Evelyn Mentions That Galleys
Were Built There In His Time, But That Was More Than A Hundred
Years Before.
The slips and dock had long been abandoned, as
Smollett is careful to point out in his manuscript notes, now in
the British Museum.
He also explains with superfluous caution
that the Duomo of Pisa is not entirely Gothic. Once arrived in
the capital of Tuscany, after admitting that Florence is a noble
city, our traveller is anxious to avoid the hackneyed ecstasies
and threadbare commonplaces, derived in those days from Vasari
through Keysler and other German commentators, whose genius
Smollett is inclined to discover rather "in the back than in the
brain."
The two pass-words for a would-be connoisseur, according to
Goldsmith, were to praise Perugino, and to say that such and such
a work would have been much better had the painter devoted more
time and study to it. With these alternatives at hand one might
pass with credit through any famous continental collection.
Smollett aspired to more independence of thought and opinion,
though we perceive at every turn how completely the Protestant
prejudice of his "moment" and "milieu" had obtained dominion over
him. To his perception monks do not chant or intone, they bawl
and bellow their litanies. Flagellants are hired peasants who pad
themselves to repletion with women's bodices. The image of the
Virgin Mary is bejewelled, hooped, painted, patched, curled, and
frizzled in the very extremity of the fashion. No particular
attention is paid by the mob to the Crucified One, but as soon as
his lady-mother appeared on the shoulders of four lusty friars
the whole populace fall upon their knees in the dirt. We have
some characteristic criticism and observation of the Florentine
nobles, the opera, the improvisatori, [For details as to the
eighteenth-century improvisatore and commedia delle arte the
reader is referred to Symonds's Carlo Gozzi. See also the Travel
Papers of Mrs. Piozzi; Walpole's Letters to Sir Horace Mann, and
Doran's Mann and Manners at the Court of Florence. (Vide Appendix
A, p. 345)] the buildings, and the cicisbei. Smollett nearly
always gives substantial value to his notes, however casual, for
he has an historian's eye, and knows the symptoms for which the
inquirer who comes after is likely to make inquisition.
Smollett's observations upon the state of Florence in Letters
XXVII and XXVIII are by no means devoid of value. The direct rule
of the Medici had come to an end in 1737, and Tuscany (which with
the exception of the interlude of 1798-1814 remained in Austrian
hands down to 1860) was in 1764 governed by the Prince de Craon,
viceroy of the Empress Maria Theresa. Florence was, indeed, on
the threshold of the sweeping administrative reforms instituted
by Peter Leopold, the archduke for whom Smollett relates that
they were preparing the Pitti Palace at the time of his stay.
This Prince governed the country as Grand Duke from 1765 to 1790,
when he succeeded his brother as Emperor, and left a name in
history as the ill-fated Leopold. Few more active exponents of
paternal reform are known to history. But the Grand Duke had to
deal with a people such as Smollett describes. Conservative to
the core, subservient to their religious directors, the "stupid
party" in Florence proved themselves clever enough to retard the
process of enlightenment by methods at which even Smollett
himself might have stood amazed. The traveller touches an
interesting source of biography when he refers to the Englishman
called Acton, formerly an East India Company captain, now
commander of the Emperor's Tuscan Navy, consisting of "a few
frigates." This worthy was the old commodore whom Gibbon visited
in retirement at Leghorn. The commodore was brother of Gibbon's
friend, Dr. Acton, who was settled at Besancon, where his noted
son, afterwards Sir John Acton, was born in 1736. Following in
the footsteps of his uncle the commodore, who became a Catholic,
Smollett tells us, and was promoted Admiral of Tuscany, John
Acton entered the Tuscan Marine in 1775.
[Sir John Acton's subsequent career belongs to history. His
origin made him an expert on naval affairs, and in 1776 he
obtained some credit for an expedition which he commanded against
the Barbary pirates. In 1778 Maria Carolina of Naples visited her
brother Leopold at Florence, and was impressed by Acton's
ugliness and reputation for exceptional efficiency. Her favourite
minister, Prince Caramanico, persuaded the Grand Duke, Leopold,
to permit Acton to exchange into the Neapolitan service, and
reorganize the navy of the southern kingdom. This actually came
to pass, and, moreover, Acton played his cards so well that he
soon engrossed the ministries of War and Finance, and after the
death of Caracciolo, the elder, also that of Foreign Affairs. Sir
William Hamilton had a high opinion of the" General," soon to
become Field-Marshal. He took a strong part in resistance to
revolutionary propaganda, caused to be built the ships which
assisted Nelson in 1795, and proved himself one of the most
capable bureaucrats of the time. But the French proved too
strong, and Napoleon was the cause of his disgrace in 1804. In
that year, by special dispensation from the Pope, he married his
niece, and retired to Palermo, where he died on 12th August
1811.]
Let loose in the Uffizi Gallery Smollett shocked his sensitive
contemporaries by his freedom from those sham ecstasies which
have too often dogged the footsteps of the virtuosi. Like Scott
or Mark Twain at a later date Smollett was perfectly ready to
admire anything he could understand; but he expressly disclaims
pretensions to the nice discernment and delicate sensibility of
the connoisseur. He would never have asked to be left alone with
the Venus de Medicis as a modern art-critic is related to have
asked to be left alone with the Venus of Rokeby. He would have
been at a loss to understand the state of mind of the eminent
actor who thought the situation demanded that he should be
positively bereft of breath at first sight of the Apollo
Belvedere, and panting to regain it, convulsively clutched at the
arm of his companion, with difficulty articulating, "I breathe."
Smollett refused to be hypnotized by the famous Venus discovered
at Hadrian's villa, brought from Tivoli in 1680, and then in the
height of its renown; the form he admired, but condemned the face
and the posture.
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