We left M. Dumas at Marseilles: we find him again at Naples. Three volumes
are the result of his visit to the last named city--volumes in which he
manages to put a little of every thing, and a good deal of some things.
Antiquarian, historian, virtuoso, novelist, he touches upon all subjects,
flying from one to the other with a lightness and a facility of transition
peculiarly his own, and peculiarly agreeable. English travellers and
Italian composers, St Januarius and the opera, Masaniello and the
_gettatura_, Pompeii, princes, police spies, Vesuvius, all have their
turn--M. Dumas, with his usual tact, merely glancing at those subjects
which are known and written about by every tourist, but giving himself
full scope when he gets off the beaten track. His book is literally
crammed with tales and anecdotes, to such a degree indeed, and most of
them so good, that our principal difficulty in commencing a notice of it,
is to know where to pick and choose our extracts; _l'embarras des
richesses_, in short. The best way will probably be to begin at the
beginning, and go as far as our limits allow us, referring our readers to
the original for the many good things that want of space will compel us to
exclude.
M. Dumas calls his book the _Corricolo_, and devotes a short and
characteristic preface to an explanation of the title. This explanation we
must give in his own words. It is so highly graphic, that, after reading
it, we fancied we had seen a picture of what it describes.
"A _corricolo_ is a sort of tilbury or gig, originally intended to hold
one person, and be drawn by one horse. At Naples they harness two horses
to it; and it conveys twelve or fifteen individuals, not at a walk nor at
a trot, but at full gallop, and this, notwithstanding that only one of the
horses does any work. The shaft horse draws, but the other, which is
harnessed abreast of him, and called the _bilancino_, prances and curvets
about, animates his companion, but does nothing else.
"Having said that the gig built to carry one is made to carry fifteen, I
am, of course, expected to explain how this is accomplished. There is an
old French proverb, according to which, when there is enough for one there
is enough for two; but I am not aware of any proverb in any language which
says, that when there is enough for one, there is enough for fifteen.
Nevertheless, it is the case with the _corricolo_. In the present advanced
state of civilization, every thing is diverted from its primitive
destination. As it is impossible to say at what period, or in how long a
time, the capacity of the vehicle in question was extended in the ratio of
one to fifteen, I must content myself with describing the way of packing
the passengers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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