Hester Lynch Piozzi

“ Bologna affords one time for every meditation. No inn upon the Bath road is more elegant than the Pellegrino; and we regretted our broken equipage the less as it drew us slowly through so sweet a country. The medlar blossoms adorn the hedges with their blanche roses; the hawthorn bushes, later here than with us, perfume them; and the roads, little travelled, do not torment one with the dust as in England, where it not only offends the traveller, but takes away some beauty from the country, by giving a brown or whitish look to the shrubs and trees. ”

“ DEAR MADAM,—I am come to this place on my way to London and to Streatham. I hope to be in London on Tuesday or Wednesday, and Streatham on Thursday, by your kind conveyance. I shall have nothing to relate either wonderful or delightful. But remember that you sent me away, and turned me out into the world, and you must take the chance of finding me better or worse. This you may know at present, that my affection for you is not diminished, and my expectation from you is increased. Do not neglect me, nor relinquish me. Nobody will ever love you better or honour you more. ”

“ He who should fix his residence in France, lives like Sir Gawaine in our old romance, whose wife was bound by an enchantment, that obliged her at evening to lay down the various beauties which had charmed admiring multitudes all day, and become an object of odium and disgust.
The French do seem indeed an idle race; and poverty, perhaps for that reason, forces her way among them, through a climate that might tempt other mortals to improve its blessings; but, as the motto to the arms they are so proud of expresses it—"they toil not, neither do they spin." ”

“ Sir Joshua Reynolds said one day that nobody wore laced coats now; and that once everybody wore them. “See, now,” says Johnson, “how absurd that is; as if the bulk of mankind consisted of fine gentlemen that came to him to sit for their pictures. If every man who wears a laced coat (that he can pay for) was extirpated, who would miss them?” With all this haughty contempt of gentility, no praise was more welcome to Dr. Johnson than that which said he had the notions or manners of a gentleman: which character I have heard him define with accuracy, and describe with elegance. ”

“ The drive perhaps pleased us better than the palace, which is a prodigious mass of building indeed, and to my eye appears to cover more space than proud Versailles itself; court within court, and quadrangle within quadrangle; it is an enormous bulk to be sure—not pile—for it is not high in proportion to the surrounding objects somehow; and being composed all of brick, presents ideas rather of squat solidity, than of princely magnificence. Ostentation is expected always to strike, as elegance is known to charm, the beholder; and space seldom fails in its immediate effect upon the mind ”

“ Rude, uncouth, arrogant as he was—spoilt as he was, which is far worse, by flattery and toadying and the silly homage of inferior worshippers—selfish as he was in his eagerness for small enjoyments and disregard of small attentions—that which lay at the very bottom of his character, that which constitutes the great source of his power in life, and connects him after death with the hearts of all of us, is his spirit of imaginative romance. He was romantic in almost all things—in politics, in religion, in his musings on the supernatural world, in friendship for men, and in love for women. ”

“ I would rather talk of their gallery than their government: and surely nothing made by man ever so completely answered a raised expectation, as the apparent contest between Titian's recumbent beauty, glowing with colour and animated by the warmest expression, and the Greek statue of symmetrical perfection and fineness of form inimitable, where sculpture supplies all that fancy can desire, and all that imagination can suggest. These two models of excellence seem placed near each other, at once to mock all human praise, and defy all future imitation. ”

“ Johnson’s amusements were thus reduced to the pleasures of conversation merely. And what wonder that he should have an avidity for the sole delight he was able to enjoy? No man conversed so well as he on every subject; no man so acutely discerned the reason of every fact, the motive of every action, the end of every design. He was indeed often pained by the ignorance or causeless wonder of those who knew less than himself, though he seldom drove them away with apparent scorn, unless he thought they added presumption to stupidity. ”

“ Would it not be painful to owe his appearance of regard more to his honour than his love? and is not my person, already faded, likelier to fade sooner, than his? On the other hand, is his life a good one? and would it not be lunacy even to risque the wretchedness of losing all situation in the world for the sake of living with a man one loves, and then to lose both companion and consolation? When I lost Mr. Thrale, every one was officious to comfort and to soothe me; but which of my children or quondam friends would look with kindness upon Piozzi's widow? ”

