I am recovering a little facility in Italian--to be lost again when I get beyond the daily sound of it. I give Fanny a lesson every day in the Promessi Sposi, which has so often served as a go-cart to those who are learning to take their first steps in the language. She reads aloud to me, so that I save my eyes and practise my ears at the same time. She is a very good scholar for she puts zeal into whatever she does, and is making great progress. It is odd to me how the familiar phrases cling round my brain like bats to the roof of a cage, and are set flying all of a sudden by a chance footfall. I am very much struck, by the way, to find how much more vividly I remember the Venetian pictures than any others. I can’t help thinking it implies a peculiar merit in them. I recall them as I do natural objects--the Staubbach for example, or Hogarth....
... I can’t “do” anything over here except study a little now and then, and I long to get back to my reeky old den at Elmwood. Then I hope to find I have learned something in my two years abroad.... I am looking forward to home now, and shouldn’t wonder if I took up my work at Harvard again, as they wish me to do. We leave Venice probably to-morrow for Verona. Thence to Florence, Rome, and Naples....
As the year 1874 opened, the question of Lowell’s return to college work was mooted. He had felt a little piqued at being suffered to leave, after sixteen years’ continuous service, without any concession from the college. He thought at least he might have been granted leave of absence on half pay, and when no proposal of this sort was made, he sent in a definite resignation. Now the authorities intimated that they hoped he would resume his old place. He was in doubt what he should do. He had tasted the pleasures of freedom; he remembered well the uncongeniality of much of his work; he was painfully conscious of lacking qualities requisite for success in the profession of teaching; he had, moreover, been disturbed by physical disabilities, especially in a blurring of memory and a weakness in his head which alarmed him; the trouble, he decided, was “flying gout,” a disorder to which he had been more or less subject for many years, and which never left him for long after this period. More disturbing still was the “drop of black blood” he had inherited from his mother, which was apt to spread itself over the pupil of his eye, darkening everything, and, as he said, temporarily inducing a mood of suspicion or distrust.