I could not help, however, repeatedly observing, through the mingled
tone of levity and solemnity with which he rapidly descanted upon
matters of little importance, a certain air of trepidation --a
degree of nervous unction in action and in speech --an unquiet
excitability of manner which appeared to me at all times
unaccountable, and upon some occasions even filled me with alarm.
Frequently, too, pausing in the middle of a sentence whose
commencement he had apparently forgotten, he seemed to be listening in
the deepest attention, as if either in momentary expectation of a
visitor, or to sounds, which must have had existence in his
imagination alone.
It was during one of these reveries or pauses of apparent
abstraction, that, in turning over a page of the poet and scholar
Politian's beautiful tragedy "The Orfeo," (the first native Italian
tragedy,) which lay near me upon an ottoman, I discovered a passage
underlined in pencil. It was a passage towards the end of the third
act --a passage of the most heart-stirring excitement --a passage
which, although tainted with impurity, no man shall read without a
thrill of novel emotion --no woman without a sigh. The whole page
was blotted with fresh tears, and, upon the opposite interleaf, were
the following English lines, written in a hand so very different
from the peculiar characters of my acquaintance, that I had some
difficulty in recognising it as his own.
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