“ 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 giants could scarcely have been more amazed at Jupiter's thunder, than I was at their painted fall. If Rome is to exhibit any thing beyond this, I shall really be more dazzled than delighted; for imagination will stretch no further, and admiration will endure no more.
Sunday, April 10.
Here is no appearance of spring yet, though so late in the year; what must it be in England? One almond and one plum tree have I seen in blossom; but no green leaf out of the bud: so cheerless has been the road between Mantua and Verona, which, however, makes amends for all on our arrival. ”

“ Virtues are like shrubs, which yield their sweets in different manners according to the circumstances which surround them; and while generosity of soul scatters its fragrance like the honeysuckle, and delights the senses of many occasional passengers, who feel the pleasure, and half wonder how the breeze has blown it from so far, the more sullen but not less valuable myrtle waits like fortitude to discover its excellence, till the hand arrives that will crush it, and force out that perfume whose durability well compensates the difficulty of production. ”

“ Here are the most excellent, the most incomparable fish I ever eat; red mullets, large as our maycril, and of singularly high flavour; besides the calamaro, or ink-fish, a dainty worthy of imperial luxury; almond and even apple trees in blossom, to delight those who can be paid for coarse manners and confined notions by the beauties of a brilliant climate. Here are all the hedges in blow as you drive towards Pozzuoli, and a snow of white May-flowers clustering round Virgil’s tomb. ”

“ ROME.
The first sleeping place between Sienna and this capital shall not escape mentioning; its name is Radicosani, its title an inn, and its situation the summit of an exhausted volcano. Such a place did I never see. The violence of the mountain, when living, has split it in a variety of places, and driven it to a breadth of base beyond credibility, its height being no longer formidable. Whichever way you turn your eyes, nothing but portions of this black rock appear therefore; so here is extent without sublimity, and here is terror mingled with disgust. ”

“ Many people have asserted that this is the first among all bridges in the world; but architecture triumphs in the art of building bridges, and, though this is a most exquisitely beautiful fabric, I can scarcely venture to call it an unrivalled one: it shall, if the fine statues at the corners can assist its power over the fancy, and if cleanliness can compensate for stately magnificence, or for the fire of original and unassisted genius, it shall obliterate from my mind the Rialto at Venice, and the fine arch thrown over the Conway at Llanwrst in our North Wales. ”

“ These notions Dr. Johnson carried so very far, that I have heard him say, “If you shut up any man with any woman, so as to make them derive their whole pleasure from each other, they would inevitably fall in love, as it is called, with each other; but at six months’ end, if you would throw them both into public life, where they might change partners at pleasure, each would soon forget that fondness which mutual dependence and the paucity of general amusement alone had caused, and each would separately feel delighted by their release.” ”

“ This charming Adriatic gulph beside, though more than delicious to drive by, does not, like the Mediterranean, convey homeish or familiar ideas; one feels that it belongs exclusively to Venice; one knows that ancient Greece is on the opposite shore, and that with a quick sail one should soon see Macedonia; and descending but a little to the southward, visit Athens, Corinth, Sparta, Thebes—seats of philosophy, freedom, virtue; whence models of excellence and patterns of perfection have been drawn for twenty succeeding centuries! ”

“ One hears a pretty woman not unfrequently admired for her wit, a woman of talents wondered at for her beauty; while I can think on no reason for such perversion of language, unless it is that a small share of elegance will content those whose delight is to hear declamation; and that the most hackeyed sentiments will seem new, when uttered by a pair of rosy lips, and seconded by the expression of eyes from which every thing may be expected. ”

“ Johnson, amazed at his odd frankness, “I thought had been a secret between you and me; and I am sure I would not have said anything about it for the world. Now see,” repeated he, when he told the story, “what a figure a man makes who thus unaccountably chooses to be the frigid narrator of his own disgrace. Il volto sciolto, ed i pensieri stretti, was a proverb made on purpose for such mortals, to keep people, if possible, from being thus the heralds of their own shame; for what compassion can they gain by such silly narratives? ”

“ The truth is, a continental nobleman can have little heart of a country, where, to be treated as a man of fashion, he must absolutely behave as such: his rank is ascertained at home, and people’s deportment to him regulated by long-established customs; nor can it be supposed flattering to its prejudices, to feel himself jostled in the street, or driven against upon the road by a rich trader, while he is contriving the cheapest method of going to look over his manufactory. Wealth diffused makes all men comfortable, and leaves no man splendid; gives every body two dishes, but nobody two hundred. ”

