ickles me, bites me!
Oh, how my eyes loosen sweetly in tears!
I'm ravished! I'm rapt! Heaven finds me admissible!
Lost in an ecstasy! blinded! invisible!--
Hearken all earth!
We, Bacchus, in the might of our great mirth,
To all who reverence us, are right thinkers;
Hear, all ye drinkers!
Give ear and give faith to the edict divine;
Montepulciano's the King of all wine.

It is necessary, however, that our modern barbarian should travel to
Montepulciano itself, and there obtain a flask of _manna_ or _vino
nobile_ from some trusty cellar-master. He will not find it bottled
in the inns or restaurants upon his road.

[1] From Leigh Hunt's Translation.

IV

The landscape and the wine of Montepulciano are both well worth the
trouble of a visit to this somewhat inaccessible city. Yet more
remains to be said about the attractions of the town itself. In the
Duomo, which was spoiled by unintelligent rebuilding at a dismal
epoch of barren art, are fragments of one of the rarest monuments of
Tuscan sculpture. This is the tomb of Bartolommeo Aragazzi. He was a
native of Montepulciano, and secretary to Pope Martin V., that
_Papa_ _Martino non vale un quattrino_, on whom, during his long
residence in Florence, the street-boys made their rhymes. Twelve
years before his death he commissioned Donatello and Michelozzo
Michelozzi, who about that period were working together upon the
monuments of Pope John XXIII. and Cardinal Brancacci, to erect his
own tomb at the enormous cost of twenty-four thousand scudi. That
thirst for immortality of fame, which inspired the humanists of the
Renaissance, prompted Aragazzi to this princely expenditure. Yet,
having somehow won the hatred of his fellow-students, he was
immediately censured for excessive vanity. Lionardo Bruni makes his
monument the theme of a ferocious onslaught. Writing to Poggio
Bracciolini, Bruni tells a story how, while travelling through the
country of Arezzo, he met a train of oxen dragging heavy waggons
piled with marble columns, statues, and all the necessary details of
a sumptuous sepulchre. He stopped, and asked what it all meant. Then
one of the contractors for this transport, wiping the sweat from his
forehead, in utter weariness of the vexatious labour, at the last
end of his temper, answered: 'May the gods destroy all poets, past,
present, and future.' I inquired what he had to do with poets, and
how they had annoyed him. 'Just this,' he repl