Reviews for Metafact: Essayistic Science in Eighteenth-Century France

The average rating for Metafact: Essayistic Science in Eighteenth-Century France based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-12-01 00:00:00 Terrence Grimes The famous 18th century British author Tobias Smollett, (and infamous grouch) travels to France and Italy in 1763.Bringing along his wife,Nancy and two young girls, of which Nancy was their guardian and a servant.What are the chances that disasters will ensue, for the party of five? Having recently lost their 15 year old daughter Elizabeth and only child, the couple wants to leave England for a long trip.The writer and physician also is hoping to recover his health, in the warmer climate.The few friends he has left, encourage him to send letters, describing Smollett's adventures.As soon as he crosses the English Channel,(and before) everyone he discovers, has his hands out for some extra cash.Pay or they will make your vacation miserable.Besides foreigners are hated everywhere.Nasty inns with "filth" all around, bed bugs,floors that haven't been cleaned in years(not to mention rats),mosquitoes, gross meals, left uneaten.It's no wonder that Tobias sleeps often on top of his luggage trunk, outside in the hall!In a memorable incident, Smollett threatens the owner of a inn with his cane ,when the landlord's bill is exorbitant.Coaches get stuck in the mud,wheels break ,in bad roads,many times there is none. Welcome to the 18th century!Well at least they see Rome, Florence,the leaning Tower of Pisa,Nice, Cannes on the Riviera, before all the tourist arrived,Paris,a lot of old cathedrals and even older Roman ruins and the fabulous Sistene Chapel; of course Tobias Smollett didn't like Michelangelo's painting!

Review # 2 was written on 2017-11-16 00:00:00 Irene Brunnthaler Smollett's travel journal - written in epistolary form to an imaginary acquaintance back in England - is like a series of abominably bad Yelp reviews. One auberge after another is the dirtiest, most disgusting lodging he has ever seen or stayed at, until the next auberge, which is also the worst. The beds are covered with vermin, the sheets are filthy, he often sleeps atop boxes wrapped in his great coat. The food is barely edible, the natives grimy and lazy, the women pot-bellied. The chaises constantly break down on the stony or muddy roads. Blacksmiths have to be hired to forge new axles. There is the bane of traveling in this era, when horses must be changed at every post. If there are not fresh horses, the exhausted horses must be rested for hours. Smollett expends thousands of words on the relative costs of each manner of conveyance he is considering (chaise, calesse, cambiatura, felucca, etc.), as well as of lodgings and food. Every porter, innkeeper, coachman, boatman, guide, doctor, and vendor, he suspects, is trying to swindle him (given his naturally bilious temper, you can hardly blame them) and he would feel justified in caning them. For a man married to an heiress, he certainly is tightfisted. He borrows heavily from the guide books of the day in order to describe landscape features, climate, or architecture, but his art criticism is his own, as when he recommends that Raphael's Transfiguration be cut in half and opines that Michelangelo's Pietà is displeasing. "The figure of Christ is as much emaciated, as if he had died of a consumption: besides, there is something indelicate, not to say indecent, in the attitude and design of a man's body, stark naked, lying upon the knees of a woman." There are charming spellings and grammars. "Rain up to our ancles," mattrasses, cloaths, taylors, chymistry, crouded, intirely, aukward. "...it did not appear that [the waters] had ever been drank by the antients." An interesting side note is that since Smollett was going to be sojourning at Nice for 18 months, he had brought a large number of books with him, which were detained in Boulogne in order to be sent to Amiens for examination to make sure there was nothing in them "contrary to the Religion or the state of France." The books included his twelve novels, Don Quixote in two languages, the works of Shakespear [sic] and Congreve, five foreign language dictionaries, 58 volumes of ancient and modern history, eight volumes of British history, 25 volumes of Voltaire, and more.