Vestiges of ancient manners and customs, discoverable in modern Italy and Sicily / By the Rev. John James Blunt.

  • Blunt, John J. (John James), 1794-1855.
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vestiges of ancient manners and customs, discoverable in modern Italy and Sicily / By the Rev. John James Blunt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and explained their compositions to the pub- lic? For it is to be recollected, that these writings were not merely such as might na- turally be expected to interest a promiscuous rabble; they were not simply farces or lam- poons, the rehearsal of which would in any age and nation bring a multitude of persons together; but the Thebais of Statius, the merit of which has preserved it to our own times, and which flatters no vulgar passions, is recorded to have attracted the whole of Rome, and to have been heard with peculiar delight by the attentive crowd : | Tanta dulcedine captos Afficit ille animos, tantaque libidine vulgi Auditur. Juv. vil. 85. When Statius fix’d a morning, to recite His Thebaid to the town, with what delight They flock’d to hear! with what fond rapture hung On the sweet strains, made sweeter by his tongue! GIFFORD. But besides the authors themselves, there were certain individuals called ‘literati,’ or U