Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846

Birboniana

In England, we have our trades and our professions; – abroad, all callings are trades; medicine is a trade; theology a trade; law no better. With us, the title of professor carries with it something of rank, being always conferred by authority, and not, as in Italy, a dignity at once self-imposed and assumed by any party who chooses to adopt it. Furthermore, at home it must be a grave subject indeed that is entitled to the honour of being represented by a professor; whilst abroad, the commonest accomplishments are raised to the dignity which we restrict to science; and every private teacher of fencing, fiddling, juggling, and dancing, affixes professor to his card. The art of cheating, ingannazione, seems to be at present the only one in Italy irrepresented, eo nomine, by a teacher. Whether it be that there is properly no such art, but, as was formerly alleged of rhetoric, that every man persuades best in the subject of his own craft, the principles of cheating in like manner vary with the occupation of the cheater; or because, where all men are more or less proficients, the instructions of a professor may be dispensed with. Nevertheless, if mere pre-eminence in the dark dexterity of imposing on one's neighbour deserved this coronal, whose brows were fitter to wear it than yours, ye professors of natural history and of virtù, with whom ingannation is but a collateral branch of these your severer studies? The very name of naturalist, which in England falls so refreshingly on our ears, accustomed as we are to link with it the memory of such men as White, Ray, Derham, Darwin, Paley, and a host of others, there, is but too frequently bestowed on a class of dishonest collectors, who fill their rooms (which they dub their museum) with a collection of modern mummies, and study nature but to jocky amateurs in the sale of her specimens! Nor is the man called antiquaro in Italy, a whit a better representative of him whom we so designate, than is the soi-disant professor of taxidermy and seller of embalmed pole-cats of our own naturalist. Not that our thoroughbred antiquary at home stands high in our classification of English citizens. It was not as a reward for tracing sites, by following the vestiges of dry rubbish near a place ending in chester, that the mural crown (probably a chaplet of wallflowers) was devised by the Romans; and we, too, have a weakness for ranging the precedents of our fellow-citizens according to their usefulness. We have no sympathy with soulless bodies; with miserly old men of starved affections, who are too parsimonious even for the gout; who prefer bronze puttini to babies in flesh, and marble mistresses to a fond and pleasing wife! But this is their affair, not ours; if they choose thus to sacrifice to the cold manes of antiquity the sweetest and most endearing sympathies of life, the sacrifice and the loss is their own; whilst Englishmen must admit, that in England at least they form a very learned body, much given up to the prosecution of curious and prying researches. But in Italy, where all the world pretend to be antiquaries, the ignorance and incapacity of by far the larger portion of these pretenders is marvellous. No sooner has the adventurer who prints himself antiquary, begun to cheat his way on a little, then he addresses himself boldly to some venal professor of archæology too poor to refuse the bribe; who for a small consideration undertakes to decipher his inscriptions for him, to teach him his history, to furnish him with learned conjectures, and to praise his goods, which last is generally the only part of these educational acquirements which he retains, and recollects to profit by afterwards; his ignorance, in all other matters appertaining to his craft, is frequently absolute. Yet many of these men live to buy villas, to plant vineyards, and to show how much more flourishing a thing in Italy virtù is than virtue. In character, or shall we not rather say in want of character, they are all alike; and if any act of any of them bears the external semblance of honesty about it, this is predetermined by their fear of the penal "code Napoleon" and its consequences, and not by the code of moral necessity. Let your antiquarian acquaintance be ever so extensive; be you in habits of pigeon-and-hawk-like intimacy with scores of them, for years, you shall never meet one – from the noble, well-lampooned prince of St Georgio, and the courtly Count of Milan, to the poor starveling old man whose cotton pocket-handkerchief contains all his stores, with no patent of nobility to stand him in stead should he be detected in a fraud – one who will not cheat as much as, and whenever he can. As the King of Naples said of his ministers, in objecting to change them, sono ladri tutti. Woe, then, betide the simple Englishman to whom some demon has whispered to have a taste, and who thinks that he cannot better employ the time of his being abroad, than in making purchases to satisfy it. Much