Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/188

174 sea. Human, however, and true, becomes the song in this way. Thus is life given to the melody on whose dead elements we should otherwise have been sadly puzzled. It is the song of one solitary, singing at a distance, in the hope that another of kindred feelings and sentiments may hear and answer.

, Oct. 8, 1786.

I paid a visit to the Palace Pisani Moretta, for the sake of a charming picture by Paul Veronese. The females of the family of Darius are represented kneeling before Alexander and Hephæstion: his mother, who is in the foreground, mistakes Hephæstion for the king; turning away from her, he points to Alexander. A strange story is told about this painting. The artist had been well received and for a long time honourably entertained in the palace: in return, he secretly painted the picture, and left it behind him as a present, rolled up under his bed. Certainly it well deserves to have had a singular origin, for it gives an idea of all the peculiar merits of this master. The great art with which he manages, by a skilful distribution of light and shade, and by an equally clever contrast of the local colours, to produce a most delightful harmony, without throwing any sameness of tone over the whole picture, is here most strikingly visible. For the picture is in excellent preservation, and stands before us almost with the freshness of yesterday. Indeed, whenever a painting of this order has suffered from neglect, our enjoyment of it is marred on the spot, even before we are conscious what the cause may be.

Whoever feels disposed to quarrel with the artist on the score of costume has only to say he ought to have painted a scene of the sixteenth century; and the matter is at an end. The gradation in the expression, from the mother through the wife to the daughters, is in the highest degree true and happy. The youngest