Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. 2 (of 2) — Reading Companion

mpressions of this wonderful metropolis, of which I had been always reading summer descriptions, and had regarded somehow as an Hesperian garden, an earthly paradise, where delicacy and softness subdued every danger, and general sweetness captivated every sense;--nor have I any reason yet to say it will not still prove so, for though wet, and weary, and hungry, we wanted no fire, and found only inconvenience from that they lighted on our arrival. It was the fashion at Florence to struggle for a Terreno, but here we are all perched up one hundred and forty two steps from the level of the land or sea; large balconies, apparently well secured, give me every enjoyment of a prospect, which no repetition can render tedious: and here we have agreed to stay till Spring, which, I trust, will come out in this country as soon as the new year calls it.

Our eagerness to see sights has been repressed at Naples only by finding every thing a sight; one need not stir out to look for wonders sure, while this amazing mountain continues to exhibit such various scenes of sublimity and beauty at exactly the distance one would chuse to observe it from; a distance which almost admits examination, and certainly excludes immediate fear. When in the silent night, however, one listens to its groaning; while hollow sighs, as of gigantic sorrow, are often heard distinctly in my apartment; nothing can surpass one’s sensations of amazement, except the consciousness that custom will abate their keenness: I have not, however, yet learned to lie quiet, when columns of flame, high as the mountain’s self, shoot from its crater into the clear atmosphere with a loud and violent noise; nor shall I ever forget the scene it presented one day to my astonished eyes, while a thick cloud, charged heavily with electric matter, passing over, met the fiery explosion by mere chance, and went off in such a manner as effectually baffles all verbal description, and lasted too short a time for a painter to seize the moment, and imitate its very strange effect. Monsieur de Vollaire, however, a native of France, long resident in this city, has obtained, by perpetual observation, a power of representing Vesuvius without that black shadow, which others have thought necessary to increase the contrast, but which greatly takes away all resemblance of its original. Upon reflection it appears to me, that the men most famous at London and Paris for performing tricks with fire have been always Italians in my time, and commonly Neapolitans; no wonder, I should think, Naples would produce prodigious connoisseurs in this way; we have almost perpetual lightning of various colours, according to the soil from whence the vapours are exhaled; sometimes of a pale straw or lemon colour, often white like artificial flame produced by camphor, but oftenest blue, bright as the rays emitted through the coloured liquors set in the window of a chemist’s shop in London--and with such thunder!!--“For God’s sake, Sir,” said I to some of them, “is there no danger of the ships in the harbour here catching fire? why we should all fly up in the air directly, if once these flashes should communicate to the room where any of the vessels keep their powder.”--“Gunpowder, Madam!” replies the man, amazed; “why if St. Peter and St. Paul came here with gunpowder on board, we should soon drive them out again: don’t you know,” added he, “that every ship discharges her contents at such a place (naming it), and never comes into our port with a grain on board?”

The palaces and churches have no share in one’s admiration at Naples, who scorns to depend on man, however mighty, however skilful, for _her_ ornaments; while Heaven has bestowed on her and her _contorni_ all that can excite astonishment, all that can impress awe. We have spent three or four days upon Pozzuoli and its environs; its cavern scooped originally by nature’s hand, assisted by the armies of Cocceius Nerva--ever tremendous, ever gloomy grotto!--which leads to the road that shews you Ischia, an old volcano, now an island apparently rent asunder by an earthquake, the division too plain to beg assistance from philosophy: this is commonly called the _Grotto di Posilippo_ though; you pass through it to go to every place; not without flambeaux, if you would go safely, and avoid the necessity the poor are under, who, driving their carts through the subterranean passage, cry as they meet each other, to avoid jostling, _alla montagna_, or _alla marina_, _keep to the rock side_, or _keep to the sea side_. It is at the right hand, awhile before you enter this cavern, that climbing up among a heap of bushes, you find a hollow place, and there go down again--it is the tomb of Virgil; and, for other antiquities, I recollect nothing shewed me when at Rome that gave me as complete an idea how things were really carried on in former days, as does the temple of _Shor Apis_ at Pozzuoli, where the area is exactly all it ever was; the ring remains where the victim was fastened to; the priests apartments, lavatories, &c. the drains for carrying the beast’s blood away, all yet remains as perfect as it is possible. The end of Caligula’s bridge too, but that they say is not his bridge, but a mole built by some succeeding emperor--a madder or a wickeder it could not be--though here Nero bathed, and here he buried his mother Agrippina. Here are the centum camera, the prisons employed by that prince for the cruellest of purposes; and here are his country palaces reserved for the most odious ones: here effeminacy learned to subsist without delicacy or shame, hence honour was excluded by rapacity, and conscience stupefied by constant inebriation: here brainsick folly put nature and common sense upon the rack--Caligula in madness courted the moon to his embraces--and Sylla, satiated with blood, retired, and gave a premature banquet to those worms he had so often fed with the flesh of innocence: here dwelt depravity in various shapes, and here Pandora’s chambers left scarcely a _Hope_ at the bottom that better times should come:--who can write prose however in such places!--let the impossibility of expressing my thoughts any other way excuse the following

