Part 10
as Milton says. Pinelli had an excellent taste for pictures likewise, and here at Venice there are paintings to satisfy, nay satiate connoisseurship herself. Tintoret’s force of colouring at St. Rocque’s, displayed in the crucifixion, can surely be exceeded by no disposition of light and shade; but the Scuola Bolognese has hardened my heart against merit of any other sort, so much more easy to be obtained, than that of character, dignity, and truth. Paul Veronese forgets too seldom his original trade of _orefice_, there is too much gold and silver in his drapery; and though Darius’s ladies are judiciously adorned with a great deal of it here at Palazzo Pisani, I would willingly have abated some brocade, for an addition of expressive majesty in the Alexander. What a striking difference there is too between Guercino’s prodigal returned, and a picture at some Venetian palace of the same story treated by Leandro Bassano! yet who can forbear crying out Nature, nature! when in the last named work one sees the faithful spaniel run out to meet and acknowledge his poor young master though in rags, while the cook admiring the uncommon fatness of the calf, seems to anticipate the pleasure of a jolly day: so if the old father does look a little like pantaloon, why one forgives him, for we are not told that the fable had to do with _nobiltà_, though Guercino has made _his_ master of the house a rich and stately oriental, who meets and consoles, near a column of Grecian architecture, his penitent son, whose half-uncovered form exhibits beauty sunk into decay, and whose graceful expression of shame and sorrow shew the dignity of his original birth, and little expectation of the ill-endured pains his poverty has caused: the elder brother, meantime, glowing with resentment, and turning with apparent scorn away from the sight of a scene so little to the honour of the family. Basta! as the Italians say; when we were at Rome we purchased a fine view of St. Mark’s Place Venice; now we are at Venice we have bought a sketch of Guido’s Aurora. The Doge’s dinner was magnificent, the plate older and I think finer than the Pope’s; I forget on what occasion it was given, I mean the feast, but had it been an annual ceremony our kind friends would have shewn it us last year. We must leave them once more, for a long time I fear, but I part with less regret because the heat grows almost insupportable; and either the stench of the small canals, or else the too great abundance of sardelline, a fresh anchovy with which these seas abound, keep me unwell and in perpetual fear of catching a putrid fever, should I indulge in eating once again of so rich but dangerous a dainty. Besides that one may be tired of exertion, and fatigued with festivity, purchased at the price of sleep and quiet.
Non Hybla non me specifer capit Nilus, Nec quæ paludes delicata Pomptinus Ex arce clivi spectat uva Sestini. Quid concupiscam? quæris ergo,--_dormire_[35].
To PADUA.
Then we returned the twelfth of June, and surely it is too difficult to describe the sweet sensations excited by the enjoyment of
Each rural sight, each rural sound;
as the dear banks of the Brenta first saluted our return to _terra firma_ from the watery residence of our _bella dominante_. We dined at a lovely villa belonging to an amiable friend upon the margin of the river, where the kind embraces of the Padrona di Casa, added to the fragrance of her garden, and the sweet breath of oxen drawing in her team, revived me once more to the enjoyment of cheerful conversation, by restoring my natural health, and proving beyond a possibility of doubt, that my late disorder was of the putrid kind. We dined in a grotto-like room, and partook the evening refreshments, cake, ice, and lemonade, under a tree by the river side, whilst my own feelings reminded me of the sailors delight described in Anson’s voyages when they landed at Juan Fernandez. Night was best disposed of in the barge, and I observed as we entered Padua early in the morning, how surprisingly quick had been the progress of summer; but in these countries vegetation is so rapid, that every thing makes haste to come and more to go. Scarce have you tasted green pease or strawberries, before they are out of season; and if you do _not_ swallow your pleasures, as Madame la Presidente said, you have a chance to miss of getting any pleasures at all. Here is no mediocrity in any thing, no moderate weather, no middle rank of life, no twilight; whatever is not night is day, and whatever is not love is hatred; and that the English should eat peaches in May, and green pease in October, sounds to Italian ears as a miracle; they comfort themselves, however, by saying that they _must_ be very insipid, while _we_ know that fruits forced by strong fire are at least many of them higher in flavour than those produced by sun; the pine-apple particularly, which West Indians confess eats better with us than with them. Figs and cherries, however, defy a hot-house, and grapes raised by art are worth little except for shew; peaches, nectarines, and ananas are the glory of a British gardener, and no country but England can shew such. Our morning, passed at the villa of the senator Quirini, set us on this train of thinking, for every culled excellence adorned it, and brought to my mind Voltaire’s description of Pococuranti in Candide, false only in the ostentation, and _there_ the character fails; misled by a French idea, that pleasure is nothing without the delight of shewing that you are pleased, like the old adage, or often-quoted passage about learning:
Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter[36].
