should be, a tone higher than nature’s.’

And again: — ‘This morning came ——’s letter, announcing Sterling’s death: —

‘The news was very sad: Sterling did so earnestly wish to do a man’s work, and had done so small a portion of his own. This made me feel how fast my years are flitting by, and nothing done. Yet these few beautiful