ABBA ABBA

"We know not the day nor the hour," said Don Benedetto, who was fat, hale, nearly sixty. "These Protestants," he added.

"He did not call himself a Protestant," Gulielmi said. "He was a saintly young man, but he was neither Protestant nor Catholic."

Don Benedetto puffed at that saintly. "Interred in the dark," he said. "Darkness to darkness."

"What," said Belli, "do you mean by that?"

"The unenlightened. We may not even speak of invincible ignorance. All those nations that have turned their backs on the light."

"He had," Belli said, "more light in his little toe than you have in your entire fat carcase."

"No," said Gulielmi. "Please. Not now."

"I know nothing of him," Belli said, "but that I am prepared to say again and again. Priests live by the letter and poets by the word. Do you not say anything about poets turning their backs to the light."

"You are understandably upset," the priest said, "and it is early and chilly and dark. I will pretend I did not hear what you said."

"Oh, I said it," Belli cried. "Wipe that sanctimonius smirk from your jowls or I will wipe it for you."

"Please," Gulielmi said.

"Bloodsuckers, preyers on the people, purveyors of gloom, fear and uncharity."

"You will hear more of this," Don Benedetto said. He began to climb the Steps.

"You will hear more, you mean," Belli cried after him. "Much more, bloated parasite." And then, to Gulielmi: "God forgive me, what gets into me?"

The cortège was ready to move off.

TWO

So John Keats died on February 23, 1821, and Napoleon Bonaparte died a little over two months later. Percy Bysshe Shelley, having presented Keats in Adonais as a sensitive plant choked by weeds but paradoxically surviving his killers in the form of a spirit of Eternal Beauty, was drowned in 1822, reduced to ashes on an heroic pyre, then, like Keats, interred in the Protestant Cemetery of Rome. Lord Byron, fighting for the independence of Greece, died in Greece in 1824. The intensest phase of the Romantic Movement was thus coming to an end.

Lieutenant Elton died in Switzerland a year and more after the death of Keats. Joseph Severn returned to England but went back to Rome, there to live long as British consul and to become a venerable Roman figure. Valentino Llanos visited England, met Fa

Giova

Mr and Mrs Gulielmi had one child only, a son named Joseph Joachim, born in 1840. Joseph Joachim was trained as a singer at the Manchester Royal College of Music, and had a notable bass voice notably heard in performances of Handel and Mendelssohn oratorio and in sung mass at the Church of the Holy Name, Manchester, but he became best known as a private teacher of bel canto and pianoforte. Manchester was then, as now, a very musical city. Joseph Joachim married a Scottish lady, A

Joseph John Wilson married an Irish waitress he met in one of the U.C.P. restaurants in Manchester. This girl, six months after the marriage, gave birth to a son named for his grandfather Joseph Joachim. This boy, born in Moss Side in 1916, was to be – by a twist if not genetic then purely coincidental, since family interest in Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli was born and apparently died with the founder of the family – the translator into English of the great Roman poet. He had no linguistic endowment for the task, since Italian was no longer spoken in the family, but as a boy at St Bede's College, Manchester, he showed skill in facetious or scurrilous versifying and a passion for the Petrarchan so

J. J. Wilson was himself no poet. He made a strict distinction, even as a schoolboy, between the art of poetry and the craft of verse. His approach to the craft of the Petrarchan so

The Bet

Some men were talking, as men often will,

About their wives. And each with each one vied.

Over his beer, with a grim sort of pride,

Saying: "Mine's ugly." – "But mine's uglier still,"

Comparing photographs. "If looks could kill,

My missis could effect mass homicide.

Just look." But one man, with no picture, cried:

"Ugly? Come home with me and feast your fill."

A bet, then? Reet. The money was not lacking,

A quid per man. Their winter breaths asmoke,

They homed with him when "Time please" sent them packing.

"Get ready, missis." From upstairs she spoke:

"Am I to hide me face wi' piece of sacking?"

"Nay," he called, "it's a bet, lass, not a poke."

"The ashes of my dear departed?" said

The widow, serving tea and cakes at five

Five days after the funeral. "I contrive

To house them aptly. No, not lapped in lead.