In such favourite incidents, then, of Giorgione's school, music or
music-like intervals in our existence, life itself is conceived as a
sort of listening--listening to music, to the reading of Bandello's
novels, to the sound of water, to time as it flies. Often such moments
are really our moments of play, and we are surprised at the unexpected
blessedness of what may seem our least important part of time; not
merely because play is in many instances that to which people really
apply their own best powers, but also because at such times, the stress
of our servile, everyday attentiveness being relaxed, the happier powers
in things without us are permitted free passage, and have their way with
us. And so, from music, the school of Giorgione passes often to the play
which is like music; to those masques in which men avowedly do but play
at real life, like children "dressing up," disguised in the strange old
Italian dresses, parti-coloured, or fantastic with embroidery and furs,
of which the master was so curious a designer, and which, above all the
spotless white linen at wrist and throat, he painted so dexterously.
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