The Expedition of Humphry ClinkerSmollett, T. (Tobias)
General
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
Smollett, T. (Tobias)
Epistolary fiction; Great Britain -- Fiction; Travelers -- Fiction
of a double row of horses, wincing under the curry-combs of grooms and
postilions, over and above the hazard of being obstructed, or overturned
by the carriages which are continually making their exit or their
entrance--I suppose after some chairmen shall have been maimed, and
a few lives lost by those accidents, the corporation will think, in
earnest, about providing a more safe and commodious passage. The Circus
is a pretty bauble, contrived for shew, and looks like Vespasian’s
amphitheatre turned outside in. If we consider it in point of
magnificence, the great number of small doors belonging to the separate
houses, the inconsiderable height of the different orders, the affected
ornaments of the architrave, which are both childish and misplaced,
and the areas projecting into the street, surrounded with iron rails,
destroy a good part of its effect upon the eye; and, perhaps, we shall
find it still more defective, if we view it in the light of convenience.
The figure of each separate dwelling-house, being the segment of a
circle, must spoil the symmetry of the rooms, by contracting them
towards the street windows, and leaving a larger sweep in the space
behind. If, instead of the areas and iron rails, which seem to be of
very little use, there had been a corridore with arcades all round,
as in Covent-garden, the appearance of the whole would have been more
magnificent and striking; those arcades would have afforded an agreeable
covered walk, and sheltered the poor chairmen and their carriages from
the rain, which is here almost perpetual. At present, the chairs stand
soaking in the open street, from morning to night, till they become so
many boxes of wet leather, for the benefit of the gouty and rheumatic,
who are transported in them from place to place. Indeed this is a
shocking inconvenience that extends over the whole city; and, I am
persuaded, it produces infinite mischief to the delicate and infirm;
even the close chairs, contrived for the sick, by standing in the open
air, have their frize linings impregnated like so many spunges, with the
moisture of the atmosphere, and those cases of cold vapour must give
a charming check to the perspiration of a patient, piping hot from the
Bath, with all his pores wide open.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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