The first evening's drive carried us no farther than Lodi, a place
renowned through all Europe for its excellent cheese, as out well-known
ballad bears testimony:
Let Lodi or Parmesan bring up the rear.
Those verses were imitated, I fancy, from a French song written by
Monsieur des Yveteaux, of whose extraordinary life and death much has
been said by his cotemporary wits, particularly how some of them found
him playing at shepherd and shepherdess in his own garden with a pretty
Savoyard wench, at seventy-eight years old, _en habit de berger, avec un
chapeau couleur de rose_[Footnote: In a pastoral habit, and a hat turned
up with pink], &c. when he shewed them the famous lines, _Avoir peu de
parens, moins de train que de rente_, &c. which do certainly bear a very
near affinity to our Old Man's Wish, published in Dryden's
Miscellanies; who, among other luxuries, resolves to eat Lodi cheese, I
remember.
The town, however, bringing no other ideas either new or old to our
minds, we went to the opera, and heard Morichelli sing: after which they
gave us a new dramatic dance, made upon the story of Don John, or the
Libertine; a tale which, whether true or false, fact or fable, has
furnished every Christian country in the world, I believe, with some
subject of representation. It makes me no sport, however; the idea of an
impenitent sinner going to hell is too seriously terrifying to make
amusement out of. Let mythology, which is now grown good for little
else, be danced upon the stage; where Mr. Vestris may bounce and
struggle in the character of Alcides on his funeral pile, with no very
glaring impropriety; and such baubles serve beside to keep old classical
stories in the heads of our young people; who, if they _must_ have
torches to blaze in their eyes, may divert themselves with Pluto
catching up Ceres's daughter, and driving her away to Tartarus; but let
Don John alone. I have at least _half a notion_ that the horrible
history is _half true_; if so, it is surely very gross to represent it
by dancing. Should such false foolish taste prevail in England (but I
hope it will not), we might perhaps go happily through the whole book of
God's Revenge against Murder, or the Annals of Newgate, on the stage, as
a variety of pretty stories may be found there of the same cast; while
statues of Hercules and Minerva, with their insignia as heathen deities,
might be placed, with equal attention to religion, costume, and general
fitness, as decorations for the monuments of _Westminster Abbey_.
The country we came through to Cremona is rich and fertile, the roads
deep and miry of course; very few of the Lombardy poplars, of which I
expected to see so many: but Phaeton's sisters seem to have danced all
away from the odoriferous banks of the Po, to the green sides of the
Thames, I think; meantime here is no other timber in the country but a
few straggling ash, and willows without end. The old Eridanus, however,
makes a majestic figure at Cremona, and frights the inhabitants when it
overflows. There are not many to be frighted though, for the town is
thinly peopled; but exquisitely clean, perhaps for that very reason;
and the cathedral, of a mixed Grecian and Gothic architecture, has a
respectable appearance; while two enormous lions, of red marble, frown
at its door, and the crucifixion, painted by Pordenone, with a rough but
powerful pencil, strikes one at the entrance: I have seen nothing finer
than the figure of the Centurion upon the fore-ground, who seems to cry
out, with soldier-like courage and apostolic fervour, Truly this is the
Son of God.
The great clock here too is very curious: having, besides the
twenty-four hours, a minute and second finger, like a stop watch, and
shews the phases of the moon, with her triple rotation clearly to all
who walk across the piazza. Yet I trust the dwellers at Cremona are no
better astronomers than those who live in other places; to what purpose
then all these representations with which Italy is crowded; processions,
paintings, &c. besides the moral dances, as they call them now? One word
of solid instruction to the ear, conveys more knowledge to the mind at
last, than all these marionettes presented to the eye.
The tower of Cremona is of a surprising height and elegant form; we
climbed, not without some difficulty, to its top, and saw the flat
plains of Lombardy stretched out all round us. Prospects, however, and
high towers have I seen; that in Mr. Hoare's grounds, dedicated to King
Alfred, is a much finer structure than this, and the view from it much
more variegated certainly; I think of greater extent; though there is
more dignity in these objects, while the Po twists through them, and
distant mountains mingle with the sky at the end of a lengthened
horizon.
What I have never seen till now, we were made to observe in the octagon
gallery which crowns this pretty structure, where in every compartment
there are channels cut in the stone to guide the eye or rest the
telescope, that so a spectator need not be fruitlessly teized, as one
almost always is, by those who shew one a prospect, with _Look there!
See there!_ &c. At this place nothing needs be done but lay the glass or
put the eye even with the lines which point to Bergamo, Mantua, or where
you please; and _look there_ becomes superfluous as offensive.
The bells in the tower amused us in another way: an old man who has the
care of them, delighted much in telling us how he rung tunes upon them
before the Duke of Parma, who presented him with money, and bid him ring
again: and not a little was the good man amazed, when one of our company
sate down and played on them himself: a thing he had never before been
witness to, he said, except once, when a surprising musician arrived
from England, and performed the like seat: by his description of the
person, and the time of his passing through Cremona, we conjectured he
meant Dr. Burney.
The most dreadful of all roads carried us next morning to Mantua, where
we had letters for an agreeable friend, who neglected nothing that could
entertain or instruct us. He shewed me the field where it is supposed
the house stood in which Virgil was born, and told me what he knew of
the evidence that he was born there: certain it is that much care is
taken to keep the place fenced, from an idea of its being the identical
spot, and I hope it is so.
The theatres here are beautiful beyond all telling: it is a shame not to
take the model of the small one, and build a place of entertainment on
the plan. There cannot surely be any plan more elegant.
We had a concert of admirable music at the house of our new
acquaintance, in the evening, and were introduced by his means to many
people of fashion; the ladies were pretty, and dressed with much taste;
no caps at all, but flowers in their heads, and earrings of silver
fillagree finely worked; long, light, and thin: I never saw such before,
but it would be an exceeding pretty fashion. They hung down quite low
upon the neck and shoulders, and had a pleasing effect.
Mantua stands in the middle of a deep swampy marsh, that sends up a
thick foggy vapour all winter, a stench intolerable during the summer
months. Its inhabitants lament the want of population; and indeed I
counted but five carriages in the streets while we remained in the town.
Seven thousand Jews occupy a third part of the city, founded by old
Tiresias's daughter, where they have a synagogue, and live after their
own fashion. The dialect here is closer to that Italian which foreigners
learn, and the ladies speak more Tuscan, I think, than at Milan, but it
is a _lady's_ town as I told them.
"Ille etiam patriis agmen ciet Ocnus ab oris
Fatidicæ _Mantûs_ et Tusci filius amnis,
Qui muros matrisque dedit tibi. _Mantua_ nomen."
Ocnus was next, who led his native train
Of hardy warriors thro' the wat'ry plain,
The son of Manto by the Tuscan stream,
From whence the _Mantuan_ town derives its name.