I Pretend Not To Judge Of The
National Character, From My Own Observation:
But, if the
portraits drawn by Goldoni in his Comedies are taken from nature,
I would not hesitate to pronounce the Italian women the most
haughty, insolent, capricious, and revengeful females on the face
of the earth.
Indeed their resentments are so cruelly implacable,
and contain such a mixture of perfidy, that, in my opinion, they
are very unfit subjects for comedy, whose province it is, rather
to ridicule folly than to stigmatize such atrocious vice.
You have often heard it said, that the purity of the Italian is
to be found in the lingua Toscana, and bocca Romana. Certain it
is, the pronunciation of the Tuscans is disagreeably guttural:
the letters C and G they pronounce with an aspiration, which
hurts the ear of an Englishman; and is I think rather rougher
than that of the X, in Spanish. It sounds as if the speaker had
lost his palate. I really imagined the first man I heard speak in
Pisa, had met with that misfortune in the course of his amours.
One of the greatest curiosities you meet with in Italy, is the
Improvisatore; such is the name given to certain individuals, who
have the surprising talent of reciting verses extempore, on any
subject you propose. Mr. Corvesi, my landlord, has a son, a
Franciscan friar, who is a great genius in this way.
When the subject is given, his brother tunes his violin to
accompany him, and he begins to rehearse in recitative, with
wonderful fluency and precision.
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