[Footnote 7: Pasquale Anfossi, an Italian operatic composer of the
eighteenth century. He was for a time the fashion of the day at Rome,
but occupies now only a subordinate rank amongst musicians.]

[Footnote 8: A red, aromatic, sweet Italian wine, made chiefly at
Florence.]

[Footnote 9: The wine was presumably in flasks of the usual Italian
kind, bottles encased in straw or reed, &c., with oil on the top of the
wine instead of a cork in the neck of the bottle.]

SIGNOR FORMICA.[1.1]

I.

_The celebrated painter Salvator Rosa comes to Rome, and is attacked by
a dangerous illness. What befalls him in this illness._

Celebrated people commonly have many ill things said of them, whether
well-founded or not And no exception was made in the case of that
admirable painter Salvator Rosa, whose living pictures cannot fail to
impart a keen and characteristic delight to those who look upon them.

At the time that Salvator's fame was ringing through Naples, Rome, and
Tuscany--nay, through all Italy, and painters who were desirous of
gaining applause were striving to imitate his peculiar and unique
style, his malicious and envious rivals were laboring to spread abroad
all sorts of evil reports intended to sully with ugly black stains the
glorious splendor of his artistic fame. They affirmed that he had at a
former period of his life belonged to a company of banditti,[1.2] and
that it was to his experiences during this lawless time that he owed
all the wild, fierce, fantastically-attired figures which he introduced
into his pictures, just as the gloomy fearful wildernesses of his
landscapes--the _selve selvagge_ (savage woods)--to use Dante's
expression, were faithful representations of the haunts where they lay
hidden. What was worse still, they openly charged him with having been
concerned in the atrocious and bloody revolt which had been set on foot
by the notorious Masaniello[1.3] in Naples. They even described the
share he had taken in it, down to the minutest details.

The rumor ran that Aniello Falcone,[1.4] the painter of battle-pieces,
one of the best of Salvator's masters, had been stung into fury and
filled with bloodthirsty vengeance because the Spanish soldiers had
slain one of his relatives in a hand-to-hand encounter. Without delay
he leagued together a band of daring spirits, mostly young painters,
put arms into their hands, and gave them