Footnote 392: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu met many of these pairs at Rome,
where she writes that, by herding together and throwing away their money
on worthless objects, they had acquired the title of Golden Asses, and
that Goldoni adorned his dramas with "gli milordi Inglesi" in the same
manner as Moliere represented his Parisian marquises (Letters, ed.
Wharncliffe, London, 1893, vol. ii. p. 327).
Footnote 393: William Congreve, The Way of the World, Act III. Sc. xv.
Footnote 394: Philip Thicknesse, Observations on the Customs and
Manners of the French Nation, London, 1766, p. 3.
Footnote 395: Thomas Gray the poet.
Footnote 396: Horace Walpole, Letters, ed. Cunningham, London, 1891,
vol. i. p. 24.
Footnote 397: Thomas Gray, Letters, ed. Tovey, Cambridge University
Press, 1890, pp. 38, 44, 68.
Footnote 398: James Howell, Instructions for Forraine Travell, p. 25
(Arber Reprint).
Footnote 399: Ibid., Epistolae Ho-Elianae, ed. Jacobs, 1892, vol. i. p.
95.
The Renaissance traveller had little commendation for a land that was
not fruitful, rich with grains and orchards. A landscape that suggested
food was to him the fairest landscape under heaven. Far from being an
admirer of mountains, he was of the opinion of Dr Johnson that "an eye
accustomed to flowery pastures and waving harvests is astonished and
repelled by this wide extent of hopeless sterility" and that "this
uniformity of barrenness can afford very little amusement to the
traveller" (Works, ed. 1787, vol. x. p. 359).
Footnote 400:
