¹ Hester Piozzi, Observations and reflections made in the course of a journey through France, Italy and Germany, ed. Herbert Barrows (Ann Arbor, MI, 1967), p. 166.

² In referring to Florence's appeal to the English, it seems unlikely that Piozzi was deliberately drawing a distinction between the English and the British. The English tended to use the terms interchangeably in this period.

³ On the ‘Grand Tour’ in the eighteenth century, see Ilaria Bignamini and Andrew Wilton, Grand Tour: the lure of Italy in the eighteenth century (London, 1996); Jeremy Black, The British and the Grand Tour (Stroud, 1985) and Italy and the Grand Tour (London, 2003); Edward Chaney, The evolution of the Grand Tour: Anglo-Italian cultural relations since the Renaissance (Ilford, 1998); Chloe Chard, Pleasure and guilt on the Grand Tour: travel writing and imaginative geography, 1600–1830 (Manchester, 1999); Clare Hornsby, The impact of Italy: the Grand Tour and beyond (London, 2000). Recent literature on the Grand Tour is surveyed in two review articles: Naddeo, Barbara Ann, ‘Cultural capitals and cosmopolitanism in eighteenth-century Italy: the historiography of Italy and the Grand Tour’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 10 (2005), pp. 183–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ely, John Wilton, ‘“Classic ground”: Britain, Italy and the Grand Tour’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 28 (2004), pp. 136–65Google Scholar.

⁴ The best account of Anglophone interest in, and writing on, the Renaissance remains J. R. Hale, England and the Italian Renaissance: the growth of interest in its history and art (London, 1954). See also J. B. Bullen, The myth of the Renaissance in nineteenth-century writing (Oxford, 1994).

⁵ William Roscoe, The life of Lorenzo de' Medici, called the Magnificent (2 vols., Liverpool, 1795). It had been translated into Italian, German, and French by 1799 and had reached its tenth edition in English by 1851.

⁶ For an overview of Florentine influence over urban culture in British cities of the nineteenth century, see Tristram Hunt, Building Jerusalem: the rise and fall of the Victorian city (London, 2005), pp. 205–26. See also Arline Wilson, ‘“The Florence of the north”? The civic culture of Liverpool in the early nineteenth century’, in Alan. J. Kidd and David Nicholls, eds., Gender, civic culture and consumerism: middle-class identity in Britain, 1800–1940 (Manchester, 1999), pp. 34–46.

⁷ Towner, John, ‘The Grand Tour: a key phase in the history of tourism’, Annals of Tourism Research, 12 (1985), pp. 297–333CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Towner's study is the only attempt so far to provide any kind of statistical breakdown of the age profile, gender, occupation, and social status of tourists. His sample, based upon 108 separate tours over the period 1547–1840 corroborates the more impressionistic findings of other studies.

⁸ On Venice, see Bruce Redford, Venice and the Grand Tour (London, 1996), and John Eglin, Venice transfigured: the myth of Venice in British culture, 1660–1797 (Basingstoke, 2001).

⁹ Edward Wright, Some observations made in travelling through France, Italy, &c in the years 1720, 1721 and 1722 (2 vols., London, 1730), i, p. 56; see also Monsieur de Blainville, Travels through Holland, Germany, Switzerland and other parts of Europe; but especially Italy (2 vols., London, 1734), i, p. 505; John Moore, A view of society and manners in Italy (2 vols., London, 1781), i, pp. 40, 45; Piozzi, Observations, p. 88; Samuel Sharp, Letters from Italy, describing the customs and manners of that country in the years 1765 and 1766 (London, 1766), p. 35; ‘Mr Drake's tour in the year 1750’, Magdalen College Oxford, MC F 16, p. 143; J. E. Smith, Sketch of a tour on the continent in the year 1786 and 1787 (3 vols., London, 1793), ii, pp. 365–6.

¹⁰ Wright, Observations, i, p. 50.

¹¹ Frank Brady and Frederick A. Pottle, eds., Boswell on the Grand Tour: Italy, Corsica, and France, 1765–1766 (London, 1955), p. 11; see also Elizabeth Craven, A journey through the Crimea to Constantinople in a series of letters from the Right Honourable Elizabeth Lady Craven (London, 1789), p. 93; D. Cubitt, A. L. Mackley, and R. G. Wilson, eds., The Great tour of John Patteson, 1778–1779 (Norfolk Record Society, 67, 2003), p. 295; National Library of Scotland Acc. 12244, letter book of Roger Robertson of Ladykirk, letter dated 24 Apr. 1752; Cambridge University Library (CUL) Add. MS 8670 (c)/17, correspondence of Thomas Brand with his sister, Thomas Brand to Susan Brand, 17 Apr. 1787; Smith, Sketch of a tour, ii, p. 422.

¹² For a classic statement of this viewpoint, see Thomas Denham, The temporal government of the pope's state (London, 1788).

