I had no notion of such discipline, and thought the praises, though very loud, not ill bestowed: as it is surely one of man's earliest privileges to replenish the earth with animal life, and to subdue it.
I have, for my own part, generally speaking, little delight in the obstreperous clamours of these heroic pantomimes;—their battles are so noisy, and the acclamations of the spectators so distressing to weak nerves, I dread an Italian theatre—it distracts me.—And always the same thing so, every and every night! how tedious it is!
This want of variety in the common pleasures of Italy though, and that surprising content with which a nation so sprightly looks on the same stuff, and laughs at the same joke for months and months together, is perhaps less despicable to a thinking mind, than the affectation of weariness and disgust, where probably it is not felt at all; and where a gay heart often lurks under a clouded countenance, put on to deceive spectators into a notion of his philosophy who wears it; and what is worse, who wears it chiefly as a mark of distinction cheaply obtained; for neither science, wit, nor courage are now found necessary to form a man of
fashion, or the ton, to which may be said as justly as ever Mr. Pope affirmed it of silence,
That routed reason finds her sure retreat in thee.
Affectation is certainly that faint and sickly weed which is the curse of cultivated,—not naturally fertile and extensive countries; an insect that infests our forcing stoves and hot-house plants: and as the naturalists tell us all animals may be bred down to a state very different from that in which they were originally placed; that carriers, and fantails, and croppers, are produced by early caging, and minutely attending to the common blue pigeon, flights of which cover the ploughed fields in distant provinces of England, and shew the rich and changeable plumage of their fine neck to the summer sun; so from the warm and generous Briton of ancient days may be produced, and happily bred down, the clay-cold coxcomb of St. James's-street.
In Italy, so far at least as I have gone, there is no impertinent desire of appearing what one is not: no searching for talk, and torturing expression to vary its phrases with something new and something fine; or else sinking into silence from despair of diverting
the company, and taking up the opposite method, contriving to impress them with an idea of bright intelligence, concealed by modest doubts of our own powers, and stifled by deep thought upon abstruse and difficult topics. To get quit of all these deep-laid systems of enjoyment, where
To take our breakfast we project a scheme,
Nor drink our tea without a stratagem,
like the lady in Doctor Young; the surest method is to drop into Italy; where a conversazione at Venice or Florence, after the society of London, or les petit soupers de Paris, where, in their own phrase, un tableau n'attend pas l'autre[One picture don't wait for another], is like taking a walk in Ham Gardens, or the Leasowes, after les parterres de Versailles ed i Terrazzi di Genoa. We are affected in the house, but natural in the gardens. Italians are natural in society, affected and constrained in the disposition of their grounds. No one, however, is good or bad, or wise or foolish without a reason why. Restraint is made for man, and where religious and political liberty is enjoyed to its full extent,