“ We have at length passed the Alps, and are safely arrived at this lovely little city, whence I look back on the majestic boundaries of Italy, with amazement at his courage who first profaned them: surely the immediate sensation conveyed to the mind by the sight of such tremendous appearances must be in every traveller the same, a sensation of fulness never experienced before, a satisfaction that there is something great to be seen on earth—some object capable of contenting even fancy. ”

“ Johnson possessed, however, the strongest compassion for poverty or illness, he did not even pretend to feel for those who lamented the loss of a child, a parent, or a friend. “These are the distresses of sentiment,” he would reply, “which a man who is really to be pitied has no leisure to feel. The sight of people who want food and raiment is so common in great cities, that a surly fellow like me has no compassion to spare for wounds given only to vanity or softness.” No man, therefore, who smarted from the ingratitude of his friends, found any sympathy from our philosopher. ”

“ A hall built in imitation of the Colonna gallery shews Frederick’s taste at once and liberal spirit: the front seems borrowed from something at St. Peter’s; all is beautiful; the gilding of his long-room makes a very sudden and strong effect, nor are marbles of immense value wanting; here is a specimen of every thing I think, and two agate tables of prodigious size and beauty. The Silesian chrysopaz, and Carolina marble of a bright scarlet colour, quite luminous like the feathers of a fighting cock, struck me with their singular and splendid appearance. Rubens’s merit was not new to me, I hope ”

“ When the flashing season is over, and you are no longer to be dazzled with finery or stunned with noise, the nobility of Milan—for gentry there are none—fairly slip a check case over the hammock, as we do to our best chairs in England, clap a coarse leather cover on the carriage top, the coachman wearing a vast brown great coat, which he spreads on each side him over the corners of his coach-box, and looks as somebody was saying—like a sitting hen. ”

“ Villa Pamphili is a lovely place, or might be made so; but laying out pleasure grounds is not the forte of Italian taste. I never saw one of them, except Lomellino of Genoa, who had higher notions of a garden than what an opera scene affords; and that is merely a range of trees in great pots with gilded handles, and rows of tall cypresses planted one between every two pots, all straight over against each other in long lines; with an octangular marble bason to hold water in the middle, covered for the most part with a thick green scum. ”

“ I never in my whole life heard so much of birth and family as since I came to this town; where blood enjoys a thousand exclusive privileges, where Cavalier and Dama are words of the first, nay of the only importance; where wit and beauty are considered as useless without a long pedigree; and virtue, talents, wealth, and wisdom, are thought on only as medals to hang upon the branch of a genealogical tree, as we tie trinkets to a watch in England. ”

“ Italians, by what I can observe, suffer their minds to be much under the dominion of the sky; and attribute every change in their health, or even humour, as seriously to its influence, as if there were no nearer causes of alteration than the state of the air, and as if no doubt remained of its immediate power, though they are willing enough here to poison it with the scent of wood-ashes within doors, while fires in the grate seem to run rather low, and a brazier full of that pernicious stuff is substituted in its place, and driven under the table during dinner. ”

“ Naples is the town that can afford him most matter both of solemn and pleasing speculation.
If ruins of pristine splendour, solid proofs of universal dominion, once, nay twice enjoyed: with the view of temporal power crushed by its own weight, solicits his curiosity.—It will be amply gratified at Rome; where all that modern magnificence can perform, is added to all that ancient empire has left behind. Romantic ideas of Armida’s palace, fancied scenes of perennial pleasure, and magical images of ever varying delight, will be best realized at smiling Venice of any place ”

“ This city seems really under admirable regulations; here are fewer beggars than even at Florence, where however one for fifty in the states of Genoa or Venice do not meet your eyes: And either the word liberty has bewitched me, or I see an air of plenty without insolence, and business without noise, that greatly delight me. Here is much cheerfulness too, and gay good-humour; but this is the season of devotion at Lucca, and in these countries the ideas of devotion and diversion are so blended, that all religious worship seems connected with, and to me now regularly implies, a festive show. ”

“ As for Mount Cenis, I never felt myself more hungry, or better enjoyed a good dinner, than I did upon it's top: but the trout in the lake there have been over praised; their pale colour allured me but little in the first place, nor is their flavour equal to that of trout found in running water. Going down the Italian side of the Alps is, after all, an astonishing journey; and affords the most magnificent scenery in nature, which varying at every step, gives new impression to the mind each moment of one's passage ”

