Kinglake has an amusingly cynical passage on the impossibility of approaching the sacred shrines of the Holy Land in a fittingly reverential mood. Exactly the same difficulty is experienced in approaching the sacred shrines of art. Enthusiasm about great artistic productions, though we may readily understand it to be justifiable, is by no means so easily communicable. How many people possessing a real claim to culture have felt themselves puzzled by their insensibility before some great masterpiece! Conditions may be easily imagined in which the inducement to affect an ecstasy becomes so strong as to prove overpowering. Many years ago at Florence the loiterers in the Tribuna were startled by the sudden rush into the place of a little man whose literary fame gave him high claims to intuitive taste. He placed himself with high clasped hand before the chief attraction in that room of treasures. "There," he murmured, "is the Venus de Medicis, and here I must stay—for ever and for ever." He had scarcely uttered these words, each more deeply and solemnly than the preceding, when an acquaintance entered, and the enthusiast, making a hasty inquiry if Lady So-and-So had arrived, left the room not to return again that morning. Before the same statue another distinguished countryman used to pass an hour daily. His acquaintance respected his raptures and kept aloof; but a young lady, whose attention was attracted by sounds that did not seem expressive of admiration, ventured to approach, and found the poet sunk in profound, but not silent, slumber. From such absurdities as these, or of the enthusiast who went into raptures about the head of the Elgin Ilissos (which is unfortunately a headless trunk), we are happily spared in the pages of Smollett. In him complete absence of gush is accompanied by an independent judgement, for which it may quite safely be claimed that good taste is in the ascendant in the majority of cases.

From Florence Smollett set out in October 1764 for Siena, a distance of forty-two miles, in a good travelling coach; he slept there, and next day, seven and a half miles farther on, at Boon Convento, hard by Montepulciano, now justly celebrated for its wine, he had the amusing adventure with the hostler which gave occasion for his vivid portrait of an Italian uffiziale, and also to that irresistible impulse to cane the insolent hostler, from the ill consequences of which he was only saved by the underling's precipitate flight. The night was spent at Radicofani, five and twenty miles farther on. A clever postilion diversified the route to Viterbo, another forty-three miles. The party was now within sixteen leagues, or ten hours, of Rome. The road from Radicofani was notoriously bad all the way, but Smollett was too excited or too impatient to pay much attention to it. "You may guess what I felt at first sight of the city of Rome."

"When you arrive at Rome," he says later, in somewhat more accustomed vein, "you receive cards from all your country folk in that city. They expect to have the visit returned next day, when they give orders not to be at home, and you never speak to one another in the sequel. This is a refinement in hospitality and politeness which the English have invented by the strength of their own genius without any assistance either from France, Italy, or Lapland." It is needless to recapitulate Smollett's views of Rome. Every one has his own, and a passing traveller's annotations are just about as nourishing to the imagination as a bibliographer's note on the Bible. Smollett speaks in the main judiciously of the Castle of St. Angelo, the Piazza and the interior of St. Peter's, the Pincian, the Forum, the Coliseum, the Baths of Caracalla, and the other famous sights of successive ages. On Roman habits and pastimes and the gullibility of the English cognoscente he speaks with more spice of authority. Upon the whole he is decidedly modest about his virtuoso vein, and when we reflect upon the way in which standards change and idols are shifted from one pedestal to another, it seems a pity that such modesty has not more votaries. In Smollett's time we must remember that Hellenic and primitive art, whether antique or medieval, were unknown or unappreciated. The reigning models of taste in ancient sculpture were copies of fourth-century originals, Hellenistic or later productions. Hence Smollett's ecstasies over the Laocoon, the Niobe, and the Dying Gladiator. Greek art of the best period was hardly known in authentic examples; antiques so fine as the Torso of Hercules were rare. But while his failures show the danger of dogmatism in art criticism, Smollett is careful to disclaim all pretensions to the nice discernment of the real connoisseur. In cases where good sense and sincere utterance are all that is necessary he is seldom far wrong. Take the following description for example:—

"You need not doubt but that I went to the church of St. Peter in Montorio, to view the celebrated Transfiguration by Raphael, which, if it was mine, I would cut in two parts. The three figures in the air attract the eye so strongly that little or no attention is paid to those below on the mountain. I apprehend that the nature of the subject does not admit of that keeping and dependence which ought to be maintained in the disposition of the lights and shadows in a picture. The groups seem to be entirely independent of each other. The extraordinary merit of this piece, I imagine, consists not only in the expression of divinity on the face of Christ, but also in the surprising lightness of the figure that hovers like a beautiful exhalation in the air."

