thirdly, how we passed through Piacenza, Parma, Modena, entered the territories of the Pope; stayed twelve days at Bologna ; crossed the Appennines, and afterwards arrived at Florence. None of these things have I told you, nor do I intend to tell you, till you ask me some questions concerning them. No not even of Florence itself, except that it is as fine as possible, and has every thing in it that can bless the eyes. But, before I enter into particulars, you must make your peace both with me and the Venus de Medicis, who, let me tell you, is highly and justly offended at you for not inquiring, long before this, concerning her symmetry and proportions.* LETTER XVI. MR. WEST TO MR. GRAY. ELEGIA.* ERGO desidia videor tibi crimine dignus; Mene igitur statuas & inania saxa vereri! Stultule! marmoreâ quid mihi cum Venere? Cedite Romanæ formosa et cedite Graiæ, Sintque oblita Helenæ nomen et Hermionæ ! * The Letter which accompanied this little Elegy is not extant: Probably it was only inclosed in one to Mr. Walpole.-Mason. Et, quascunque refert ætas vetus, Heroina: Sive est Phidiacum marmor, seu Mentoris æra, Nec minus artificum magna argumenta recentûm Quà Furor & Mavors & sævo in Marmore vultus, Quaque et formoso mollior ære Venus. Quàque loquax spirat fucus, vivique labores, Et quicquid calamo dulciùs ausa manus: Hic nemora, & solâ mærens Melibus in umbrâ, Lymphaque muscoso prosiliens lapide; Illic majus opus, faciesque in pariete major Exurgens, Divûm & numina Cœlicolûm; O vos fælices, quibus hæc cognoscere fas est, Et totâ Italiâ, quà patet usque, frui! Nulla dies vobis eat injucunda, nec usquam Noritis quid sit tempora amara pati. LETTER XVII. MR. GRAY TO MR. WHARTON. Proposals for Printing by Subscription, in THIS LARGE LETTER, THE TRAVELS OF T. G. GENT. WHICH WILL CONSIST OF THE FOLLowing partICULARS. CHAP. I. THE Author arrives at Dover; his conversation with the Mayor of that Corporation. Sets out in the pacquet boat: grows very sick; the Author spews; a very minute account of all the circumstances thereof. His arrival at Calais; how the inhabitants of that country speak French, and are said to be all Papishes; the Author's reflections thereupon. II. How they feed him with soupe, and what meets with a capucin, and what a capucin is. soupe is. How he How they shut him up in a post-chaise and send him to Paris; he goes wondering along during six days; and how there are trees and houses just as in England. Arrives at Paris without knowing it. III. Full account of the river Seine, and of the various animals and plants its borders produce. Description of the little creature called an Abbé, its parts, and their uses; with the reasons why they will not live in England, and the methods that have been used to propagate them there. A cut of the inside of a nunnery; its structure wonderfully adapted to the use of the animals that inhabit it; a short account of them, how they propagate without the help of a male; and how they eat up their own young ones, like cats and rabbits: supposed to have both sexes in themselves like a snail. Dissection of a Dutchess, with copper-plates, very curious. IV. Goes to the opera: grand orchestra of humstrums, bag-pipes, salt-boxes, tabours and pipes. Anatomy of a French ear, showing the formation of it to be entirely different from that of an English one; and that sounds have a directly contrary effect upon one and the other. Farinelli, at Paris, said to have a fine manner, but no voice. Grand ballet, in which there is no seeing the dance for petticoats. Old women with flowers and jewels stuck in the curls of their grey hair. Red-heeled shoes and roll-ups innumerable; hoops and panniers immeasurable, paint unspeakable. Tables, wherein is calculated, with the utmost exactness, the several degrees of red, now in use, from the rising blushes of an Advocate's wife, to the flaming crimson of a Princess of the Blood; done by a limner in great vogue. V. The Author takes unto him a taylour; his character. How he covers him with silk and fringe, and widens his figure with buckram, a yard on each side. Waistcoat and breeches so strait, he can neither breathe nor walk. How the barber curls him en bequille, and à la negligée, and ties a vast solitaire about his neck. How the milliner lengthens his ruffles to his fingers' ends, and sticks his two arms into a muff. How he cannot stir; and how they cut him in proportion to his clothes. VI. He is carried to Versailles, despises it infinitely. A dissertation upon taste. Goes to an Installation in the Chapel Royal: enter the King and fifty fiddlers; fiddlers solus; kettle-drums and trumpets; queens and dauphins; princesses and cardinals; incense and the mass; old knights making curtsies; Holy Ghosts and fiery tongues. VII. Goes into the country to Rheims, in Champagne, stays there three months; what he did there (he must beg the reader's pardon but) he has really forgot. VIII. Proceeds to Lyons, vastness of that city. Can't see the streets for houses.* How rich it is, and how much it stinks. Poem upon the confluence of the Rhone and the Sâone, by a friend of the Author's; very pretty. IX. Makes a journey into Savoy, and in his way visits the Grand Chartreuse he is set aside upon a mule's back, and begins to climb up the mountains: rocks and torrents beneath, pine trees and snows above: horrours and terrours on all sides. The Author dies of the fright. * When one is misled by a proper name, the only use of which is to direct, one feels like the countryman, who complained-" That the houses hindred him from "seeing Paris." The thing becomes an obstruction to itself. Walpole's Fugitive Pieces, Vol. I. p. 222.-Ed. |