SONNETS FROM VENICE. The com mon consent of critics and general readers ranks Platen's
To the original 12 sonnets Platen added five variants, a small number to be chosen from the voluminous writings of the most aristocratic and faultless master of German verse as his contribution to world literature. For Platen the City of Lagoons had a miraculous, mysteri ous, awesome beauty in its "labyrinth of bridges and canals" from which he took a regretful leave after two months of delight, with feelings akin to those of banished Ovid longing for. Rome. The
"Neptunian city where divine honor is paid to winged lions by a glad-hearted people of charm ing idlers, everywhere the monument of fallen greatness, whose horses, captured in the sack of Constantinople, were humbled by the Corsi can's bridle," revealed to Platen .a wealth of power and gentleness even in its cold unyielding marble where "art grew from the sea like a gorgeous tulip." Von Klenze claims Platen as the "first visitor to be keenly alive to the charm of her Giovanni Bellini; to show sympathetic comprehension of the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo and its treasures?' But Platen's °first love in Venice," Bellini, gradually found a victorious rival in Titian, whose 'Ascension of Mary,' 'Peter the Martyr,' and especially