Smollett's remarks about the "Last Judgement" of Michael Angelo, (that it confuses the eye as a number of people speaking at once confounds the ear; and that while single figures are splendid, the whole together resembles a mere mob, without subordination, keeping, or repose) will probably be re-echoed by a large proportion of the sightseers who gaze upon it yearly. But his description of the "Transfiguration" displays an amount of taste and judgement which is far from being so widely distributed. For purposes of reproduction at the present day, I may remind the reader that the picture is ordinarily "cut in two." and the nether portion is commonly attributed to Raphael's pupils, while the "beautiful exhalation," as Smollett so felicitously terms it, is attributed exclusively to the master when at the zenith of his powers. His general verdict upon Michael Angelo and Raphael has much in it that appeals to a modern taste. Of Raphael, as a whole, he concludes that the master possesses the serenity of Virgil, but lacks the fire of Homer; and before leaving this same Letter XXXIII, in which Smollett ventures so many independent critical judgements, I am tempted to cite yet another example of his capacity for acute yet sympathetic appreciation. "In the Palazzo Altieri I admired a picture, by Carlo Maratti, representing a saint calling down lightning from heaven to destroy blasphemers. It was the figure of the saint I admired, merely as a portrait. The execution of the other parts was tame enough; perhaps they were purposely kept down in order to preserve the importance of the principal figure. I imagine Salvator Rosa would have made a different disposition on the same subject—that amidst the darkness of a tempest he would have illuminated the blasphemer with the flash of lightning by which he was destroyed. This would have thrown a dismal gleam upon his countenance, distorted by the horror of his situation as well as by the effects of the fire, and rendered the whole scene dreadfully picturesque."

Smollett confuses historical and aesthetic grandeur. What appeals to him most is a monument of a whole past civilization, such as the Pont du Gard. His views of art, too, as well as his views of life, are profoundly influenced by his early training as a surgeon. He is not inclined by temperament to be sanguine. His gaze is often fixed, like that of a doctor, upon the end of life; and of art, as of nature, he takes a decidedly pathological view. Yet, upon the whole, far from deriding his artistic impressions, I think we shall be inclined rather to applaud them, as well for their sanity as for their undoubted sincerity.

