His Remarks Upon The Famous Pieta Of Michael Angelo Are Frank
To The Point Of Brutality.
The right of sanctuary and its
"infamous prerogative," unheard of in England since the days of
Henry VII., were still capable of affording a lesson to the Scot
abroad.
"I saw a fellow who had three days before murdered his
wife in the last month of pregnancy, taking the air with great
composure and serenity, on the steps of a church in Florence."
Smollett, it is clear, for all his philosophy, was no degenerate
representative of the blind, unreasoning seventeenth-century
detestation of "Popery and wooden shoes."
Smollett is one of the first to describe a "conversazione," and
in illustration of the decadence of Italian manners, it is
natural that he should have a good deal to tell us about the
Cicisbeatura. His account of the cicisbeo and his duties, whether
in Nice, Florence, or Rome, is certainly one of the most
interesting that we have. Before Smollett and his almost
contemporary travel correspondent, Samuel Sharp, it would
probably be hard to find any mention of the cicisbeo in England,
though the word was consecrated by Sheridan a few years later.
Most of the "classic" accounts of the usage such as those by Mme.
de Stael, Stendhal, Parini, Byron and his biographers date from
very much later, when the institution was long past its prime if
not actually moribund. Now Smollett saw it at the very height of
its perfection and at a time when our decorous protestant
curiosity on such themes was as lively as Lady Mary Montagu had
found it in the case of fair Circassians and Turkish harems just
thirty years previously.
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