These Mahometan invaders, less savage, but not less cruel, afforded at least an unwilling shelter in that which is now their capital, for the wretched remains of literature. To their misty envelopement of science, fatigued with struggling against perpetual suffocation, succeeded imposture, barbarism, and credulity; with superstition at their head, who still keeps her footing in this country: and inspires such veneration for St. Januarius, his name, his blood, his statue, &c. that the Neapolitans, who are famous for blasphemous oaths, and a facility of taking the most sacred words into their mouths on every, and I may say, on no occasion, are never heard to repeat his name without pulling off their hat, or making some reverential sign of worship at the moment. And I have seen Italians from other states greatly shocked at the grossness of these their unenlightened neighbours, particularly the half-Indian custom of burning figures upon their skins with gunpowder: these figures, large, and oddly displayed too, according to the coarse notions of the wearer.
As the weather is exceedingly warm, and there is little need of clothing for comfort, our Lazaroni have small care about appearances, and go with a vast deal of their persons uncovered, except by these strange ornaments. The man who rows you about this lovely bay, has perhaps the angel Raphael, or the blessed Virgin Mary, delineated on one brawny sun-burnt leg, the saint of the town upon the other: his arms represent the Glory, or the seven spirits of God, or some strange things, while a brass medal hangs from his neck, expressive of his favourite martyr: whom they confidently affirm is so madly venerated by these poor uninstructed mortals, that when the mountain burns, or any great disaster threatens them, they beg of our Saviour to speak to St. Januarius in their behalf, and intreat him not to refuse them his assistance. Now though all this was told me by friends of the Romish persuasion; and told me too with a just horror of the superstitious folly; I think my remarks and inferences were not agreeable to them, when expressing my notion that it was only a relick of the adoration originally paid to Janus in Italy, where the ground yielding up its frost to the soft breath of the new year, is not ill-typified by the liquefaction of the blood; a ceremony which has succeeded to various Pagan ones celebrated by Ovid in the first book of his Fasti. We know from history too, that perfumes were offered in January always, to signify the renovation of sweets; and this was so necessary, that I think Tacitus tells us Thrasea was first impeached for absence at the time of the new year, when in Janus’s presence, &c. good wishes were formed for the Emperor’s felicity; and no word of ill omen was to be pronounced.—Cautum erat apud Romanos ne quod mali ominis verbum calendis Januariis efferretur; says Pliny: and the strenæ or new-years gifts, called now by the French “les etrennes,” and practised by Lutherans as well as Romanists, is the self-same veneration of old Janus, if fairly traced up to Tatius King of the Sabines, who sought a laurel bough plucked from the grove of the goddess Strenia, or Strenua, and presented it to his favourites on the first of January, from whence the custom arose; and Symmachus, in his tenth book, twenty-eighth epistle, mentions it clearly when writing to the Emperors Theodosius and Arcadius—“Strenuarum usus adolevit auctoritate Tatii regis, qui verbenas felicis arboris ex luco Strenuæ anni.”
Octavius Cæsar took the name of Augustus on the first of January in Janus’s temple, by Plancus’s advice, as a lucky day; and I suppose our new-year’s ode, sung before the King of England, may be derived from the same source. The old Fathers of the Church declaimed aloud against the custom of new-years gifts, because they considered them as of Pagan original. So much for Les Etrennes.
As to St. Januarius, there certainly was a martyr of that name at Naples, and to him was transferred much of the veneration originally bestowed on the deity from whom he was probably named. One need not however wander round the world with Banks and Solander, or stare so at the accounts given us in Cook’s Voyages of tattowed Indians, when Naples will shew one the effects of a like operation, very very little better executed, on the broad shoulders of numberless Lazaroni; and of this there is no need to examine books for information, he who runs over the Chiaja may read in large characters the gross superstition of the Napolitani, who have no inclination to lose their old classical character for laziness—
Et in otia natam
Parthenopen;
says Ovid. I wonder however whether our people would work much surrounded by similar circumstances; I fancy not: Englishmen, poor fellows! must either work or starve; these folks want for nothing: a house would be an inconvenience to them; they like to sleep out of doors, and it is plain they have small care for clothing, as many who possess decent habiliments enough, I speak of the Lazaroni, throw almost all off till some holiday, or time of gala, and sit by the sea-side playing at moro with their fingers.
A Florentine nobleman told me once, that he asked one of these fellows to carry his portmanteau for him, and offered him a carline, no small sum certainly to a Neapolitan, and rather more in proportion than an English shilling; he had not twenty yards to go with it: “Are you hungry, Master?” cries the fellow. “No,” replied Count Manucci, “but what of that?”—“Why then no more am I:” was the answer, “and it is too hot weather to carry burthens:” so turned about upon the other side, and lay still.
This class of people, amounting to a number that terrifies one but to think on, some say sixty thousand souls, and experience confirms no less, give the city an air of gaiety and cheerfulness, and one cannot help honestly rejoicing in. The Strada del Toledo is one continual crowd: nothing can exceed the confusion to a walker, and here are little gigs drawn by one horse, which, without any bit in his mouth, but a string tied round his nose, tears along with inconceivable rapidity a small narrow gilt chair, set between the two wheels, and no spring to it, nor any thing else which can add to the weight; and this flying car is a kind of fiacre you pay so much for a drive in, I forget the sum.
Horses are particularly handsome in this town, not so large as at Milan, but very beautiful and spirited; the cream-coloured creatures, such as draw our king’s state coach, are a common breed here, and shine like sattin: here are some too of a shining silver white, wonderfully elegant; and the ladies upon the Corso exhibit a variety scarcely credible in the colour of their cattle which draw them: but the coaches, harness, trappings, &c. are vastly inferior to the Milanese, whose liveries are often splendid; whereas the four or five ill-dressed strange-looking fellows that disgrace the Neapolitan equipages seem to be valued only for their number, and have very often much the air of Sir John Falstaff’s recruits.