"Musa profonda dei Toscani, il Dante,
Il nobil cittadin, nostro Alighieri,
Alla filosofia ricco e brillante
Purgo il linguaggio e corredo i pensieri;
E nell' opera sua fatto gigante
A Campaldino nei primi guerrieri;
Lui il Purgatorio, Paradiso e Inferno
Fenomeno terren, poeta eterno!"
--_Le Statue disotto gli Ufizi in Fireneze_. _Ottave improvisate da
Giuseppe Moroni detto Il Nicchieri_ (_Iliterato_). Florence, 1892.
It has been boldly asserted by writers who should know better, that there
are no ghosts in Italy, possibly because the two only words in the
language for such beings are the equivocal ones of _spirito_ or spirit,
and _spettro_ or spectre--or _specter_, as the Websterians write
it--which is of itself appalling as a terrific spell. But the truth is
that there is no kind of _spuk_, goblin, elf, fairy, gnome, or ouphe
known to all the North of Europe which was not at home in Italy since old
Etruscan days, and ghosts, though they do not make themselves common, are
by no means as rare as eclipses. For, as may be read in my "Etruscan
Roman Legends," people who will look through a stone with a hole in it
can behold no end of _revenants_, or returners, in any churchyard, and on
fine nights the seer can see them swarming in the streets of Florence.
Giotto is in the campanile as a gentle ghost with the fairy lamb, and
Dante, ever benevolent, is all about town, as appears from the following,
which was unexpectedly bestowed on me: