may possibly have been of this Balderstonian variety. But Smollett had
little room in his economy for such vapouring speculations. He was as
unsentimental a critic as Sydney Smith or Sir Leslie Stephen. He wants
to know the assets of a place more than its associations. Facts,
figures, trade and revenue returns are the data his shrewd mind
requires to feed on. He has a keen eye for harbours suitable for an
English frigate to lie up in, and can hardly rest until his sagacity
has collected material for a political horoscope.
Smollett's remarks upon the mysterious dispensations of Providence in
regard to Genoa and the retreat of the Austrians are charged to the
full with his saturnine spirit. His suspicions were probably well
founded. Ever since 1685 Genoa had been the more or less humiliated
satellite of France, and her once famous Bank had been bled pretty
extensively by both belligerents. The Senate was helpless before the
Austrian engineers in 1745, and the emancipation of the city was due
wholly to a popular emeute. She had relapsed again into a completely
enervated condition. Smollett thought she would have been happier under
British protection. But it is a vicious alternative for a nation to
choose a big protector. It was characteristic of the Republic that from
1790 to 1798 its "policy" was to remain neutral. The crisis in regard
to Corsica came immediately after Smollett's visit, when in 1765, under
their 154th doge Francesco Maria Rovere, the Genoese offered to abandon
the island to the patriots under Paoli, reserving only the possession
of the two loyal coast-towns of Bonifazio and Calvi. [See Boswell's
Corsica, 1766-8.] At Paoli's instance these conciliatory terms were
refused. Genoa, in desperation and next door to bankruptcy, resolved to
sell her rights as suzerain to France, and the compact was concluded by
a treaty signed at Versailles in 1768. Paoli was finally defeated at
Ponte Novo on 9th May 1769, and fled to England. On 15th August the
edict of "Reunion" between France and Corsica was promulgated. On the
same day Napoleon Buonaparte was born at Ajaccio.
After a week at Genoa Smollett proceeded along the coast to Lerici.
There, being tired of the sea, the party disembarked, and proceeded by
chaise from Sarzano to Cercio in Modenese territory, and so into
Tuscany, then under the suzerainty of Austria. His description of Pisa
is of an almost sunny gaiety and good humour. Italy, through this
portal, was capable of casting a spell even upon a traveller so
case-hardened as Smollett. The very churches at Pisa are "tolerably
ornamented." The Campo Santo and Tower fall in no way short of their
reputation, while the brass gates so far excel theirs that Smollett
could have stood a whole day to examine and admire them. These agremens
may be attributable in some measure to "a very good inn." In stating
that galleys were built in the town, Smollett seems to have fallen a
victim, for once, to guide-book information. Evelyn mentions that
galleys were built there in his time, but that was more than a hundred
years before. The slips and dock had long been abandoned, as Smollett
is careful to point out in his manuscript notes, now in the British
Museum. He also explains with superfluous caution that the Duomo of
Pisa is not entirely Gothic. Once arrived in the capital of Tuscany,
after admitting that Florence is a noble city, our traveller is anxious
to avoid the hackneyed ecstasies and threadbare commonplaces, derived
in those days from Vasari through Keysler and other German
commentators, whose genius Smollett is inclined to discover rather "in
the back than in the brain."
The two pass-words for a would-be connoisseur, according to Goldsmith,
were to praise Perugino, and to say that such and such a work would
have been much better had the painter devoted more time and study to
it. With these alternatives at hand one might pass with credit through
any famous continental collection. Smollett aspired to more
independence of thought and opinion, though we perceive at every turn
how completely the Protestant prejudice of his "moment" and "milieu"
had obtained dominion over him. To his perception monks do not chant or
intone, they bawl and bellow their litanies. Flagellants are hired
peasants who pad themselves to repletion with women's bodices. The
image of the Virgin Mary is bejewelled, hooped, painted, patched,
curled, and frizzled in the very extremity of the fashion. No
particular attention is paid by the mob to the Crucified One, but as
soon as his lady-mother appeared on the shoulders of four lusty friars
the whole populace fall upon their knees in the dirt. We have some
characteristic criticism and observation of the Florentine nobles, the
opera, the improvisatori, [For details as to the eighteenth-century
improvisatore and commedia delle arte the reader is referred to
Symonds's Carlo Gozzi. See also the Travel Papers of Mrs. Piozzi;
Walpole's Letters to Sir Horace Mann, and Doran's Mann and Manners at
the Court of Florence. (Vide Appendix A, p. 345)] the buildings, and
the cicisbei. Smollett nearly always gives substantial value to his
notes, however casual, for he has an historian's eye, and knows the
symptoms for which the inquirer who comes after is likely to make
inquisition.
Smollett's observations upon the state of Florence in Letters XXVII and
XXVIII are by no means devoid of value. The direct rule of the Medici
had come to an end in 1737, and Tuscany (which with the exception of
the interlude of 1798-1814 remained in Austrian hands down to 1860) was
in 1764 governed by the Prince de Craon, viceroy of the Empress Maria
Theresa. Florence was, indeed, on the threshold of the sweeping
administrative reforms instituted by Peter Leopold, the archduke for
whom Smollett relates that they were preparing the Pitti Palace at the
time of his stay. This Prince governed the country as Grand Duke from
1765 to 1790, when he succeeded his brother as Emperor, and left a name
in history as the ill-fated Leopold. Few more active exponents of
paternal reform are known to history. But the Grand Duke had to deal
with a people such as Smollett describes. Conservative to the core,
subservient to their religious directors, the "stupid party" in
Florence proved themselves clever enough to retard the process of
enlightenment by methods at which even Smollett himself might have
stood amazed. The traveller touches an interesting source of biography
when he refers to the Englishman called Acton, formerly an East India
Company captain, now commander of the Emperor's Tuscan Navy, consisting
of "a few frigates." This worthy was the old commodore whom Gibbon
visited in retirement at Leghorn. The commodore was brother of Gibbon's
friend, Dr. Acton, who was settled at Besancon, where his noted son,
afterwards Sir John Acton, was born in 1736. Following in the footsteps
of his uncle the commodore, who became a Catholic, Smollett tells us,
and was promoted Admiral of Tuscany, John Acton entered the Tuscan
Marine in 1775.
[Sir John Acton's subsequent career belongs to history. His origin made
him an expert on naval affairs, and in 1776 he obtained some credit for
an expedition which he commanded against the Barbary pirates. In 1778
Maria Carolina of Naples visited her brother Leopold at Florence, and
was impressed by Acton's ugliness and reputation for exceptional
efficiency. Her favourite minister, Prince Caramanico, persuaded the
Grand Duke, Leopold, to permit Acton to exchange into the Neapolitan
service, and reorganize the navy of the southern kingdom. This actually
came to pass, and, moreover, Acton played his cards so well that he
soon engrossed the ministries of War and Finance, and after the death
of Caracciolo, the elder, also that of Foreign Affairs. Sir William
Hamilton had a high opinion of the" General," soon to become
Field-Marshal. He took a strong part in resistance to revolutionary
propaganda, caused to be built the ships which assisted Nelson in 1795,
and proved himself one of the most capable bureaucrats of the time. But
the French proved too strong, and Napoleon was the cause of his
disgrace in 1804. In that year, by special dispensation from the Pope,
he married his niece, and retired to Palermo, where he died on 12th
August 1811.]
Let loose in the Uffizi Gallery Smollett shocked his sensitive
contemporaries by his freedom from those sham ecstasies which have too
often dogged the footsteps of the virtuosi. Like Scott or Mark Twain at
a later date Smollett was perfectly ready to admire anything he could
understand; but he expressly disclaims pretensions to the nice
discernment and delicate sensibility of the connoisseur. He would never
have asked to be left alone with the Venus de Medicis as a modern
art-critic is related to have asked to be left alone with the Venus of
Rokeby. He would have been at a loss to understand the state of mind of
the eminent actor who thought the situation demanded that he should be
positively bereft of breath at first sight of the Apollo Belvedere, and
panting to regain it, convulsively clutched at the arm of his
companion, with difficulty articulating, "I breathe." Smollett refused
to be hypnotized by the famous Venus discovered at Hadrian's villa,
brought from Tivoli in 1680, and then in the height of its renown; the
form he admired, but condemned the face and the posture. Personally I
disagree with Smollett, though the balance of cultivated opinion has
since come round to his side. The guilt of Smollett lay in criticizing
what was above criticism, as the contents of the Tribuna were then held
to be. And in defence of this point of view it may at least be said
that the Uffizi was then, with the exception of the Vatican, the only
gallery of first-rate importance open to the travelling public on the
Grand Tour. Founded by Cosimo I, built originally by George Vasari, and
greatly enlarged by Francis I, who succeeded to the Grand Duchy in
1574, the gallery owed most perhaps to the Cardinal, afterwards
Ferdinand I, who constructed the Tribuna, and to Cardinal Leopold, an
omnivorous collector, who died in 1675. But all the Medici princes
added to the rarities in the various cabinets, drawing largely upon the
Villa Medici at Rome for this purpose, and the last of them, John
Gaston (1723-1737), was one of the most liberal as regards the freedom
of access which he allowed to his accumulated treasures. Among the
distinguished antiquaries who acted as curators and cicerones were
Sebastiano Bianchi, Antonio Cocchi, Raymond Cocchi, Joseph Bianchi, J.
B. Pelli, the Abbe Lanzi, and Zacchiroli. The last three all wrote
elaborate descriptions of the Gallery during the last decades of the
eighteenth century. There was unhappily an epidemic of dishonesty among
the custodians of gems at this period, and, like the notorious Raspe,
who fled from Cassel in 1775, and turned some of his old employers to
ridicule in his Baron Munchausen, Joseph Bianchi was convicted first of
robbing his cabinet and then attempting to set it on fire, for which
exploit the "learned and judicious Bianchi," as Smollett called him in
his first edition, was sent to prison for life. The Arrotino which
Smollett so greatly admired, and which the delusive Bianchi declared to
be a representation of the Augur Attus Naevius, is now described as "A
Scythian whetting his knife to flay Marsyas."
Kinglake has an amusingly cynical passage on the impossibility of
approaching the sacred shrines of the Holy Land in a fittingly
reverential mood. Exactly the same difficulty is experienced in
approaching the sacred shrines of art. Enthusiasm about great artistic
productions, though we may readily understand it to be justifiable, is
by no means so easily communicable. How many people possessing a real
claim to culture have felt themselves puzzled by their insensibility
before some great masterpiece! Conditions may be easily imagined in
which the inducement to affect an ecstasy becomes so strong as to prove
overpowering. Many years ago at Florence the loiterers in the Tribuna
were startled by the sudden rush into the place of a little man whose
literary fame gave him high claims to intuitive taste. He placed
himself with high clasped hand before the chief attraction in that room
of treasures. "There," he murmured, "is the Venus de Medicis, and here
I must stay--for ever and for ever." He had scarcely uttered these
words, each more deeply and solemnly than the preceding, when an
acquaintance entered, and the enthusiast, making a hasty inquiry if
Lady So-and-So had arrived, left the room not to return again that
morning. Before the same statue another distinguished countryman used
to pass an hour daily. His acquaintance respected his raptures and kept
aloof; but a young lady, whose attention was attracted by sounds that
did not seem expressive of admiration, ventured to approach, and found
the poet sunk in profound, but not silent, slumber. From such
absurdities as these, or of the enthusiast who went into raptures about
the head of the Elgin Ilissos (which is unfortunately a headless
trunk), we are happily spared in the pages of Smollett. In him complete
absence of gush is accompanied by an independent judgement, for which
it may quite safely be claimed that good taste is in the ascendant in
the majority of cases.
From Florence Smollett set out in October 1764 for Siena, a distance of
forty-two miles, in a good travelling coach; he slept there, and next
day, seven and a half miles farther on, at Boon Convento, hard by
Montepulciano, now justly celebrated for its wine, he had the amusing
adventure with the hostler which gave occasion for his vivid portrait
of an Italian uffiziale, and also to that irresistible impulse to cane
the insolent hostler, from the ill consequences of which he was only
saved by the underling's precipitate flight. The night was spent at
Radicofani, five and twenty miles farther on. A clever postilion
diversified the route to Viterbo, another forty-three miles. The party
was now within sixteen leagues, or ten hours, of Rome. The road from
Radicofani was notoriously bad all the way, but Smollett was too
excited or too impatient to pay much attention to it. "You may guess
what I felt at first sight of the city of Rome."
"When you arrive at Rome," he says later, in somewhat more accustomed
vein, "you receive cards from all your country folk in that city. They
expect to have the visit returned next day, when they give orders not
to be at home, and you never speak to one another in the sequel. This
is a refinement in hospitality and politeness which the English have
invented by the strength of their own genius without any assistance
either from France, Italy, or Lapland." It is needless to recapitulate
Smollett's views of Rome. Every one has his own, and a passing
traveller's annotations are just about as nourishing to the imagination
as a bibliographer's note on the Bible. Smollett speaks in the main
judiciously of the Castle of St. Angelo, the Piazza and the interior of
St. Peter's, the Pincian, the Forum, the Coliseum, the Baths of
Caracalla, and the other famous sights of successive ages. On Roman
habits and pastimes and the gullibility of the English cognoscente he
speaks with more spice of authority. Upon the whole he is decidedly
modest about his virtuoso vein, and when we reflect upon the way in
which standards change and idols are shifted from one pedestal to
another, it seems a pity that such modesty has not more votaries. In
Smollett's time we must remember that Hellenic and primitive art,
whether antique or medieval, were unknown or unappreciated. The
reigning models of taste in ancient sculpture were copies of
fourth-century originals, Hellenistic or later productions. Hence
Smollett's ecstasies over the Laocoon, the Niobe, and the Dying
Gladiator. Greek art of the best period was hardly known in authentic
examples; antiques so fine as the Torso of Hercules were rare. But
while his failures show the danger of dogmatism in art criticism,
Smollett is careful to disclaim all pretensions to the nice discernment
of the real connoisseur. In cases where good sense and sincere
utterance are all that is necessary he is seldom far wrong. Take the
following description for example:--
"You need not doubt but that I went to the church of St. Peter in
Montorio, to view the celebrated Transfiguration by Raphael, which, if
it was mine, I would cut in two parts. The three figures in the air
attract the eye so strongly that little or no attention is paid to
those below on the mountain. I apprehend that the nature of the subject
does not admit of that keeping and dependence which ought to be
maintained in the disposition of the lights and shadows in a picture.
The groups seem to be entirely independent of each other. The
extraordinary merit of this piece, I imagine, consists not only in the
expression of divinity on the face of Christ, but also in the
surprising lightness of the figure that hovers like a beautiful
exhalation in the air."
Smollett's remarks about the "Last Judgement" of Michael Angelo, (that
it confuses the eye as a number of people speaking at once confounds
the ear; and that while single figures are splendid, the whole together
resembles a mere mob, without subordination, keeping, or repose) will
probably be re-echoed by a large proportion of the sightseers who gaze
upon it yearly. But his description of the "Transfiguration" displays
an amount of taste and judgement which is far from being so widely
distributed. For purposes of reproduction at the present day, I may
remind the reader that the picture is ordinarily "cut in two." and the
nether portion is commonly attributed to Raphael's pupils, while the
"beautiful exhalation," as Smollett so felicitously terms it, is
attributed exclusively to the master when at the zenith of his powers.
His general verdict upon Michael Angelo and Raphael has much in it that
appeals to a modern taste. Of Raphael, as a whole, he concludes that
the master possesses the serenity of Virgil, but lacks the fire of
Homer; and before leaving this same Letter XXXIII, in which Smollett
ventures so many independent critical judgements, I am tempted to cite
yet another example of his capacity for acute yet sympathetic
appreciation.
"In the Palazzo Altieri I admired a picture, by Carlo Maratti,
representing a saint calling down lightning from heaven to destroy
blasphemers. It was the figure of the saint I admired, merely as a
portrait. The execution of the other parts was tame enough; perhaps
they were purposely kept down in order to preserve the importance of
the principal figure. I imagine Salvator Rosa would have made a
different disposition on the same subject--that amidst the darkness of
a tempest he would have illuminated the blasphemer with the flash of
lightning by which he was destroyed. This would have thrown a dismal
gleam upon his countenance, distorted by the horror of his situation as
well as by the effects of the fire, and rendered the whole scene
dreadfully picturesque."
Smollett confuses historical and aesthetic grandeur. What appeals to
him most is a monument of a whole past civilization, such as the Pont
du Gard. His views of art, too, as well as his views of life, are
profoundly influenced by his early training as a surgeon. He is not
inclined by temperament to be sanguine. His gaze is often fixed, like
that of a doctor, upon the end of life; and of art, as of nature, he
takes a decidedly pathological view. Yet, upon the whole, far from
deriding his artistic impressions, I think we shall be inclined rather
to applaud them, as well for their sanity as for their undoubted
sincerity.
For the return journey to Florence Smollett selected the alternative
route by Narni, Terni, Spoleto, Foligno, Perugia, and Arezzo, and, by
his own account, no traveller ever suffered quite so much as he did
from "dirt," "vermin," "poison," and imposture. At Foligno, where
Goethe also, in his travels a score of years or so later, had an
amusing adventure, Smollett was put into a room recently occupied by a
wild beast (bestia), but the bestia turned out on investigation to be
no more or no less than an "English heretic." The food was so filthy
that it might have turned the stomach of a muleteer; their coach was
nearly shattered to pieces; frozen with cold and nearly devoured by
rats. Mrs. Smollett wept in silence with horror and fatigue; and the
bugs gave the Doctor a whooping-cough. If Smollett anticipated a
violent death from exhaustion and chagrin in consequence of these
tortures he was completely disappointed. His health was never
better,--so much so that he felt constrained in fairness to drink to
the health of the Roman banker who had recommended this nefarious
route. [See the Doctor's remarks at the end of Letter XXXV.] By
Florence and Lerici he retraced his steps to Nice early in 1765, and
then after a brief jaunt to Turin (where he met Sterne) and back by the
Col di Tende, he turned his face definitely homewards. The journey home
confirmed his liking for Pisa, and gives an opening for an amusing
description of the Britisher abroad (Letter XXXV). We can almost
overhear Thackeray, or the author of Eothen, touching this same topic
in Letter XLI. "When two natives of any other country chance to meet
abroad, they run into each other's embrace like old friends, even
though they have never heard of one another till that moment; whereas
two Englishmen in the same situation maintain a mutual reserve and
diffidence, and keep without the sphere of each other's attraction,
like two bodies endowed with a repulsive power." Letter XXXVI gives
opportunity for some discerning remarks on French taxation. Having
given the French king a bit of excellent advice (that he should abolish
the fermiers generaux), Smollett proceeds, in 1765, to a forecast of
probabilities which is deeply significant and amazingly shrewd. The
fragment known as Smollett's Dying Prophecy of 1771 has often been
discredited. Yet the substance of it is fairly adumbrated here in the
passage beginning, "There are undoubtedly many marks of relaxation in
the reins of French government," written fully six years previously.
After a pleasing description of Grasse, "famous for its pomatum,
gloves, wash-balls, perfumes, and toilette boxes lined with bergamot,"
the homeward traveller crossed the French frontier at Antibes, and in
Letter XXXIX at Marseille, he compares the galley slaves of France with
those of Savoy. At Bath where he had gone to set up a practice,
Smollett once astonished the faculty by "proving" in a pamphlet that
the therapeutic properties of the waters had been prodigiously
exaggerated. So, now, in the south of France he did not hesitate to
pronounce solemnly that "all fermented liquors are pernicious to the
human constitution." Elsewhere he comments upon the immeasurable
appetite of the French for bread. The Frenchman will recall the story
of the peasant-persecuting baron whom Louis XII. provided with a
luxurious feast, which the lack of bread made uneatable; he may not
have heard a story told me in Liege at the Hotel Charlemagne of the
Belgian who sought to conciliate his French neighbour by remarking, "Je
vois que vous etes Français, monsieur, parceque vous mangez beaucoup de
pain," and the Frenchman's retort, "Je vois que vous etes lye monsieur,
parceque vous mangez beaucoup de tout!" From Frejus Smollett proceeds
to Toulon, repeating the old epigram that "the king of France is
greater at Toulon than at Versailles." The weather is so pleasant that
the travellers enjoy a continual concert of "nightingales" from Vienne
to Fontainebleau. The "douche" of Aix-les-Bains having been explained,
Smollett and his party proceeded agreeably to Avignon, where by one of
the strange coincidences of travel he met his old voiturier Joseph "so
embrowned by the sun that he might have passed for an Iroquois." In
spite of Joseph's testimonial the "plagues of posting" are still in the
ascendant, and Smollett is once more generous of good advice. Above
all, he adjures us when travelling never to omit to carry a hammer and
nails, a crowbar, an iron pin or two, a large knife, and a bladder of
grease. Why not a lynch pin, which we were so carefully instructed how
to inquire about in Murray's Conversation for Travellers?
But-the history of his troublous travels is drawing to an end. From
Lyons the route is plain through Macon, Chalons, Dijon, Auxerre, Sells,
and Fontainebleau--the whole itinerary almost exactly anticipates that
of Talfourd's Vacation Tour one hundred and ten years later, except
that on the outward journey Talfourd sailed down the Rhone.
Smollett's old mental grievances and sores have been shifted and to
some extent, let us hope, dissipated by his strenuous journeyings, and
in June 1765, after an absence of two years, he is once more enabled to
write,
"You cannot imagine what pleasure I feel while I survey the white
cliffs of Dover at this distance [from Boulogne]. Not that I am at all
affected by the nescio qua dulcedine natalis soli of Horace.
"That seems to be a kind of fanaticism, founded on the prejudices of
education, which induces a Laplander to place the terrestrial paradise
among the snows of Norway, and a Swiss to prefer the barren mountains
of Soleure to the fruitful plains of Lombardy. I am attached to my
country, because it is the land of liberty, cleanliness, and
convenience; but I love it still more tenderly, as the scene of all my
interesting connections, as the habitation of my friends, for whose
conversation, correspondence, and esteem I wish alone to live."
For the time being it cannot be doubted that the hardships Smollett had
to undergo on his Italian journey, by sea and land, and the violent
passions by which he was agitated owing to the conduct of refractory
postilions and extortionate innkeepers, contributed positively to brace
up and invigorate his constitution. He spoke of himself indeed as
"mended by ill-treatment" not unlike Tavernier, the famous
traveller,--said to have been radically cured of the gout by a Turkish
aga in Egypt, who gave him the bastinado because he would not look at
the head of the bashaw of Cairo. But Fizes was right after all in his
swan-prescription, for poor Smollett's cure was anything but a radical
one. His health soon collapsed under the dreary round of incessant
labour at Chelsea. His literary faculty was still maturing and
developing. His genius was mellowing, and a later work might have
eclipsed Clinker. But it was not to be. He had a severe relapse in the
winter. In 1770 he had once more to take refuge from overwork on the
sunny coast he had done so much to popularize among his countrymen, and
it was near Leghorn that he died on 17th September 1771.
ANNO AETATIS 51.
EHEV! QVAM PROCVL A PATRIA!
PROPE LIBVRNI PORTVM, IN ITALIA
JACET SEPVLTVS.
THOMAS SECCOMBE. ACTON, May 1907.