The
Strappado As Described By Smollett, However, Is A More Severe
Form Of Torture Even Than That Practised By The Inquisition, And
We Can Only Hope That His Description Of Its Brutality Is Highly
Coloured.
[See the extremely learned disquisition on the whole
subject in Dr. H. C. Lea's History of the Inquisition in Spain,
1907, vol.
Iii. book vi chap. vii.] Smollett must have enjoyed
himself vastly in the market at Nice. He gives an elaborate and
epicurean account of his commissariat during the successive
seasons of his sojourn in the neighbourhood. He was not one of
these who live solely "below the diaphragm"; but he understood
food well and writes about it with a catholic gusto and relish
(156-165). He laments the rarity of small birds on the Riviera,
and gives a highly comic account of the chasse of this species of
gibier. He has a good deal to say about the sardine and tunny
fishery, about the fruit and scent traffic, and about the wine
industry; and he gives us a graphic sketch of the silkworm
culture, which it is interesting to compare with that given by
Locke in 1677. He has something to say upon the general
agriculture, and more especially upon the olive and oil industry.
Some remarks upon the numerous "mummeries" and festas of the
inhabitants lead him into a long digression upon the feriae of
the Romans. It is evident from this that the box of books which
he shipped by way of Bordeaux must have been plentifully supplied
with classical literature, for, as he remarks with unaffected
horror, such a thing as a bookseller had not been so much as
heard of in Nice.
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