First of Achelous’ blood, Fairest daughter of the flood, Queen of the Sicilian sea, Beauteous, bright Parthenope! Syren sweet, whose magic force Stops the swiftest in his course; Wisdom’s self, when most severe, Longs to lend a list’ning ear, Gently dips the fearful oar, Trembling eyes the tempting shore, And sighing quits th’ enervate coast, With only half his virtue lost.

Let thy warm, thy wond’rous clime, Animate my artless rhyme, Whilst alternate round me rise Terror, pleasure, and surprise.-- Here th’ astonish’d soul surveys Dread Vesuvius’ awful blaze, Smoke that to the sky aspires, Heavy hail of solid fires, Flames the fruitful fields o’erflowing, Ocean with the reflex glowing; Thunder, whose redoubled sound Echoes o’er the vaulted ground!-- Such thy glories, such the gloom That conceals thy secret tomb, Sov’reign of this enchanted sea, Where sunk thy charms, Parthenope.

Now by the glimm’ring torch’s ray I tread Pozzuoli’s cavern’d way-- Hollow grot! that might beseem Th’ Ætnean cyclop, Polypheme: And here the bat at noonday ’bides, And here the houseless beggar hides, While the holy hermit’s voice Glads me with accustom’d noise. Now I trace, or trav’llers err, Modest Maro’s sepulchre, Where nature, sure of his intent, Is studious to conceal That eminence he always meant We should not see but feel. While Sannazarius from the steep Views, well pleas’d, the fertile deep Give life to them that seize the scaly fry, And to their poet--_immortality_.

Next beauteous Baia’s warm remains invite To Nero’s stoves my wond’ring sight; Where palaces and domes destroy’d Leave a flat unwholesome void: Where underneath the cooling wave, Ordain’d pollution’s fav’rite spot to lave, Now hardly heaves the stifled sigh Hot, hydropic luxury. Yet, chas’d by Heav’n’s correcting hand, Tho’ various crimes have fled the land; Tho’ brutish vice, tyrannic pow’r, No longer tread the trembling shore, Or taint the ambient air; By destiny’s kind care arrang’d, Th’ inhabitants are scarcely chang’d; For birds obscene, and beasts of prey, That seek the night and shun the day, Still find a dwelling there.

If then beneath the deep profound Retires unseen the slipp’ry ground; If melted metals pour’d from high A verdant mountain grows by time, Where frisking kids can browze and climb, And softer scenes supply: Let us who view the varying scene, And tread th’ instructive paths between, See famish’d Time his fav’rite sons devour, Fix’d for an age--then swallow’d in an hour; Let us at least be early wise, And forward walk with heav’n-fix’d eyes, Each flow’ry isle avoid, each precipice despise; Till, spite of pleasure, fear, or pain, Eternity’s firm coast we gain, Whence looking back with alter’d eye, These fleeting phantoms we’ll descry, And find alike the song and theme Was but--an empty, airy dream.