will he have to pay for each new apprenticeship in each new city where he sojourns for a season, while he will learn by degrees to distrust the teaching of his volunteer friends, as to what he may safely purchase, when every new acquisition is a mistake, and proves the exception to some general rule formerly taught him. It is only when they turn king's evidence and peach, that they can be safely trusted; and on these occasions he really may pick up some important hints for his future guidance; the most important of which is principiis obstare, not to begin to buy, or, if he have bought, to give over buying. How little is it generally known, by those who don't purchase, what large sums are squandered in Italy upon heaps of rubbish, palmed off and sold under the imposing names, roba antica, roba dei scavi, and the like; and how little seems it known by those who do, that of all markets for such acquisitions, the worst that an uninitiated dilettante can have to do with is the Italian! First, because it abounds more than any other in trash; and secondly, because when any thing really good comes into it, the dealers take care to put their price upon it. The much prized and paraded object has in all probability already been in England, (whence, on the death of its connoisseur possessor, and the dispersion of his effects, it has again returned to its natal soil,) and is now, it may be, to be had for twice or three times as much, as you yourself might have procured it for in Christie's auction-rooms a few months before, unless you possess an accurate taste, and an intimate knowledge of what you buy. (Not, depend upon it, to be acquired, as almost all other knowledge may now be, in six lessons.) You must know that it is quite easy to spend indefinitely large sums in the accumulation of coarse crockery, broken glass, bits of mouldings, scratched cornelians, and coins as smooth as buttons, without being able to pick one pearl from out this ancient dunghill. The peasant's ignorance, if you are also ignorant, can by no possibility be turned to your account, and, in fact, turns very much against it; for there is a prevailing tradition amongst them, that things very rare and costly, now extant in kings' palaces and great museums, have been grubbed up by the husbandman's hands; and as he cannot possibly decide what, in the amateur's mind, constitutes a prize, every fresh finding that may possibly be such, is put up and priced accordingly. Now it is a safe rule here never to buy a may be, especially when you have to pay for it as though it were a must be; and if you followed the contadino to the dealer, (who, after you, becomes his next resource,) you would find that, though the former now asks pauls for piastres, and is content to substitute baiocchi for pauls, the dealer is obdurate, and leaves his wares still upon his hands.

Some, ignorant of the ways of dealers, persuade themselves that if they go to a well-recommended shop, they may, by paying somewhat higher than they would elsewhere have done, secure themselves from all risk of imposition; and this brings us to notice that, in accordance with this well-known delusion of our countrymen, (for such we believe it to be,) the "Antiquari" are fond of dividing themselves into three classes, whereof the first is supposed to consist entirely of Galant' uomini, in which confessedly small class every one would place himself: the second of mezzo Galant' uomini, or half honest men, of whom the first division reports, that it is a well-dressed, well-spoken, and well-instituted order, ma astuto assai: and a third, which even they will tell you is their larger body, constituted of a set of ill-dressed, uneducated, ill-looking, unmannerly fellows, whom it would be unsafe to meet with an antique ring on your finger after dark, and without the city walls. Of this last class, number three, class number one is particularly desirous to impress you with a salutary awe, lest you should unfortunately become its victim. Its members, so they will tell you, have occasionally something pretty for sale; but then who, save themselves and their ally the devil, knows out of what tomb it has been plucked by night, or what conditions are annexed to its possession; and whether, after it has been purchased, the police shall not come and seize both it and its possessor? Thus one class of reputable shopkeeping rogues speaks of its peripatetic rivals, who, as they do not purchase, can afford to dispose of their things cheaper than those who have to pay both purchase and warehouse dues, making them very wrathful in consequence. The number of antiquaries, as compared with the whole population, would make a far greater statistical return than most persons are aware of, who believe the race to be confined to that half-dozen of shopkeepers who write their title over the door; these being, in fact, but a small fraction of that large community which, like the beetle called necrobios, preys both upon the living and the dead. Beside the regular shopkeeper, who sells