that degree as to be an exception; for no man here is without complaints, and life and death are fo fuddenly exchanged, that medicines have not time very frequently to operate before 'the latter prevails. This is generally the cafe in malignant fevers, which are here termed pucker fevers, meaning (in the natives language) ftrong fevers.

The rains have fet in fince the 4th of June.' We call this the unhealthy feafon, on account of the falt petre impregnated in the earth, which is exhaled by the fun, when the rain admits of intervals. Great ficknefs is caufed thereby, especially when the rains fubfide; which generally happens about the 'middle of October. The air becomes afterwards rather more temperate, and, till April, permits of exercife, to recover the human frame, that is relaxed and worn out by the preceding feafon; for in the hot periods every relief is denied, except rifing in the morning, and being on horfe-back by day-break, in order to enjoy an hour, or little more, before the fun is elevated: it becomes too powerful by fix o'clock to withstand its influence; nor can the fame be attempted that day again till the fun retires, fo that the reft of the twenty-four hours is paffed under the most severe trials of heat. In such season it is impoffible to fleep under the fuffocating heat that renders ref-" piration extremely difficult; hence people get out into the virando's and elsewhere for breath, where the dews prove cooling, but generally mortal to fuch as venture to fleep in that air. In fhort, this climate foon exhaufts a perfon's health and ftrength, though ever fo firm in conftitution, as is vifible in every countenance, after being here twelve months. I have been lately informed by an officer of diftinction, who was formerly engineer at this place, that he being fent out to furvey a falt lake in the month of September, he found the fulphureous vapours fo ftagnated and grofs, that he was obliged to get up into the talleft trees he could find, to enjoy the benefit of refpiration every now and then; he added; that he conftantly had recourfe to fmoaking tobacco, (except during the hours of fleep) to which and to fwallowing large quantities of raw brandy (though naturally averfe to ftrong liquors) he attributed his fafety. However, on his return, he was feized with an inveterate fever of the putrid kind, which he miraculously furvived, though others, who attended him on the furvey, and had lived many years in the climate, were carried off, at the fame time, by the like fever."

ን'

[To be concluded in our next.]

II. An

II. An Account of the Manners and Cuftoms of Italy; with Obfervations on the Miflakes of fome Travellers with regard to that Country. In Two Vols. By Jofeph Baretti. 8.0. Pr. 105.

Davies.

MR

R. Sharp, whofe Travels into Italy we have already reviewed with approbation, is the capital author whom Mr. Baretti attacks in this account of his own country and its inhabitants. When a difference in matters either of fact or opinion happens between two perfons of equal probity and capacity, nothing can be more difficult than to pronounce with certainty upon which fide the truth lies. Mr. Sharp's moral character, it is well known, ftands unimpeached. The forture he has fo worthily acquired by his eminence in a liberal and useful profeffion, places him above all fufpicion of writing for bread; and the account he has given us of the Italians entitles him to a confiderable rank among men of letters and difcernment. As we are utter ftrangers to the moral as well as perfonal character of his antagonist, we shall leave him and his friends to answer for both; but without violating the laws of impartiality, or trefpaffing upon the rules of candid criticism, we can fafely affert, that in England he is a foreign adventurer, in Italy a despicable bigot; that his work appears with every character of being a job either for a party or a bookfeller, perhaps for both nor is the knowledge he discovers either of men or things, comparable to that of the gentleman whom he attacks.

The difference between Mr. Sharp and Mr. Baretti confifts chiefly in facts, or inferences deducible from them: the former lie within the province of truth, as the latter do within that of reafon. We fhall for once fet afide the criterions of both, and examine the account before us by its own intrinfic characters, and the author's felf confiftency, when fet in oppofition to Mr. Sharp.-We are afraid that the generality of our readers will not agree in the truth of Mr. Baretti's first fentence. • Few books (fays he) are fo acceptable to the greatest part of mankind, as thofe that abound in flander and invective.' If this obfervation is meant to be applied to Eng land, we will venture to pronounce it equally unjust as illiberal; and the writer would have come much nearer to the truth, had he reversed his propofition. A dunce may call true fatire flander, and a generous indignation invective; but the public of England know how to diftinguish between both :

* See Vol. XXII. p. 284.
C

VOL. XXVI. July, 1768.

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and there is no country in Europe, where works which have nothing but flander and invective to recommend them, meet with fo great contempt and neglect as in England.

Our author, with the fame dull monotony, tells us, that Mr. Sharp, in the work he undertook, lay under three mat capital disadvantages; that is to fay, he was ignorant of the Italian language, was of no high rank, and was afflicted with bodily diforders.' To prove Mr. Sharp ignorant of Italian, Mr. Baretti informs us, that' throughout his work he has fpelt feveral names of families, of faints, and of towns erroneously.' A most excellent proof! and we will venture to fay, that the best English author alive may be proved, by the fame argument, not to understand a word of English. Few families have, from their originals, fpelt their names in the fame manner; and it has been frequently observed, that fome of our beft English writers, lord Clarendon particularly, are in their original manuscripts deficient in the orthography of the most common words. We have seen original fignatures of the great Lord Burleigh, in which he fometimes spells his name Cecil, and fometimes Cecyl. Is a man to be pronounced ignorant of the English language, if he should spell the name of a noble lord, Littleton, instead of Lyttelton? The fame obfervation holds, perhaps, ftill more generally as to the names of towns and places. Mr. Baretti mentions Mr. Sharp's inability in catching founds when orally uttered, as being another proof of his ignorance in the Italian language. We have nothing to reply to this argument, till he fhall produce a fheet of founds and oral utterance fairly printed, to prove his allegation.

