_Which are the Shadows?_--In the notes to the beautiful poem _Italy_, by
Samuel Rogers, published (I think) in 1830, the following occurs:--
"'You admire that picture,' said an old Dominican to me at Padua,
as I stood contemplating a Last Supper in the refectory of his
convent, the figures as large as life. 'I have sat at my meals
before it for seven-and-forty years and such are the changes that
have taken place among us; so many have come and gone in the time,
that when I look upon the company there--upon those who are
sitting at the table silent as they--I am sometimes inclined to
think that we, and not they, are the shadows.'"
In the sixth volume of Lord Mahon's _History of England_, chap. lx. p.
498., we find this passage:
"Once as Sir David Wilkie (Mr. Washington Irving and myself being
then his fellow-travellers in Spain) was gazing on one of Titian's
master-pieces--the famous picture of the Last Supper in the
refectory of the Escurial--an old monk of the order of St. Jerome
came up, and said to him, 'I have sat daily in sight of that
picture for now nearly three score years. During that time my
companions have dropped off, one after another--all who were my
seniors, all who were of mine own age, and many or most of those
who were younger than myself; nothing has been unchanged around me
except those figures, large as life, in yonder painting; and I
look at them till I sometimes think that they are the realities,
and we the shadows.'"
The great resemblance between these two passages is very striking; the
latter only amplifies the former by very few words.