20. A _cherub's face_.
21. A _reptile_ all the rest.
22. The _Rabbins_.
23. Pride that _licks the dust_.

"'Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust.
Wit that can creep, and _pride_ that _licks the dust_.'

"Now, is there a line of all the passage without the most
_forcible_ imagery (for his purpose)? Look at the _variety_--at the
_poetry_ of the passage--at the _imagination_: there is hardly a
line from which a painting might not be made, and _is_. But this is
nothing in comparison with his higher passages in the Essay on Man,
and many of his other poems, serious and comic. There never was
such an unjust outcry in this world as that which these fellows are
trying against Pope.

"Ask Mr. Gifford if, in the fifth act of 'The Doge,' you could not
contrive (where the sentence of the _Veil_ is passed) to insert the
following lines in Marino Faliero's answer?

"But let it be so. It will be in vain:
The veil which blackens o'er this blighted name,
And hides, or seems to hide, these lineaments,
Shall draw more gazers than the thousand portraits
Which glitter round it in their painted trappings,
Your delegated slaves--the people's tyrants.[33]

"Yours, truly, &c.

"P.S. Upon _public_ matters here I say little: you will all hear
soon enough of a general row throughout Italy. There never was a
more foolish step than the expedition to Naples by these fellows.

"I wish to propose to _Holmes_, the miniature painter, to come out
to me this spring. I will pay his expenses, and any sum in reason.
I wish him to take my daughter's picture (who is in a convent) and
the Countess G.'s, and the head of a peasant girl, which latter
would make a study for Raphael. It is a complete _peasant_ face,
but an _Italian_ peasant's, and quite in the Raphael Fornarina
style. Her figure is tall, but rather large, and not at all
comparable to her face, which is really superb. She is not
seventeen, and I am anxious to have her face while it lasts. Madame
G. is also very handsome, but it is quite in a different
style--completely blonde and fair--very uncommon in Italy; yet not
an _English_ fairness, but more like a Swede or a Norwegian. Her
figure, too, particularly the bust, is uncommonly good. It must be
_