appears that our accomplished and lamented oountryman, Richard Henry Wilde, whose "Researches and Considerations concerning the Love and Imprisonment of Tasso" have been made use of with so discreditable a freedom by a recent English biographer of that poet, is — if another pretender prove not less successful — to be deprived also of the fame he earned by his discoveries in regard to Dante. A correspondent of The Spectator, under the signature of , writes as follows:—
"The questions are, what share Mr. Kirkup had in the recovery of the fresco of Giotto in the chapel of the Palazzo del Podestà at Florence, and whether directly or indirectly I have been the means of depriving him, or any of the coöperators in that good work, of the merit due to their labors. I shall best enable those who take an interest in this matter to arrive at a fair conclusion, by giving a short history of the recovery of that beautiful fresco. It was Mr. Wilde, and not Mr. Kirkup, who first spoke to me of this buried treasure. Mr. Wilde, an American gentleman respected by all that knew him, was then in Florence, engaged in a work on Dante and his times, which unfortunately he did not live to complete. Among the materials he had collected for this purpose, there were some papers of the antiquarian Moreni, which he was examining when I called one day, (I had then been three or four months in Florence,) to read what he had already written, as I was in the habit of doing from time to time. It was then that a foot-note of Moreni's met his eye, in which the writer lamented that he had spent two years of his life in unceasing and unavailing efforts to recover the portrait of Dante, and the other portions of the fresco of Giotto in the Bargello, mentioned by Vasari; that others before him had been equally anxious and equally unsuccessful; and that he hoped that better times would come, (verranno tempi migliori,) and that the painting, so interesting both in an artistic and historical point of view, would be again sought for, and at last recovered. I did not then understand how the efforts of Moreni and others could have been thus unsuccessful; and I thought that with common energy and diligence they might have ascertained whether the painting, so clearly pointed out by Yasari, was or was not in existence: several months, however, of wearisome labors in the same pursuit taught me to judge more leniently of the failures of my predecessors. Mr. Wilde put Moreni's note before me, and suggested and urged, that being an Italian by birth, though not a Florentine, and having lived many years in England and among the English, I had it in my power to bring two modes of influence to bear upon the research; and that such being the case I ought to undertake it. My thoughts immediately turned to Mr. Kirkup, an artist who had abandoned his art to devote himself entirely to antiquarian pursuits, with whom I was well acquainted, and who, having lived many years in Florence, (I believe fifteen,) would weigh the value of Moreni's testimony on this matter, and effectually assist me in every way, if I took it in hand. So I called upon him, either that same day or the next, and I found that he, like most other people, had read the passage in Vasari's life of Giotto, in which it is explicitly said that the portrait of Dante had been painted with others in the Palazzo del Podestà, and was to be seen at the time the historian was writing; but that he had not read, or had not put any confidence in, the note of the Florence edition of Vasari published in 1832–1838, in which it is stated, that the Palazzo del Podestà had now become a prison — the Bargello; that the Chapel had been turned into a dispensa, (it was more like a coal-hole where the rags and much of the filth of the prison was deposited); that the walls of this dispensa exhibited nothing but a dirty coating, and that Moreni speaks of the painting in some published work; the annotator concluding thus — 'It is hoped that some day or other we shall be able to see what there is under the coating of the walls.' So everybody hoped that some day or other the thing would be done, but nobody set about heartily to do it; and it is inconceivable to me that Mr. Kirkup, who shows in this letter, if it be his, such jealousy for the credit of the recovery, should have lived so many years in Florence either entirely ignorant of that which every shop-boy knew, or knowing there were chances of bringing such a treasure to light, that he should have never moved one step for that purpose. That Mr. Kirkup took no active part in this matter at any time, is quite proved by two admissions I find in the letter of your correspondent.