When one has exhausted all the ideas presented to the mind by the sight of Monte Nuovo, made in one night by the eruption of Solfa Terra, now sunk into itself and almost extinguished; by the lake Avernus; by the Phlegræan fields, where Jupiter killed the giants, with such thunderbolts as fell about our ears the other night I trust, and buried one of them alive under mount Ætna; when one has seen the Sybil’s grott, and the Elysian plains, and every seat of fable and of verse; when one has run about repeating Virgil’s verses and Claudian’s by turns, and handled the hot sand under the cool waves of Baia; when one has seen Cicero’s villa and Diana’s temple, and talked about antiquities till one is afraid of one’s own pedantry, and tired of every one’s else; it is almost time to recollect realities of more near interest to such of us as are not ashamed of being Christians, and to remember that it was at Pozzuoli St. Paul arrived after the storms he met with in these seas. The wind is still called here _Sieuroc_, o sia _lo vento Greco_; and their manner of pronouncing it led me to think it might possibly be that called in Scripture _Euroc_lydon, abbreviated by that grammatical figure, which lops off the concluding syllables. The old Pastor Patrobas too, who received and entertained the Apostle here, lies interred under the altar of an old church at Pozzuoli, made out of the remains of a temple to Jupiter, whose pillars are in good preservation: I was earnest to see the place at least, as every thing named in the New Testament is of true importance, but one meets few people of the same taste: for Romanists take most delight in venerating traditionary heroes, and Calvinists, perhaps too easily disgusted, desire to venerate no heroes at all.

Some curious inscriptions here, to me not legible, shew how this poor country has been overwhelmed by tyrants, earthquakes, Saracens! not to mention the Goths and Vandals, who however left no traces _but_ desolation: while, as the prophet Joel says, “_The ground was as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness_.”

These Mahometan invaders, less savage, but not less cruel, afforded at least an unwilling shelter in that which is now their capital, for the wretched remains of literature. To their misty envelopement of science, fatigued with struggling against perpetual suffocation, succeeded imposture, barbarism, and credulity; with superstition at their head, who still keeps her footing in this country: and inspires such veneration for St. Januarius, his name, his blood, his statue, &c. that the Neapolitans, who are famous for blasphemous oaths, and a facility of taking the most sacred words into their mouths on every, and I may say, on _no_ occasion, are never heard to repeat _his_ name without pulling off their hat, or making some reverential sign of worship at the moment. And I have seen Italians from other states greatly shocked at the grossness of these their unenlightened neighbours, particularly the half-Indian custom of burning figures upon their skins with gunpowder: these figures, large, and oddly displayed too, according to the coarse notions of the wearer.

As the weather is exceedingly warm, and there is little need of clothing for comfort, our Lazaroni have small care about appearances, and go with a vast deal of their persons uncovered, except by these strange ornaments. The man who rows you about this lovely bay, has perhaps the angel Raphael, or the blessed Virgin Mary, delineated on one brawny sun-burnt leg, the saint of the town upon the other: his arms represent the Glory, or the seven spirits of God, or some strange things, while a brass medal hangs from his neck, expressive of his favourite martyr: whom they confidently affirm is so madly venerated by these poor uninstructed mortals, that when the mountain burns, or any great disaster threatens them, they beg of our Saviour to speak to St. Januarius in their behalf, and intreat him not to refuse them his assistance. Now though all this was told me by friends of the Romish persuasion; and told me too with a just horror of the superstitious folly; I think my remarks and inferences were not agreeable to them, when expressing my notion that it was only a relick of the adoration originally paid to Janus in Italy, where the ground yielding up its frost to the soft breath of the new year, is not ill-typified by the liquefaction of the blood; a ceremony which has succeeded to various Pagan ones celebrated by Ovid in the first book of his Fasti. We know from history too, that perfumes were offered in _January_ always, to signify the renovation of _sweets_; and this was so necessary, that I think Tacitus tells us Thrasea was first impeached for absence at the time of the new year, when in _Janus_’s presence, &c. good wishes were formed for the Emperor’s felicity; and no word of ill omen was to be pronounced.--_Cautum erat apud Romanos ne quod mali ominis verbum calendis_ Januariis _efferretur_; says Pliny: and the _strenæ_ or new-years gifts, called now by the French “les _etrennes_,” and practised by Lutherans as well as Romanists, is the self-same veneration of old _Janus_, if fairly traced up to Tatius King of the Sabines, who sought a laurel bough plucked from the grove of the goddess _Strenia_, or _Strenua_, and presented it to his favourites on the first of _January_, from whence the custom arose; and Symmachus, in his tenth book, twenty-eighth epistle, mentions it clearly when writing to the Emperors Theodosius and Arcadius--“Strenuarum _usus adolevit auctoritate Tatii regis, qui verbenas felicis arboris ex luco Strenuæ anni_.”

