boy might learn the
same."

"He took no pleasure in reading, writing, nor accounts"! You will find
the same thing recorded of Cimabue; but it is more curious when stated
of a man whom I cite to you as typically a gentleman and a scholar. But
remember, in those days, though there were not so many entirely correct
books issued by the Religious Tract Society for boys to read, there were
a great many more pretty things in the world for boys to see. The Val
d'Arno was Pater-noster Row to purpose; their Father's Row, with books
of His writing on the mountain shelves. And the lad takes to looking at
things, and thinking about them, instead of reading about them,--which I
commend to you also, as much the more scholarly practice of the two. To
the end, though he knows all about the celestial hierarchies, he is not
strong in his letters, nor in his dialect. I asked Mr. Tyrwhitt to help
me through with a bit of his Italian the other day. Mr. Tyrwhitt could
only help me by suggesting that it was "Botticelli for so-and-so." And
one of the minor reasons which induced me so boldly to attribute these
sibyls to him, instead of Bandini, is that the lettering is so ill done.
The engraver would assuredly have had his lettering all right,--or at
least neat. Botticelli blunders through it, scratches impatiently out
when he goes wrong: and as I told you there's no repentance in the
engraver's trade, leaves all the blunders visible.

187. I may add one fact bearing on this question lately communicated to
me.[AT] In the autumn of 1872 I possessed myself of an Italian book of
pen drawings, some, I have no doubt, by Mantegna in his youth, others by
Sandro himself. In examining these, I was continually struck by the
comparatively feeble and blundering way in which the titles were
written, while all the rest of the handling was really superb; and still
more surprised when, on the sleeves and hem of the robe of one of the
principal figures of women, ("Helena rapita da Paris,") I found what
seemed to be meant for inscriptions, intricately embroidered; which
nevertheless, though beautifully drawn, I could not read. In copying
Botticelli's Zipporah this spring, I found the border of her robe
wrought with characters of the same kind, which a young painter, working
with me, who already knows the minor secrets of Italian art better than
I,[AU] assures me are letters,--and letters of a language hitherto
undeciphered.

188. "There was at that time a clos