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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 69 of 291
Words from 17899 to 18170
of 77809