Octavius Cæsar took the name of Augustus on the first of January in Janus’s temple, by Plancus’s advice, as a lucky day; and I suppose our new-year’s ode, sung before the King of England, may be derived from the same source. The old Fathers of the Church declaimed aloud against the custom of new-years gifts, because they considered them as of Pagan original. So much for _Les Etrennes_.

As to _St. Januarius_, there certainly was a martyr of that name at Naples, and to him was transferred much of the veneration originally bestowed on the deity from whom he was probably named. One need not however wander round the world with Banks and Solander, or stare so at the accounts given us in Cook’s Voyages of _tattowed Indians_, when Naples will shew one the effects of a like operation, very _very_ little better executed, on the broad shoulders of numberless Lazaroni; and of this there is no need to examine books for information, he who runs over the Chiaja may read in large characters the gross superstition of the Napolitani, who have no inclination to lose their old classical character for laziness--

Et in otia natam Parthenopen;

says Ovid. I wonder however whether our people would work much surrounded by similar circumstances; I fancy not: Englishmen, poor fellows! must either work or starve; these folks want for nothing: a house would be an inconvenience to them; they like to sleep out of doors, and it is plain they have small care for clothing, as many who possess decent habiliments enough, I speak of the Lazaroni, throw almost all off till some holiday, or time of gala, and sit by the sea-side playing at moro with their fingers.

A Florentine nobleman told me once, that he asked one of these fellows to carry his portmanteau for him, and offered him a _carline_, no small sum certainly to a Neapolitan, and rather more in proportion than an English shilling; he had not twenty yards to go with it: “_Are you hungry, Master?_” cries the fellow. “_No_,” replied Count Manucci, “_but what of that?_”--“_Why then no more am I_:” was the answer, “_and it is too hot weather to carry burthens_:” so turned about upon the other side, and lay still.

This class of people, amounting to a number that terrifies one but to think on, some say sixty thousand souls, and experience confirms no less, give the city an air of gaiety and cheerfulness, and one cannot help honestly rejoicing in. The Strada del Toledo is one continual crowd: nothing can exceed the confusion to a walker, and here are little gigs drawn by one horse, which, without any bit in his mouth, but a string tied round his nose, tears along with inconceivable rapidity a small narrow gilt chair, set between the two wheels, and no spring to it, nor any thing else which can add to the weight; and this flying car is a kind of _fiacre_ you pay so much for a drive in, I forget the sum.

Horses are particularly handsome in this town, not so large as at Milan, but very beautiful and spirited; the cream-coloured creatures, such as draw our king’s state coach, are a common breed here, and shine like sattin: here are some too of a shining silver white, wonderfully elegant; and the ladies upon the Corso exhibit a variety scarcely credible in the colour of their cattle which draw them: but the coaches, harness, trappings, &c. are vastly inferior to the Milanese, whose liveries are often splendid; whereas the four or five ill-dressed strange-looking fellows that disgrace the Neapolitan equipages seem to be valued only for their number, and have very often much the air of Sir John Falstaff’s recruits.

Yesterday however shewed me what I knew not had existed--a skew-ball or pye-balled ass, eminently well-proportioned, coated like a racer in an English stud, sixteen hands and a half high, his colour bay and white in large patches, and his temper, as the proprietor told me, singularly docile and gentle. I have longed perhaps to purchase few things in my life more earnestly than this beautiful and useful animal, which I might have had too for two pounds fifteen shillings English, but dared not, lest like Dogberry I should have been written down for an ass by my merry country folks, who, I remember, could not let the Queen of England herself possess in peace a creature of the same kind, but handsomer still, and from a still hotter climate, called the Zebra.

Apropos to quadrupeds, when Portia, in the Merchant of Venice, enumerates her lovers, she names the Neapolitan prince first; who, she says, does nothing, for his part, but talk of his horse, and makes it his greatest boast that he can shoe him himself. This is almost literally true of a nobleman here; and they really do not throw their pains away; for it is surprising to see what command they have their cattle in, though bits are scarcely used among them.

The coat armour of Naples consists of an unbridled horse; and by what I can make out of their character, they much resemble him;

Qualis ubi abruptis fugit præsæpia vinclis Tandem liber æquus, &c. &c. &c.[2];