the whole statue, and undertakes excavations on his own account, there is, in the next place, the stall-keeper, whose commerce is in fragments, and who makes his small profits upon toes and fingers, (he having received certain of the unsaleable refuse from some richer antiquary, committed to his charge on certain conditions, as the oranges that are offered in London in the streets are consigned by the wealthier to the poorer Jews to traffic in,) squats himself down in the neighbourhood of some piazza, church, or other place of public resort, where, under favour of a shower, he is enabled to dispose of his bits of rosso antico, and pavonazzo, which then exhibit all their hues, polished and shining in the rain. There is a third class who have two callings; a principal one – some petty trade, a tobacconist, a printseller, or a chemist – to which they add that of odds and ends. These they buy from the peasants on market-days; and some there are, more active than their neighbours, who make a very early start to anticipate their arrival; and many a long and weary mile will they trudge, far, far beyond the tomb of Cecilia Metella, or the Ponte Molle, before it is day, each striving to outstrip the other, and to be first to greet the simple contadini on their road Romewards from Tivoli, Frescati, Valmontone, or Veii. Alas! and notwithstanding all the pains they take, they frequently make bad purchases, and are duped by the superior cunning of other antiquaries at a distance, who have been tampering with the peasants, and have given them counterfeits to sell. Thus do antiquaries, like whitings, prey upon each other, illustrating their own proverb, Mercantia non vuol ni amici ni parenti. You become also, after a time, acquainted with a particular set of dealers, not from themselves, for they have no direct communication with the part of the town you inhabit, nor yet from the shop antiquaro, who would gladly ignore the existence of such people, but from certain fellows called mezzani or go-betweens, whose office it is to prowl about in quest of those who frequent old curiosity shops; whom they will track to their hotels, and fish out presently from couriers, or waiters, what class of things his Excellency buys. These men are perhaps the greatest rogues in Christendom; sometimes they take your side; sometimes gently hint that your most esteemed person is somewhat hard upon their friend; they wink knowingly when you say something meant to be smart, and they will expostulate earnestly, and make it quite a personal affair if their friend protests and refuses to listen to their instances in your favour. Lastly, when the purchase has been effected, they will stay to congratulate you on the bargain you are sure to have made under their auspices; and to announce to you that they have still some other ignoramuses in petto for your excellency to pigeon! Even when you don't buy, they suppress their disappointment; or, showing it, try to convince you it is on your account solely that they feel it. "You bargained," they tell you, "in style, showing at once your perfect connoisseurship and tact; and though you were aware yourself that your offers could not be entertained without a serious loss to the proprietor, (who had not such articles every day to dispose of,) and would soon find means of disposing of them, still, as the donne say, though they cannot always accept, they consider every offer a compliment." These mezzani get a per centage of eighteen per cent upon every purchase from the seller; and, if you are not aware of this, they will make a pretty per centage upon you besides. It is amusing to get access through them into many interiors that you would not else have heard of, and to have presented to you a new variety of wares, requiring new vigilance on your part every day. Thus, one man's room (he has been a soldier under Napoleon, hence his particular line of dealing) might well be styled a hero's slop-shop, out of whose stores Sir Walter Scott might have found fitting armour for every one of his heroes, from Waverley to Quentin Durward. The owner visits Thrasymene every summer, and pretends that these iron harvests of the field, which he gleans each year from near the banks of the "Stream of Blood," were sown there in the time of Hannibal, with whose name he is perfectly familiar; and should you, on questioning him, make out that he was not quite au courant as to dates, and not quite certain that every spear-head was as old as the Punic war; his rule for sale is simple, (viz.) whenever there appears to be a doubt, to give it not in your favour, but in favour of his armour. Another man, who only deals in pictures, tries your skill and knowledge in the Madonna and Saint line. This man is a collector of coins; and woe betide you if you purchase there, and can't make out the difference between a real Emperor S. C. and a pretender to the laurel! Do you know any thing of "storied urns and animated busts?" Then, and not till then, when you are sure you do, visit A – 's interior, where