Thy Pharos Genoa First Displayed Itself
Burning In Stillness On Its Rocky Seat;
That Guiding Star So Oft The Only One,
When Those Now Glowing In The Azure Vault
Are Dark And Silent
Smollett's description of Genoa is decidedly more interesting.
He
arrived at a moment specially propitious to so sardonic an
observer, for the Republic had fallen on evil times, having
escaped from the clutches of Austria in 1746 by means of a
popular riot, during which the aristocracy considerately looked
the other way, only to fall into an even more embarrassed and
unheroic position vis-a-vis of so diminutive an opponent as
Corsica. The whole story is a curious prototype of the nineteenth
century imbroglio between Spain and Cuba. Of commonplaces about
the palaces fruitful of verbiage in Addison and Gray, who says
with perfect truth, "I should make you sick of marble were I to
tell you how it is lavished here," Smollett is sparing enough,
though he evidently regards the inherited inclination of Genoese
noblemen to build beyond their means as an amiable weakness. His
description of the proud old Genoese nobleman, who lives in
marble and feeds on scraps, is not unsympathetic, and suggests
that the "deceipt of the Ligurians," which Virgil censures in the
line
Haud Ligurum extremus, dum fallere fata sinebant
may possibly have been of this Balderstonian variety. But
Smollett had little room in his economy for such vapouring
speculations. He was as unsentimental a critic as Sydney Smith or
Sir Leslie Stephen.
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