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TRAVELS OF

LADY MARY WORTLEY MON

TAGU IN EUROPE AND ASTA:

LIBRARY

TIBKVKA

MEM AOKK

TRAVELS

THROUGH

ITALY AND SWITZERLAND,

In the Years 1701, 1702, 1703,

BY JOSEPH ADDISON, Esq.*

On the twelfth of December, 1699, I set out from Marseilles to Genoa in a tartane, and arrived late at a small French port called Cassis, where the next morning we were not a little surprised to see the moun tains about the town covered with green olive trees, or laid out in beautiful gardens, which gave us a great variety of pleasing prospecis, even in the depth of winter. The most uncultivated of them produce abundance of sweet plants, as wild-thyme, lavender, rosemary, balm, and myrtle. We were here shown at a distance the deserts, which have been rendered so famous by the penance of Mary Magdalene, who, after her arrival with Lazarus and Joseph of Arimathea at Marseilles, is said to have wept away the rest of her life among these solitary rocks and mountains. It is so romantic a scene, that it has always probably

• This work is printed from the original text, without abridgment. VOL. XIV.

B

given occasion to such chimerical relations; for it is perhaps of this place that Claudian speaks, in the following description:

Et locus extremum pandit qua Gallia littus
Oceani prætentus aquis, qua fertur Ulysses
Sanguine libato populum movisse silentum :
Illic umbrarum tenui stridore volantum
Flebilis auditur questus; simulachra coloni
Pallida defunctasque vident migrare figuras, &e.

Claud. in Ruf. lib. 1.

A place there lies on Gallia's utmost bounds,'
Where rising seas insult the frontier grounds:
Ulysses here the blood of victims shed,
And rais'd the pale assembly of the dead:
Oft in the winds is heard a plaintive sound
Of melancholy ghosts that hover round:
The lab'ring plowman oft with horror spies
Thin airy shapes that o'er the furrows rise,
(A dreadful scene!) and skim before his eyes.

I know there is nothing more undetermined among the learned than the voyage of Ulysses; some confining it to the Mediterranean, others extending it to the great Ocean, and others ascribing it to a world of the poet's own making; though his conversations with the dead are generally supposed to have been is the Narbon Gaul.

Incultos adin læstrigonas antiphalenque, etc.
Atque hæc seu nostras intersunt cognita terras,
Fabula sive novum dedit his erroribus orbem.

Tibul. Lib. iv. Eleg. i. ver. 59.

Uncertain whether, by the winds convey'd,
On real seas to real shores he stray'd;
Or, by the fable driven from coast to coast,
In new imaginary worlds was lost.

The next day we again set sail, and made the best of our way until we were forced, by contrary winds, into St. Remo, a very pretty town in the Genoese dominions. The front to the sea is not large; but there are a great many houses behind it, built up side of the mountain to avoid the winds and vapours

the

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