Mantuan : Virgil who was born near Mantua, capital of Mantua, Lombardy, Italy.
... and "revelatory" of the native land of the soul. Add to this that Virgil's rhythm is exquisitely euphonious, and it is no wonder Belloc should feel as if the very harps of heaven were echoed by the Mantuan. He couples Shakespeare with Virgil as a master of (to put it in a phrase of Arjava's) "earth-transforming gramarye". The quotations he gives from Shakespeare struck me as rather peculiar in the ...
... O Beatrice, one word's saluting grace 33 O beauty swirling in the heart, 385 O body, modern tongue swayed by thought's flicker 317 "O courteous soul of Mantuan poesy. 502 dry lips longing in a face grown pale! 530 O face of scorn, you winter not my will: 168 O Fire divine, make this great marvel pass. 86 ...
... English of Virgil's untranslatable "Sunt lacrimae rerum..." which I have already quoted in one of my letters. But one can't quite overlook his muffing several other wonderful snatches of the great Mantuan's art. To the example I gave in my last letter I would particularly add his treatment of the line which Arnold Bennett considered the most rhythmical in all poetic literature - the phrase Virgil put ...
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