Malaprop, and was an excellent
representative of that popular lady, though she will, I am sure,
forgive me for saying not so perfect a one as my mother.
Quite indescribably strange is the effect on my mind of looking back
at my three Thespian avatars--Falstaff at Cincinnati, Acres and Sir
Anthony in Grand Ducal Florence, and Sir Anthony again in a liberated
Tuscany! I seem to myself like some old mail-coach guard, who goes
through the whole long journey, while successive coachmen "Leave you
here, sir!" But then in my case the passengers are all changed too;
and I arrive at the end of the journey without one "inside" or
"outside" of those who started with me! I can still blow my horn
cheerily, however, and chat with the passengers, who joined the coach
when my journey was half done, as if they were quite old fellow
travellers!
It must not be imagined, however, that that pleasant life at Florence
was all cakes and ale.
I was upon the whole a hard worker. I wrote a series of volumes on
various portions of Italian, and especially Florentine, history,
beginning with _The Girlhood of Catherine de Medici_. They were all
fairly well received, the _Life of Filippo Strozzi_ perhaps the most
so. But the volume on the story of the great quarrel between the
Papacy and Venice, entitled _Paul the Pope and Paul the Friar_, was, I
think, the best. The volumes entitled _A Decade of Italian Women_,
and dealing with ten typical historic female figures, has attained,
I believe, to some share of public favour.
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