The steps existed behind
the spot where Mortimer Market now stands, and not as Miss Porter says, in
her novel of the _Field of Forty Steps_, at the end of Upper Montague
Street. In her story, Miss Porter departs entirely from the local
tradition.
H.S. SIDNEY.
* * * * *
ITALIAN IMPROVISATRI.
_(To the Editor of the Mirror.)_
Allow me permission, if consistent with the regulations of your
interesting miscellany, to submit to you a literary problem. We are
informed that there exists, at the present day, in Italy, a set of persons
called "improvisatri," who pretend to recite original poetry of a superior
order, composed on the spur of the moment. An extraordinary account
appeared a short time back in a well known Scotch magazine, of a female
improvisatrice, which may have met your notice. Now I entertain
considerable doubt of the truth of these pretensions; not that I question
the veracity of those who have visited Italy and make the assertion: they
believe what they relate, but are, I conceive, grossly deceived. There is
something, no doubt, truly inspiring in the air of Italy:
For wheresoe'er they turn their ravish'd eyes,
Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise,
Poetic fields encompass them around,
And still they seem to tread on classic ground;
For there the muse so oft her harp has strung,
That not a mountain rears its head unsung:
Renown'd inverse each shady thicket grows,
And ev'ry stream in heav'nly numbers flows.
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