If At
The Peace Of Utrecht In 1713 We Had Only Been As Tender About The
Case Of Our Poor Catalan Allies!
Nice at that juncture had just
been returned by France to the safe-keeping of Savoy, so that in
order to escape from French territory, Marteilhe sailed for Nice
in a tartane, and not feeling too safe even there, hurried thence
by Smollett's subsequent route across the Col di Tende.
Many
Europeans were serving at this time in the Turkish or Algerine
galleys. But the most pitiable of all the galley slaves were
those of the knights of St. John of Malta. "Figure to yourself,"
wrote Jacob Houblon [The Houblon Family, 1907 ii. 78. The
accounts in Evelyn and Goldsmith are probably familiar to the
reader.] about this year, "six or seven hundred dirty half-naked
Turks in a small vessel chained to the oars, from which they are
not allowed to stir, fed upon nothing but bad biscuit and water,
and beat about on the most trifling occasion by their most
inhuman masters, who are certainly more Turks than their slaves."
After several digressions, one touching the ancient Cemenelion, a
subject upon which the Jonathan Oldbucks of Provence without
exception are unconscionably tedious, Smollett settles down to a
capable historical summary preparatory to setting his palette for
a picture of the Nissards "as they are." He was, as we are aware,
no court painter, and the cheerful colours certainly do not
predominate. The noblesse for all their exclusiveness cannot
escape his censure. He can see that they are poor (they are
unable to boast more than two coaches among their whole number),
and he feels sure that they are depraved. He attributes both
vices unhesitatingly to their idleness and to their religion. In
their singularly unemotional and coolly comparative outlook upon
religion, how infinitely nearer were Fielding and Smollett than
their greatest successors, Dickens and Thackeray, to the modern
critic who observes that there is "at present not a single
credible established religion in existence." To Smollett
Catholicism conjures up nothing so vividly as the mask of comedy,
while his native Calvinism stands for the corresponding mask of
tragedy. [Walpole's dictum that Life was a comedy to those who
think, a tragedy for those who feel, was of later date than this
excellent mot of Smollett's.] Religion in the sunny spaces of the
South is a "never-failing fund of pastime." The mass (of which he
tells a story that reminds us of Lever's Micky Free) is just a
mechanism invented by clever rogues for an elaborate system of
petty larceny. And what a ferocious vein of cynicism underlies
his strictures upon the perverted gallantry of the Mariolaters at
Florence, or those on the two old Catholics rubbing their ancient
gums against St. Peter's toe for toothache at Rome. The recurring
emblems of crosses and gibbets simply shock him as mementoes of
the Bagne.
At Rome he compares a presentment of St. Laurence to "a barbecued
pig." "What a pity it is," he complains, "that the labours of
painting should have been employed on such shocking objects of
the martyrology," floggings, nailings, and unnailings...
"Peter writhing on the cross, Stephen battered with stones,
Sebastian stuck full of arrows, Bartholomew flayed alive," and so
on.
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