" He quotes triumphantly the proverb,--_Inglese
italianato, diavolo incarnato_. A century later, the entertaining
"Richard Lassels, Gent., who Travelled through Italy Five times as
Tutor to several of the _English_ Nobility and Gentry," and who is open
to new engagements in that kind, declares, that, "For the Country
itself, it seemed to me to be _Nature's Darling_, and the _Eldest
Sister_ of all other Countries; carrying away from them all the
greatest blessings and favours, and receiving such gracious looks from
the _Sun_ and _Heaven_, that, if there be any fault in _Italy_, it is,
that her Mother _Nature_ hath cockered her too much, even to make her
become Wanton." Plainly, our Tannhaeuser is but too ready to go back to
the Venus-berg!
A new book on Italy seems a dangerous experiment. Has not all been told
and told and told again? Is it not one chief charm of the land, that it
is changeless without being Chinese? Did not Abbot Samson, in 1159,
_Scotti habitum induens_, (which must have shown his massive calves to
great advantage.) probably see much the same popular characteristics
that Hawthorne saw seven hundred years later? Shall a man try to be
entertaining after Montaigne, aesthetic after Winckelmann, wise after
Goethe, or trenchant after Forsyth? Can he hope to bring back anything
so useful as the _fork_, which honest Tom Coryate made prize of two
centuries and a half ago, and put into the greasy fingers of Northern
barbarians? Is not the "Descrittione" of Leandro Alberti still a
competent itinerary? And can one hope to pick up a fresh Latin
quotation, when Addison and Eustace have been before him with their
scrap-baskets?
If there be anything which a person of even moderate accomplishments
may be presumed to know, it is Italy.
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