The fecond proof, of Mr. Sharp being of no high rank, infinuates as if he had been thereby precluded from all opportunities of keeping good company, and confequently of information. If the lye direct is not a fufficient confutation of this charge, all we can fay is, that it proves Italy to be a nation of barbarians, fwelled with conceit of their own nothingness, and without the smallest taste or regard of liberal endowments in any man (for the charge is not particularly levelled againft Mr. Sharp) whose station in life does not anfwer their vulgar ideas of greatnefs and nobility. As to the third charge, of Mr. Sharp being afflicted with bodily disorders, if true, it was his misfortune, and not his fault; though it was a crime in Mr. Baretti to mention it, unless he could have brought inftances where Mr. Sharp's perfonal infirmities affect either, his ftile, his narrative, or reafoning. But indeed this infinuation is as falfe as the former. Mr. Sharp was not afflicted with any bodily diftemper that could at all difqualify him

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from making fuch obfervations as he has published; and in every part of Italy where he refided, his house was ever the rendezvous of Italians and foreigners of all ranks and nations.

Intending (fays our author) to throw a ridicule on the Italians, Mr. Sharp fays, that they give the name of palaces even to their country-boufes. But he is himself ridiculous in faying so. Un palazzo means in Italian the building where the fovereign refides, or the house in which a nobleman lives. Thus Marlborough-houfe or Devonshire-houfe would, in Italian, be diftinguished from common houses, and be called palazzo's. What in England is a private-man's habitation, or a building in which many common families live, in Italian is called una cafa. The leaft knowledge of our language had fhewn Mr. Sharp the distinguishing propriety of these two words, and had kept him from ftealing this blunder, along with many others, from Miffon's Travels through Italy. Miffon was not able to feparate the idea annexed by the English to their word palace, from that annexed by the Italians to their word palazzo. He thought they both excluded littleness, which our word palazzo does not; and betrayed his unskilfulness in our language \many years ago, as Mr. Sharp does now.'

This is one of the most unaccountable paffages we have met with for some time, because, we cannot fee, according to this writer's own account, the leaft difference between him and Mr. Sharp. The word palace in English does not exclude littleness; for every bishop has his palace, feveral of which are not comparable, either for magnificence or conveniency, to the dwelling-houfes of many of our middling gentry. But after all, we are by no means fatisfied that Mr. Baretti's ipfe dixit destroys the fact advanced by Mr. Sharp, that the Italians give the name of palaces even to their paultry country-houses.

The fecond chapter of this notable production mentions a journey which our author performed from Venice to Ancona, in 1765; part of which we fhall lay before the reader, because both Mr. Baretti and his friends have made the fact contained -in it a capital charge against Mr. Sharp.

I had been there about three months without ever having had the pleasure of feeing an English traveller go through or by the place; when lo! on a morning betimes, one Signor Cecco Storani came to me in a hurry, and told me, that late the preceding night an English gentleman, with three young ladies, had put up at the post house; and as he did not understand English, he defired. I would introduce him to these frangers, that he and his family might fhew them some civilities.

This Signor Cecco is the fon of an Anconitan nobleman decorated by the pope or the pretender (no matter which) with the title of English Conful in that town. The British confulThip there is, certainly, not very profitable in point of interest: but the nobility of Ancona look upon it as very honourable, ́and they are fond of it, as it gives them fome confideration in the place, befides affording them an opportunity of being li beral of their dinners to many strangers, and especially the English, of whom they are enamoured to a degree of enthufiafm.

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If Mr. Sharp knew me perfonally, he would certainly do me the honour to believe me, when I aver that I was much pleafed with this piece of intelligence from Signor Cecco. Now, faid I, I fhall fee an Englishman again; and what is ftill +infinitely better, fome English women, whofe conversation will renew those pleafing ideas of which I have been so long deprived. But alas, what a difappointment! Though it was fcarcely eight o'clock, as far as I can remember, on my reaching the inn with my friend, I found that the gentleman and the ladies were gone. They had got an hour before into their coach, and were haftening towards Loretto, in their way to Rome.

•No man in his senses can suppose that a gentleman who travels with fuch precipitancy along the Romagna and the Marca, is a fit person to meddle with the business of defcribing the manners and customs of their inhabitans. Yet Mr. Sharp has boldly meddled with that business, for the gentleman who travelled with thofe young ladies was Mr. Sharp himself. 622 On his arrival at Loretto the fame evening of that day in which he left Ancona, Mr. Sharp fat gravely down to write a long letter to an imaginary correfpondent in England, and informed him of the disadvantages that Ancona lies under, from the infinite conceffions made to the church by the commercial and military "parts of the nation. A fine period, and in the true political ftile! But did Mr. Sharp understand it himself, when he had written it ? For my part I do not, as I never heard at Ancona of any commercial or military parts of the Anconitan \nation. "The church at Ancona is the abfolute temporal fovereign as "well as the fpiritual and what conceffions do abfolute fovereigns want from any part of their fubjects? It is true, that there are at Ancona many commercial people; that is, fome dozen of merchants and it is true there are some military people; that is, about two score of Toldiers: but neither of these twoo paris of that nation do, or can, conftitute any distinct political body Endowed with any power independant of the fovereign, as the rift of Mr. Sharp's emphatical period imports, when he fays phed to 298291 941 prithat

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