Rome in the Footsteps of an XVIIIth Century Traveller

Samuel Rogers (1763-1855) was an English poet, during his lifetime one of the most celebrated. In 1814 he made a tour on the Continent with his sister Sarah. He travelled through Switzerland to Italy, keeping a full diary of events and impressions. Seven years later he returned to Italy. Out of the earlier of these tours arose his last and longest work, "Italy". The first part was published anonymously in 1822; the second, with his name attached, in 1828. It was at first a failure, but Rogers was determined to make it a success. He enlarged and revised the poem, and commissioned illustrations from Joseph Mallord William Turner and Thomas Stothard. These were engraved on steel in the edition of 1830. Steel engraving, which came into use in the early 1820s, was the finest and most expensive printing method available at this time. The book then proved a great success.
In 1826 Turner began work on a group of illustrations for Rogers' poem. The vignettes that he created are considered to be his finest works of literary illustration. In 1819 Turner made his first tour of Italy, where he visited most of the sites that he would later illustrate in Rogers's volume. Although he may have referred to his Italian sketchbooks when preparing the vignettes, he did not rely too heavily upon them. The purpose of the illustrations was to evoke the idea and feeling, rather than the exact appearance of a given place.
The Italy' of Rogers resembles "Childe Harold" as little as possible, considering that they are both poetical pictures of the same country. (..) After the passionate melancholy and intense ideality of Childe Harold, the tone of "Italy" will seem languid and its colors faint, especially to the young; but it wears well to the end. Men who have lived through the Byron age, in their own lives, are a little shy of the poetry which is so strongly associated with past conflicts and spent storms; but the mellow wisdom, the genial sympathy, the graceful pictures, and the perfect taste of Rogers, are not fully appreciated till our shadows have begun to lengthen. It is, indeed, a delightful poem; a work of such perfect art that the art is nowhere seen; with just the right amount of personal feeling; with a warm sense of all that is attractive to a poet and a scholar in Italy, a generous judgment of all that is distasteful to an Englishman and a Protestant; and full of charming pictures which seem to demand those exquisite illustrations of Stothard and Turner with which they are so inseparably united in our minds.
George Stillman Hillard - Six Months in Italy in 1847-1848

• Roman Forum
• Ponte and Castel Sant'Angelo
• Villa Madama in the Moonlight
• Cemetery at the Pyramid of Caius Cestius
• Consecration of a Nun
• The Campagna of Rome
• Tivoli
• Banditti (Brigands)
• Paestum

Roman Forum seen from Arco di Tito (Turner)

(from "Rome")
I am in Rome ! Oft as the morning-ray
Visits these eyes, waking at once I cry,
Whence this excess of joy? What has befallen me?
And from within a thrilling voice replies.
Thou art in Rome ! (..)
Along the Sacred Way
Hither the Triumph came, and, winding round
With acclamation, and the martial clang
Of instruments, and cars laden with spoil,
Stopt at the sacred stair that then appeared,
Then thro' the darkness broke, ample, star-bright,
As tho' it led to heaven. (..)
Now all is changed; and here, as in the wild.
The day is silent, dreary as the night;
None stirring, save the herdsman and his herd.
Savage alike; or they that would explore.
Discuss and learnedly; or they that come,
(And there are many who have crossed the earth)
That they may give the hours to meditation,
And wander, often saying to themselves,
"This was the Roman Forum !"

View of Ponte and Castel Sant'Angelo (Turner)

(from "The Roman Pontiffs")
Those ancient men, what were they, who achieved
A sway beyond the greatest conquerors;
Setting their feet upon the necks of kings.
And, thro' the world, subduing, chaining down
The free, immortal spirit? Were they not
Mighty magicians ?

Italian villa in the moonlight, with features of Villa Madama (Turner)

(from "The Interview")
The rising moon we hailed,
Duly, devoutly, from a vestibule
Of many an arch, o'er-wrought and lavishly
With many a labyrinth of sylphs and flowers.
When Raphael and his school from Florence came.
Filling the land with splendour - nor less oft
Watched her, declining, from a silent dell.
Not silent once, what time in rivalry
Tasso, Guarini, waved their wizard-wands,
Peopling the groves from Arcady, and lo,
Fair forms appeared, murmuring melodious verse,
- Then, in their day, a sylvan theatre.
Mossy the seats, the stage a verdurous floor.
The scenery rock and shrub-wood. Nature's own;
Nature the Architect.

Two ancient vases, after an engraving by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (centre)

(from "Caius Cestius", a prose essay)
When I am inclined to be serious, I love to wander up and down before the tomb of Caius Cestius. The Protestant burial-ground is there; and most of the little monuments are erected to the young; young-men of promise, cut off when on their travels, full of enthusiasm, full of enjoyment; brides, in the bloom of their beauty, on their first journey; or children borne from home in search of health. This stone was placed by his fellow-travellers, young as himself, who will return to the house of his parents without him; that, by a husband or a father, now in his native country. His heart is buried in that grave. It is a quiet and sheltered nook, covered in the winter with violets; and the Pyramid, that over-shadows it, gives it a classical and singularly solemn air. You feel an interest there, a sympathy you were not prepared for. You are yourself in a foreign land; and they are for the most part your countrymen. They call upon you in your mother-tongue - in English - in words unknown to a native, known only to yourselves: and the tomb of Cestius, that old majestic pile, has this also in common with them. It is itself a stranger, among strangers. It has stood there till the language spoken round about it has changed; and the shepherd, born at the foot, can read its inscription no longer.