“ The certainty of their irrevocable doom, softened by kind usage from their superiors, makes, in the mean time, an odd sort of humorous drollery spring up among the common people, who are much happier here at Milan than I expected to find them: every great house giving meat, broth, &c. to poor dependents with liberal good-nature enough, so that mighty little wandering misery is seen in the streets; unlike those of Genoa, who seem mocked with the word liberty, while sorrow, sickness, and the most pinching want, pine at the doors of marble palaces, whose owners are unfeeling as their walls. ”

“ The colour of the sky viewed, when one dares to look at it, through this pure atmosphere is particularly beautiful; of a much more brilliant and celestial blue I think, than it appeared from the tower of St. Mark's Place, Venice. Were I to affirm that the sea is of a more peculiar transparent brightness upon the coast of North Wales than elsewhere, it would seem prejudice perhaps, and yet is strictly true: I am not less persuaded that the sky appears of a finer tint in Tuscany than any other country I have visited:—Naples is however the vaunted climate, and that yet remains to be examined. ”

“ Little opportunity is therefore given to writers who carry the dark lanthorn of life into its deepest recesses—unwind the hidden wickedness of a Maskwell or a Monkton, develope the folds of vice, and spy out the internal worthlessness of apparent virtue; which from these discerning eyes cannot be cloked even by that early-taught affectation which renders it a real ingenuity to discover, if in a highly polished capital a man or woman has or has not good parts or principles—so completely are the first overlaid with literature, and the last perverted by refinement. ”

“ A dead language is like common ground;—all have a right to pasture, and all a claim to give or to withhold admiration. Virgil is the old original trough at the corner of the road, where every passer-by pays, drinks, and goes on his journey well refreshed. But the clear spring in the meadow sure, though private property, and lately dug, deserves attention: and confers delight not only on the actual master of the ground, but on all his visitants who can climb the style, and lift the silver cup to their lips which hangs by the fountain-side. ”

“ I hope it is impossible for any one less than myself to wish the continuance or revival of contentions so disgraceful to humanity in general; so peculiarly repugnant to the true spirit of Christianity, which consists chiefly in charity, and that brotherly love we know to have been cemented by the blood of our blessed Lord: yet very strange it is to think, that while other innovations have been resisted even to death, scarcely any among the many sects we have divided into, retain the original form in that ceremony so emphatically called christening. ”

“ The paving of our streets here at Milan is worth mentioning, only because it is directly contrary to the London method of performing the same operation. They lay the large flag stones at this place in two rows, for the coach wheels to roll smoothly over, leaving walkers to accommodate themselves, and bear the sharp pebbles to their tread as they may. In every thing great, and every thing little, the diversity of government must perpetually occur; where that is despotic, small care will be taken of the common people; where that is popular, little attention will be paid to the great ones. ”

“ I ought to learn that which before us lies in daily life, if proper use were made of my demi-naturalization; yet impediments to knowledge spring up round the very tree itself—for surely if there was much wrong, I would not tell it of those who seem inclined to find all right in me; nor can I think that a fame for minute observation, and skill to discern folly with a microscopic eye, is in any wise able to compensate for the corrosions of conscience, where such discoveries have been attained by breach of confidence, and treachery towards unguarded, because unsuspecting innocence of conduct. ”

“ Indeed every body finds the remark obvious, that this statue is of beauty and dignity beyond what human nature now can boast; and the Meleager just at hand, with the Antinous, confirm it; for all elegance and all expression, unpossessed by the Apollo, they have, while none can miss the inferiority of their general appearance to his.
The Musæum Clementinum is altogether such though, that these singularly excellent productions of art are only proper and well-adapted ornaments of a gallery, so stately as, on the other hand, that noble edifice seems but the due repository of such inhabitants. ”

“ This is the first town in Italy I have arrived at yet, where the ladies fairly drive up and down a long street by way of shewing their dress, equipages, &c. without even a pretence of taking fresh air. At Turin the view from the place destined to this amusement, would tempt one out merely for its own sake; and at Milan they drive along a planted walk, at least a stone's throw beyond the gates. Bologna calls its serious inhabitants to a little rising ground, whence the prospect is luxuriantly verdant and smiling. The Lucca bastions are beyond all in a peculiar style of miniature beauty ”