tions, Latinisms, antiquated words and phrases, that he might the better deviate from vulgar and ordinary expressions.

There

The comedies that I saw at Venice, or indeed in any other part of Italy, are very indifferent, and more lewd than those of other countries. Their poets have no notion of genteel comedy, and fall into the most filthy double meanings imaginable, when they have a mind to make their audience merry. There is no part generally so wretched as that of the fine gentleman, especially when he converses with his mistress; for then the whole dialogue is an insipid mixture of pedantry and romance. But it is no wonder that the poets of so jealous and reserved a nation fail in such conversations on the stage, as they have no patterns of in nature. are four standing characters which enter into every piece that comes on the stage, the Doctor, Harlequin, Pantaloon, and Coviello. The doctor's character comprehends the whole extent of a pedant, that with a deep voice and magisterial air breaks in upon conversation, and drives down all before him: everything he says is backed with quotations out of Galen, Hippocrates, Plato, Virgil, or any author that rises uppermost, and all answers from his companion are looked upon as impertinencies or interruptions. Harlequin's part is made up of blunders and absurdities; he is to mistake one name for another, to forget his errands, to stumble over queens, and to run his head against every post that stands in his way. This is all attended with something so comical in the voice and gestures, that a man, who is sensible of the folly of the part, can hardly forbear being pleased with it. Pantaloon is generally an old cully, and Coviello a sharper.

VOL. IV.

F

I have seen a translation of the Cid, acted at Bologna, which would never have taken, had they not found a place in it for these buffoons. All four of them appear in masks that are made like the old Roman persona, as I shall have occasion to observe in another place. The French and Italians have probably derived this custom of showing some of their characters in masks, from the Greek and Roman theatre. The old Vatican Terence has at the head of every scene the figures of all the persons that are concerned in it, with the particular disguises in which they acted; and I remember to have seen in the Villa Mattheio an antique statue masked, which was perhaps designed for Gnatho in the eunuch, for it agrees exactly with the figure he makes in the Vatican manuscript. One would wonder, indeed, how so polite a people as the ancient Romans and Athenians should not look on these borrowed faces as unnatural. They might do very well for a cyclops or a satyr, that can have no resemblance in human features; but for a flatterer, a miser, or the like characters, which abound in our own species, nothing is more ridiculous than to represent their looks by a painted vizard. In persons of this nature the turns and motions of the face are often as agreeable as any part of the action. Could we suppose that a mask represented never so naturally the general humour of a character, it can never suit with the variety of passions that are incident to every single person in the whole course of a play. The grimace may be proper on some occasions, but is too steady to agree with all. The rabble, indeed, are generally pleased at the first entry of a disguise, but the jest grows cold even with them too when it comes on the stage in a second scene.

Since I am on this subject, I cannot forbear mentioning a custom at Venice, which they tell me is particular to the common people of this country, of singing stanzas out of Tasso. They are set to a pretty solemn tune, and when one begins in any part of the poet, it is odds but he will be answered by somebody else that overhears him; so that sometimes you have ten or a dozen in the neighbourhood of one another, taking verse after verse, and running on with the poem as far as their memories will carry them.

On Holy Thursday, among the several shows that are yearly exhibited, I saw one that is odd enough, and particular to the Venetians. There is a set of artisans, who by the help of several poles, which they lay across each other's shoulders, build themselves up into a kind of pyramid; so that you see a pile of men in the air of four or five rows rising one above another. The weight is so equally distributed, that every man is very well able to bear his part of it, the stories, if I may so call them, growing Îess and less as they advance higher and higher. A little boy represents the point of the pyramid, who, after a short space, leaps off, with a great deal of dexterity, into the arms of one that catches him at the bottom. In the same manner the whole building falls to pieces. I have been the more particular on this, because it explains the following verses of Claudian, which show that the Venetians are not the inventors of this trick.

Vel qui more avium sese jaculentur in auras,
Corporaque ædificent celeri crescentia nexu,
Quorum compositam puer amentatus in arcem
Emicet, et, vinctus plantæ vel cruribus hærens,
Pendula librato figat vestigia saltu.

CLAUD. de Mall. Theod. Cons.

Men, pil'd on men, with active leaps arise,
And build the breathing fabric to the skies;
A sprightly youth, above the topmost row,
Points the tall pyramid and crowns the show.

Though we meet with the Veneti in the old poets, the city of Venice is too modern to find a place among them. Sannazarius's epigram is too

well known to be inserted. The same poet has celebrated this city in two other places of his

-Quis Veneta miracula proferat urbis?
Una instar magni que simul orbis habet.
Salve Italum regina, alta pulcherrima Roma
Emula, quæ terris, quæ dominaris aquis.
Tu tibi vel reges cives facis; O decus, O lux
Ausonia, per quam libera turba sumus:
Per quam barbaries nobis non imperat, et sol
Exoriens nostro clarius orbe nitet!

poems:

Lib. 3. el. 1.

Venetia stands with endless beauties crown'd,
And as a world within herself is found.
Hail, queen of Italy! for years to come
The mighty rival of immortal Rome!
Nations and seas are in thy states enroll'd,
And kings among thy citizens are told.
Ausonia's brightest ornament! by thee
She sits a sov'reign, unenslav'd and free;
By thee, the rude barbarian chas'd
away,
The rising sun cheers with a purer ray
Our western world, and doubly gilds the day.

Nec tu semper eris, quæ septem amplecteris arces,
Ne tu, quæ mediis æmula surgis aquis.

Lib. 2. el. 1.

Thou too shalt fall by time or barb'rous foes,
Whose circling walls the sev'n fam'd hills enclose;
And thou, whose rival tow'rs invade the skies,
And, from amidst the waves, with equal glory rise.

FERRARA, RAVENNA, RIMINI.

AT Venice I took a bark for Ferrara, and in my way thither saw several mouths of the Po, by which it empties itself into the Adriatic.

-Quo non alius per pinguia culta

In mare purpureum violentior effluit amnis.

VIRG. Georg. 4.

which is true, if understood only of the rivers of Italy.

Lucan's description of the Po would have been very beautiful, had he known when to have given

over:

Quoque magis nullum tellus se solvit in amnem
Eridanus, fractasque evolvit in æquora sylvas,
Hesperiamque exhaurit aquis: hunc fabula primum
Populeá fluvium ripas umbrasse corona:
Cumque diem pronum transverso limite ducens
Succendit Phaeton flagrantibus æthera loris;
Gurgitibus raptis penitus tellure perustâ,
Hunc habuisse pares Phœbeis ignibus undas.

The Po that, rushing with uncommon force,
O'ersets whole woods in its tumultuous course,
And rising from Hesperia's wat'ry veins,
Th' exhausted land of all its moisture drains.
The Po, as sings the fable, first convey'd
Its wond'ring current through a poplar shade :
For when young Phaeton mistook his way,
Lost and confounded in the blaze of day,
This river, with surviving streams supplied,
When all the rest of the whole earth were dried,
And nature's self lay ready to expire,

Lib. 2.

Quench'd the dire flame that set the world on fire.