For the return journey to Florence Smollett selected the alternative route by Narni, Terni, Spoleto, Foligno, Perugia, and Arezzo, and, by his own account, no traveller ever suffered quite so much as he did from "dirt," "vermin," "poison," and imposture. At Foligno, where Goethe also, in his travels a score of years or so later, had an amusing adventure, Smollett was put into a room recently occupied by a wild beast (bestia), but the bestia turned out on investigation to be no more or no less than an "English heretic." The food was so filthy that it might have turned the stomach of a muleteer; their coach was nearly shattered to pieces; frozen with cold and nearly devoured by rats. Mrs. Smollett wept in silence with horror and fatigue; and the bugs gave the Doctor a whooping-cough. If Smollett anticipated a violent death from exhaustion and chagrin in consequence of these tortures he was completely disappointed. His health was never better,—so much so that he felt constrained in fairness to drink to the health of the Roman banker who had recommended this nefarious route. [See the Doctor's remarks at the end of Letter XXXV.] By Florence and Lerici he retraced his steps to Nice early in 1765, and then after a brief jaunt to Turin (where he met Sterne) and back by the Col di Tende, he turned his face definitely homewards. The journey home confirmed his liking for Pisa, and gives an opening for an amusing description of the Britisher abroad (Letter XXXV). We can almost overhear Thackeray, or the author of Eothen, touching this same topic in Letter XLI. "When two natives of any other country chance to meet abroad, they run into each other's embrace like old friends, even though they have never heard of one another till that moment; whereas two Englishmen in the same situation maintain a mutual reserve and diffidence, and keep without the sphere of each other's attraction, like two bodies endowed with a repulsive power." Letter XXXVI gives opportunity for some discerning remarks on French taxation. Having given the French king a bit of excellent advice (that he should abolish the fermiers generaux), Smollett proceeds, in 1765, to a forecast of probabilities which is deeply significant and amazingly shrewd. The fragment known as Smollett's Dying Prophecy of 1771 has often been discredited. Yet the substance of it is fairly adumbrated here in the passage beginning, "There are undoubtedly many marks of relaxation in the reins of French government," written fully six years previously. After a pleasing description of Grasse, "famous for its pomatum, gloves, wash-balls, perfumes, and toilette boxes lined with bergamot," the homeward traveller crossed the French frontier at Antibes, and in Letter XXXIX at Marseille, he compares the galley slaves of France with those of Savoy. At Bath where he had gone to set up a practice, Smollett once astonished the faculty by "proving" in a pamphlet that the therapeutic properties of the waters had been prodigiously exaggerated. So, now, in the south of France he did not hesitate to pronounce solemnly that "all fermented liquors are pernicious to the human constitution." Elsewhere he comments upon the immeasurable appetite of the French for bread. The Frenchman will recall the story of the peasant-persecuting baron whom Louis XII. provided with a luxurious feast, which the lack of bread made uneatable; he may not have heard a story told me in Liege at the Hotel Charlemagne of the Belgian who sought to conciliate his French neighbour by remarking, "Je vois que vous etes Français, monsieur, parceque vous mangez beaucoup de pain," and the Frenchman's retort, "Je vois que vous etes lye monsieur, parceque vous mangez beaucoup de tout!" From Frejus Smollett proceeds to Toulon, repeating the old epigram that "the king of France is greater at Toulon than at Versailles." The weather is so pleasant that the travellers enjoy a continual concert of "nightingales" from Vienne to Fontainebleau. The "douche" of Aix-les-Bains having been explained, Smollett and his party proceeded agreeably to Avignon, where by one of the strange coincidences of travel he met his old voiturier Joseph "so embrowned by the sun that he might have passed for an Iroquois." In spite of Joseph's testimonial the "plagues of posting" are still in the ascendant, and Smollett is once more generous of good advice. Above all, he adjures us when travelling never to omit to carry a hammer and nails, a crowbar, an iron pin or two, a large knife, and a bladder of grease. Why not a lynch pin, which we were so carefully instructed how to inquire about in Murray's Conversation for Travellers?

But-the history of his troublous travels is drawing to an end. From Lyons the route is plain through Macon, Chalons, Dijon, Auxerre, Sells, and Fontainebleau—the whole itinerary almost exactly anticipates that of Talfourd's Vacation Tour one hundred and ten years later, except that on the outward journey Talfourd sailed down the Rhone.

Smollett's old mental grievances and sores have been shifted and to some extent, let us hope, dissipated by his strenuous journeyings, and in June 1765, after an absence of two years, he is once more enabled to write,

"You cannot imagine what pleasure I feel while I survey the white cliffs of Dover at this distance [from Boulogne]. Not that I am at all affected by the nescio qua dulcedine natalis soli of Horace.

"That seems to be a kind of fanaticism, founded on the prejudices of education, which induces a Laplander to place the terrestrial paradise among the snows of Norway, and a Swiss to prefer the barren mountains of Soleure to the fruitful plains of Lombardy. I am attached to my country, because it is the land of liberty, cleanliness, and convenience; but I love it still more tenderly, as the scene of all my interesting connections, as the habitation of my friends, for whose conversation, correspondence, and esteem I wish alone to live."

For the time being it cannot be doubted that the hardships Smollett had to undergo on his Italian journey, by sea and land, and the violent passions by which he was agitated owing to the conduct of refractory postilions and extortionate innkeepers, contributed positively to brace up and invigorate his constitution. He spoke of himself indeed as "mended by ill-treatment" not unlike Tavernier, the famous traveller,—said to have been radically cured of the gout by a Turkish aga in Egypt, who gave him the bastinado because he would not look at the head of the bashaw of Cairo. But Fizes was right after all in his swan-prescription, for poor Smollett's cure was anything but a radical one. His health soon collapsed under the dreary round of incessant labour at Chelsea. His literary faculty was still maturing and developing. His genius was mellowing, and a later work might have eclipsed Clinker. But it was not to be. He had a severe relapse in the winter. In 1770 he had once more to take refuge from overwork on the sunny coast he had done so much to popularize among his countrymen, and it was near Leghorn that he died on 17th September 1771.