A Venetian has no such notions; by force of mind and dint of elegance inherent in it, he pleases himself first, and finds every body else delighted of course, nor would quit his own country except for paradise; while an English nobleman clumps his trees, and twists his river, to comply with his neighbour’s taste, when perhaps he has none of his own; feels disgusted with all he has done, and runs away to live in Italy.
The evening of this day was spent at the theatre, where I was glad the audience were no better pleased, for the plaudits of an Italian Platea at an air they like, when one’s nerves are weak and the weather very hot, are all but totally insupportable. What then must these poor actors have suffered, who laboured so violently to entertain us? A tragedy in rhyme upon the subject of Julius Sabinus and his wife Epponina was the representation; and wonderfully indeed did the players struggle, and bounce, and sprunt, like vigorous patients resisting the influence of a disease called opisthotonos, or dry gripes of Jamaica; “Were their jaws once locked we should do better,” said Mr. Chappelow. “Che spacca monti mai!” exclaimed the gentle Padovani. _Spacca monte_ means just our English Drawcansir, a fellow that splits mountains with his bluster, a captain _Blowmedown_.
The fair at Padua is a better place for spending one’s time than the theatre; it is built round a pretty area, and I much wonder the middle is not filled by a band of music. Our Astley is expected to shine here shortly, and the ladies are in haste to see _il bel Inglese a Cavallo_; but we must be seduced to stay no longer among those whom I must ever leave with grateful regret and truly affectionate regard. Our carriage is repaired, and the man says it will now carry us safely round the world if we please; our first stage however will be no farther than to pretty
VERONA.
The road from Padua hither is a vile one; one can scarcely make twenty miles a-day in any part of the Venetian state. Its senators, accustomed to water carriage, have little care for us who go by land. The Palanzuola way is worse however, and I am glad once more to see sweet Verona.
Petruchio and Catharine might easily have met with all the adventures related by Grumio on their journey thither, but when once arrived she should have been contented. This city is as lovely as ever, more so than it was last April twelvemonth, when the spring was sullen and backward; every hill now glows with the gay produce of summer, and every valley smiles with plenty expected or pleasure possessed. The antiquities however look less respectable than when I left them; no amphitheatre will do after the Roman Colossæum, and our triumphal arch here looked so pitiful, I wondered what was come to it. So must it always happen to the performances of art, which we compare one against another, and find that as man made the best of them, so some man may in some moment make a better still: but the productions of nature are the works of God; we can only compare them with other things done by the same Almighty Master, whose power is equally discernible in all, from the fly’s antennæ to the elephant’s proboscis. Bozza’s collection gave birth to this last sentence; the farther one goes the more astonishing grows his musæum, the neglect of which is sure no credit to the present age. I find his cabinet much fuller than I left it, and adorned with many new specimens from the southern seas, besides flying-fish innumerable, beautifully preserved, and one predaceous creature caught in the very act of gorging his prey, a proof of their destruction being instant as that of the dwellers in Pompeia, who had their dinners dished when the eruption overwhelmed them.
We took leave of our learned friends here with concern, but hope to see them again, and tread the stucco floors so prettily mottled and variegated, they look like the cold mock turtle soup exactly, which London pastry-cooks keep in their shops, ready for immediate use.
What an odd thing is custom! here is weather to fry one in, yet after exercise, and in a state of the most violent perspiration, no consequences follow the use of iced beverages, except the sense of pleasure resulting from them at the moment. Should a Bath belle indulge in such luxury, after dancing down forty couple at Mr. Tyson’s ball, we should expect to hear next day of her surfeit at least, if not of her sudden death. Lying-in ladies take the same liberty with _their_ constitutions, and _say_ that no harm comes of it; and when I tell them how differently we manage in England, cry, “_mi pare che dev’essere schiavitù grande in quel paese della benedetta libertà_[37].” Fine muslin linen nicely got up is however, say they, one of the things to be produced only in Great Britain, and much do our Italian ladies admire it, though they look very charmingly with much less trouble taken. I lent one lady at some place, I remember, my maid, to shew her, as she so much wished it, how the operation of clear-starching was performed; but as soon as it began, she laughed at the superfluous fatigue, as she called it; and her servants crossed themselves in every corner of the room, with wonder that such niceties should be required.--Well they might! for I caught a great tall fellow ironing his lady’s best neck-handkerchief with the warming-pan here at Padua very quietly; and she was a woman of quality too, and looked as lovely, when the toilette was once performed, as if much more attention had been bestowed upon it.
PARMA.
We passed through Mantua the 18th of June, where nothing much attracted my notice, except a female figure in the street, veiled from head to foot, and covered wholly in black; she walked backward and forward along the same portion of the same street, from one to three o’clock, in the heat of the burning sun; her hand held out; but when I, more from curiosity than any better motive put money in it, she threw it silently away, and the beggars picked it up, while she held her hand again as before. This conduct, in any town of England, would be deemed madness or mischief; the woman would be carried before a magistrate to give an account of herself, should the mob forbear to uncase her till they came; or some charitable person would seize and carry her home, fill her pockets with money, and coax her out of the anecdotes of her past life to put in the Magazine; her print would be published, and many engravers struggle for its profits; the name at bottom, _Annabella, or the Sable Matron_; while novels would be written without end, and the circulating libraries would lend them out all the live-long day. Things are differently carried on however at Mantua: I asked one shopkeeper, and she gravely replied, “_per divozione_,” and took no further notice: another (to my inquiries, which appeared to him far odder than the woman’s conduct) said, The lady was possibly doing a little penance; that he had not minded her till I spoke, but that perhaps it might be some woman of fashion, who having refused a poor person roughly on some occasion, was condemned by her confessor to try for a couple of hours what begging _was_, and learn humanity from experience of evil. The idea charmed me; while the man coolly said, all this was only his conjecture; but that such things were done too often to attract attention; and hoped such virtue was not rare enough to excite wonder. My just applause of such sentiments was stopt by the _laquais de place_ calling me to dinner; when he informed me, that he had asked about the person whose behaviour struck me so, and could now tell me all there was to be known; she was a lady of quality, he said, who had lost a dear friend on that day some years past, and that she wore black for two hours ever since upon its anniversary; but that she would now change her dress, and I should see her in the evening at the opera. My recollecting that if _this_ were her case, I ought to have been keeping her company (as no one ever lost a friend so dear to them as was my incomparable mother, who likewise left me to mourn her loss on this day thirteen years), spoiled my appetite, and took from me all power of meeting the lady at the theatre.
We went again however to see Virgil’s field, and recollected that _tenet nunc Parthenope_; congratulated the giants on their superiority over Pietro de Cortona’s paltry creatures, in one of the Roman palaces; and drove forward to Parma, through bad roads enough.
This Mantua is a very disagreeable town; nor was Romeo wrong in lamenting his banishment to it; for though I will not say with him that--
There is no world without Verona’s walls;
yet it must be allowed that few places do unite such various excellencies, and that the contrast is very striking between that city and this.
Parma exhibits an appearance somewhat different from all the rest; yet we should scarcely have visited it but for the sake of the four surprising pictures it contains: the _Madona della Scodella_ is nature itself; and St. Girolamo exhibits such a proof of fancy and fervour, as are almost inconceivable; the general effect, and the difficulty one has to take one’s eye off it, afford conviction of its superior merit, and greatly compensate for that taste, character, and expression, which are found only in the Caraccis and their school. Corregio was perhaps one of the most powerful geniusses that has appeared on earth; destitute of knowledge, or of the means of acquiring it, he has left glorious proofs of what uninstructed man may do, and is perhaps a greater honour to the human species, than those who, from fermenting erudition of various kinds, produce performances of more complicated worth. The Fatal Curiosity, and Pilgrim’s Progress, will live as long as the Prince of Abyssinia, or _Les Avantures de Telemaque_, perhaps: and who shall dare say, that Lillo, Bunyan, and Antonio Corregio, were not _naturally_ equal to Johnson, Michael Angelo, and the Archbishop of Cambray?--Have I said enough, or can enough be ever said in praise of a painter, whose works the great Annibale Caracci delighted to study, to copy, and to praise?
Piacenza we found to offer us few objects of attention: an _improvisatore_, and not a very bad one, amused that time which would otherwise have been passed in lamenting our paucity of entertainment; while his artful praises of England put me in good humour, spite of the weather, which is too hot to bear. With all our lamentations about the heat however, here is no _cicala_ on the trees, or _lucciola_ in the hedges, as at Florence; the days are a little longer too, and the crepuscule less abrupt in its departure. How often, upon the _Ponte della Trinitá_, have I secretly regretted the long-drawn evenings of an English summer; when the dewy night-fall refreshes the air, and silent dusk brings on a train of meditations uninspired by Italian skies! In this decided country all that is not broad day is dark night; all that is not loud mirth, is penitence and grief; when the rain falls, it falls in a torrent; when the sun shines, it glows like a burning-glass; where the people are rich, they stick gems in their very walls, and make their chimneys of amethyst; where they are poor, they clasp your knees in an agony of pinching want, and display diseases which cannot be a day survived!
Talking on about Italy in which there is no mediocrity, and of England in which there is nothing else, we arrived at Lodi; where I began to rejoice in hearing the people cry _no’ cor’ altr’_ again, in reply to our commands; because we were now once more returned to the district and dialect of dear Milan, where we have cool apartments and warm friends; and where, after an absence of fifteen months, we shall again see those acquaintance with whom we lived much before; a sensation always delightfully soothing, even when one returns to less amiable scenes, and less productive of innocent pleasure than these have been to me. The consciousness of having, while at a distance, seen few people more agreeable than those one left behind; the natural thankfulness of one’s heart to God, for having preserved one’s life so as to see them again, expands philanthropy; and gives unaffected comfort in the restored society of companions long concealed from one by accident or distance.
MILAN.
21st June 1786.
After rejoicing over my house and my friends; after asking a hundred questions, and hearing a hundred stories of those long left; after reciprocating common civilities, and talking over common topics, we observed how much the general look of Milan was improved in these last fifteen months; how the town was become neater, the ordinary people smarter, the roads round their city mended, and the beggars cleared away from the streets. We did not find however that the people we talked to were at all charmed with these new advantages: their convents demolished, their processions put an end to, the number of their priests of course contracted, and their church plate carried by cart-loads to the mint; holidays forbidden, and every saint’s name erased from the calendar, excepting only St. Peter and St. Paul; whilst those shopkeepers who worked for monasteries, and those musicians who sung or played in oratorios, are left to find employment how they can;--cloud the countenances of all, and justly; as such sudden and rough reforms shock the feelings of the multitude; offend the delicacy of the nobles; make a general stagnation of business and of pleasure, in a country where _both_ depend upon religious functions; and terrify the clergy into no ill-grounded apprehensions of being found in a few years more wholly useless, and as such dismissed.--Well! whatever is done hastily, can scarcely be done quite well; and wherever much is done, a great part of it will doubtless be done wrong. A considerable portion of all this however will be confessed useful, and even necessary, when the hour of violence on one side, and prejudice on the other, is past away; as the fire of London has been found beneficial by those who live in the newly-restored town. Meantime I think the present precipitation indecent enough for my own part; a thousand little errors would burn out of themselves, were they suffered to die quietly away; and when the morning breaks in naturally, it is superfluous as awkward to put the stars out with one’s fingers, like the Hours in Guercino’s Aurora[38]. Whoever therefore will be at the pains a little to pick their principles, not grasp them by the bunch, will find as many unripe at one end, I believe, as there are rotten at the other: for could we see these hasty innovators erecting public schools for the instruction of the poor, or public work-houses for their employment; did they unlock the treasure-house of true religion, by publishing the Bible in every dialect of their dominions, and oblige their clergy to read it with the souls committed to their charge;--I should have a better idea of their sincerity and disinterested zeal for God’s glory, than they give by tearing down his statues, or those of his blessed Virgin Mother, which Carlo Borromæo set up.
The folly of hanging churches with red damask would surely fade away of itself; among people of good sense and good taste; who could not long be simple enough to suppose, that concealing Greek architecture with such transient finery, and giving to God’s house the air of a tattered theatre, could in any wife promote his service, or their salvation. Many superstitious and many unmeaning ceremonies _do_ die off every day, because unsupported by reason or religion: Doctor Carpanni, a learned lawyer, told me but to-day, that here in Lombardy they had a custom, no longer ago than in his father’s time, of burying a great lord or possessor of lands, with a ceremony of killing on his grave the favourite horse, dog, &c. that he delighted in when alive; a usage borrowed from the Oriental Pagans, who burn even the widows of the deceased upon their funeral pile; and among our monuments in Westminster Abbey, set up in the days of darkness, I have minded now and then the hawk and greyhound of a nobleman lying in marble at his feet; some of our antiquarians should tell us if they killed them.
Another odd affinity strikes me. Half a century ago there was an annual procession at Shrewsbury, called by way of pre-eminence _Shrewsbury Show_; when a handsome young girl of about twelve years old rode round the town, and wished prosperity to every trade assembled at the fair: I forget what else made the amusement interesting; but have heard my mother tell of the particular beauty of some wench, who was ever after called the _Queen_, because she had been carried in triumph as such on the day of _Shrewsbury Show_. Now if nobody gives a better derivation of that old custom, it may perhaps be found a dreg of the Romish superstition, which as many years ago, in various parts of Italy, prompted people to dress up a pretty girl, on the 25th of March, or other season dedicated to the Virgin, and carry her in procession about the streets, singing litanies to her, &c. and ending, in profaneness of admiration, a day begun in idleness and folly. At Rome however no such indecorous absurdities are encouraged: we saw a beautiful figure of the _Madonna_, dressed from a picture of Guido Rheni, borne about one day; but no human creature in the street offered to kneel, or gave one the slightest reason to say or suppose that she was worshipped: some sweet hymns were sung in her praise, as the procession moved slowly on; but no impropriety could I discern, who watched with great attention.