For it was no mean task he had proposed
to himself, namely, "to visit every spot in Italy which classic writers
had rendered famous."
To visit every spot - what a Gargantuan undertaking! None but a quite
young man could have conceived such a project, and even Ramage, with all
his good health and zest, might have spent half a lifetime over the
business but for his habit of breathless hustle, which leaves the reader
panting behind. He is always on the move. He reminds one of Mr. Phineas
Fogg in that old tale. The moment he has "satisfied his curiosity" there
is no holding him; off he goes; the smiles of the girls whom he adores,
the entreaties of some gentle scholar who fain would keep him as guest
for the night - they are vain; he is tired to death, but "time is
precious" and he "tears himself away from his intelligent host" and
scampers into the wilderness once more, as if the Furies were at his
heels. He thinks nothing of rushing from Catanzaro to Cotrone, from
Manduria to Brindisi, in a single day - at a time when there was hardly a
respectable road in the country. Up to the final paragraph of the book
he is "hurrying" because time is "fast running out."
This sense of fateful hustle - this, and the umbrella - they impart quite
a peculiar flavour to his pages.
One would like to learn more about so lovable a type - for such he was,
unquestionably; one would like to know, above all things, why his
descriptions of other parts of Italy have never been printed. Was the
enterprise interrupted by his death? He tells us that the diaries of his
tours through the central and northern regions were written; that he
visited "every celebrated spot in Umbria and Etruria" and wandered "as
far as the valley of the Po." Where are these notes? Those on Etruria,
especially, would make good reading at this distance of time, when even
Dennis has acquired an old-world aroma. The Dictionary of National
Biography might tell us something about him, but that handy little
volume is not here; moreover, it has a knack of telling you everything
about people save what you ought to know.
So, for example, I had occasion not long ago to look up the account of
Charles Waterton the naturalist. [3] He did good work in his line, but
nothing is more peculiar to the man than his waywardness. It was
impossible for him to do anything after the manner of other folks. In
all his words and actions he was a freak, a curiosity, the prince of
eccentrics. Yet this, the essence of the man, the fundamental trait of
his character which shines out of every page of his writing and every
detail of his daily life - this, the feature by which he was known to his
fellows and ought to be known to posterity - it is intelligible from that
account only if you read between the lines.
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