Consecration of a Nun (Stothard)

(from "The Nun")
'Tis over; and her lovely cheek is now
On her hard pillow - there, alas, to be
Nightly, thro' many and many a dreary hour,
Wan, often wet with tears, and (ere at length
Her place is empty, and another comes)
In anguish, in the ghasthness of death;
Hers never more to leave those mournful walls,
Even on her bier.(..)
When, as she stood, her bridal ornaments
Were, one by one, removed, even to the last.
That she might say, flinging them from her,
"Thus, Thus I renounce the world !" when all was changed.
And, as a nun, in homeliest guise she knelt.
Veiled in her veil, crowned with her silver crown,
Her crown of lilies as the spouse of Christ,
Well might her strength forsake her, and her knees
Fail in that hour !

The Campagna of Rome: Via Appia Antica (Turner)

(from "Rome")
And I am there !
Ah, little thought I, when in school I sate,
A school-boy on his bench, at early dawn
Glowing with Roman story, I should live
To tread the Appian*, once an avenue
Of monuments most glorious, palaces,
Their doors sealed up and silent as the night.
The dwellings of the illustrious dead.
* The street of the tombs in Pompeii may serve to give us some idea of the Via Appia, that Regina Viarum, in its splendour. It is perhaps the most striking vestige of Antiquity that remains to us.

The waterfalls and acropolis of ancient Tivoli (Turner)

(from "The Fire-fly")
There is an Insect, that, when Evening comes.
Small tho' he be and scarce distinguishable,
Like Evening clad in soberest livery,
Unsheaths his wings and thro' the woods and glades'
Scatters a marvellous splendour. (..)
Oft met and hailed,
Where the precipitate Anio thunders down.
And thro' the surging mist a Poet's house *
(So some aver, and who would not believe ?)
Reveals itself.
* I did not tell you that just below the first fall, on the side of the rock, and hanging over that torrent, are little ruins which they shew you for Horace's house.

Banditti (Brigands - see some etchings by Bartolomeo Pinelli) in a mountain landscape (Turner)

(from "Banditti")
'Tis a wild life, fearful and full of change,
The mountain-robber's. On the watch he lies,
Levelling his carbine at the passenger;
And, when his work is done, he dares not sleep.

Paestum: Temple to Neptune (Turner)

(from "Paestum")
They stand between the mountains and the sea;
Awful memorials, but of whom we know not !
The seaman, passing, gazes from the deck.
The buffalo-driver, in his shaggy cloak.
Points to the work of magic and moves on.
Time was they stood along the crowded street,
Temples of Gods ! and on their ample steps
What various habits, various tongues beset
The brazen gates for prayer and sacrifice ! (..)
From my youth upward have I longed to tread
This classic ground - And am I here at last ?
Wandering at will through the long porticoes,
And catching, as through some majestic grove,
Now the blue ocean, and now, chaos-like.
Mountains and mountain-gulfs, and, half-way up.
Towns like the living rock from which they grew ?

Travellers covered in this section

• Introductory page
• Gregory Martin's "Roma Sancta", a description of Christian Rome in 1581
• Fynes Moryson's An Itinerary: Containing His Ten Years Travel .. in Italy .. in 1594
• John Evelyn's Diary and Correspondence related to his stay in Rome in 1644
• Francis Mortoft's Journal of his travels in France and Italy in 1659
• John Ray's Observations (..) made in a journey through part of (..) Italy in 1663
• Richard Lassels' The Voyage of Italy, or a Compleat Journey through Italy in ca 1668
• Joseph Addison's Remarks on several parts of Italy, in the years 1701, 1702, 1703
• Jonathan and Jonathan Richardson's Account of Some of the Statues, etc. in Italy - 1722
• Edward Wright's Observations made in France, Italy &c. in the years 1720, 1721 and 1722.
• Excerpts from John Dyer's The Ruins of Rome written in 1740
• Thomas Gray's Letters from France and Italy in 1739-1741
• James Boswell's Letters on the Grand Tour in 1765
• Tobias Smollett's Travels through France and Italy in 1765
• John Moore's View of Society and Manners in Italy (in 1775) - publ. 1781
• John Chetwode Eustace's Classical Tour of Italy (in 1802) - publ. 1813
• Joseph Forsyth's Remarks on Antiquities, Arts, and Letters in Italy in 1802-1803
• John Cam Hobhouse's Dissertations on the Ruins of Rome in 1818
• Henry Matthews' Diary of an Invalid (in 1817-1818)
• Anna Jameson's Diary of an Ennuyée (in 1821-1822) - publ. 1826
• William Hazlitt's Notes of a Journey Through France and Italy in 1824-1825
• Samuel Rogers' Italy - publ. in 1830 with illustrations by J.M. William Turner
• Hans Christian Andersen's The Improvisatore - 1834 (Engl. translation 1845)
• George Stillman Hillard's Six Months in Italy in ca 1847-1848

Read What Dante Saw.
Read What Goethe Saw.
Read What Lord Byron Saw.
Read What Charles Dickens Saw.
Read What Henry James Saw.
Read What Mark Twain Saw.
Read What William Dean Howells Saw.
Read Dan Brown's Spaghetti Bolognaise (excerpts from Angels and Demons)