¹³ See, for example, the earl of Winchelsea's observation on Naples to his mother, Lady Charlotte Finch: ‘I never saw any think [sic] that surprises so much as Naples take it altogether it is so different from any thing one ever sees any where else, I mean the environs, the Town is nothing very extraordinary the Number of people is ye only surprising thing in it but the number of things that surprise you about the country are amazing’ (Leicestershire, Leicester, and Rutland Record Office (LLRRO) Finch MSS Box 4953 Bundle 32, correspondence of George, earl of Winchelsea with his mother, letter dated 18 May 1773).

¹⁴ Bodleian Library Oxford (Bodl.) MS Douce 67, ‘Remarks on several parts of Flanders, Brabant, France and Italy in the year 1717’, fos. 82–3; Bodl. MS Eng. misc. c 206, ‘Journal of Thomas Twisden on the continent, 1693–1694’, fo. 41.

¹⁵ W. E. Knowles Middleton, ed., Lorenzo Magalotti at the court of Charles II: his relazione d'Inghilterra of 1688 (Waterloo, Ont., 1980).

¹⁶ Wright, Observations, ii, p. 429.

¹⁷ Charles Thompson, The travels of the late Charles Thompson Esq.: containing his observations on France, Italy, Turkey in Europe, the Holy Land, Arabia and Egypt (3 vols., London, 1744 ), i, p. 105.

¹⁸ Eric Cochrane, Florence in the forgotten centuries, 1527–1800 (London, 1973), p. 346.

¹⁹ J. Duncombe, ed., Letters from Italy in the years 1754 and 1755 by the late Right Honourable John earl of Corke and Orrery (London, 1773), p. 108.

²⁰ The traditions of hospitality were upheld after the Napoleonic Wars also by Lord and Lady Burghersh (Lady Sydney Morgan, Italy (London, 1821), p. 111).

²¹ British Library (BL) Add. MS 33127, correspondence of Thomas Pelham with his father, Thomas Pelham, first earl of Chichester, Thomas Pelham to his father, 13 Sept. 1777, fo. 311.

²² For a recent overview of Leopold's reforms in Tuscany see Capra, Carlo, ‘Hapsburg Italy in the age of reform’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 10 (2005), pp. 218–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The intellectual and social contexts to the Tuscan reform programme, and in particular the influence of French physiocratic thought is explored by T. Wahnbaeck, Luxury and public happiness: political economy in the Italian Enlightenment (Oxford, 2004).

²³ The British would have been influenced by Leopold's own propaganda machine, which produced statistics demonstrating the improvements he had wrought and outlining his plans for improvement. (Cochrane, Florence in the forgotten centuries, pp. 484–5). Leopold also convinced Arthur Young of the efficacy of his measures. Young became a member of Georgofili society and offered a very favourable assessment of Leopold's improvements in Travels during the years 1787, 1788 and 1789 (Bury St Edmunds, 1792), p. 494. See also Robert Semple, Observations on a journey through Spain and Italy to Naples and thence to Smyrna and Constantinople (2 vols., London, 1807), ii, p. 36; Joseph Forsyth, Remarks on antiquities, arts and letters, during an excursion in Italy, in the years 1802 and 1803 (2nd edn, London, 1816), pp. 72–4, was equally full of praise for Leopold as a ‘philosopher king’ who carried out practical reforms.

²⁴ Wadham College, Oxford, Wadham MS 11.5, ‘A diary or a daily journal containing all the most remarkable accidents and events that have happen'd to me, and the most material occurrences and observations that have fallen under my knowledge since July 29th O S 1730’, 27 Apr. 1731.

²⁵ Henry Matthews, The diary of an invalid: being the journal of a tour in pursuit of health in Portugal, Italy, Switzerland and France in the years 1817, 1818 and 1819 (2nd edn, London, 1820), p. 40; Mariana Starke, Letters from Italy between the years 1792 and 1798 (2 vols., London, 1800), ii, p. 300.

²⁶ John Ingamells, A dictionary of British and Irish travellers in Italy 1701–1800 (London, 1997), pp. 439–40.

²⁷ Ibid., pp. 652–3.

²⁸ Anne, Lady Miller, Letters from Italy, describing the manners, customs, antiquities, paintings etc of that country (3 vols., London, 1776), ii, p. 74.

²⁹ Piozzi, Observations, p. 137.

³⁰ BL Add. MS 39787, correspondence of Ann Flaxman, fo. 30.

³¹ Geoffrey Trease, ed., Matthew Todd's journal: a gentleman's gentleman in Europe, 1814–1820 (London, 1968), p. 118: ‘Rose to breakfast at 9 o'clock, having enjoyed a most capital bed, with a carpeted room, just like England.’

³² Paul Oppé, ed., ‘Memoirs of Thomas Jones, Penkerrig, Radnorshire, 1803’, Walpole Society, 32 (1946–8), p. 51.

³³ Lord Kildare wrote to his mother, Emily, duchess of Leinster: ‘I must own I long to be once more comfortable at Carton, but as travelling is a pleasant thing to have over, I am, thank God, very happy and enjoy being abroad much better than I expected’ (Brian Fitzgerald, ed., The correspondence of Emily duchess of Leinster (3 vols., Dublin, 1957), iii, p. 466).

³⁴ Bodl. MS Eng. misc. c 206, ‘Journal of Thomas Twisden on the continent, 1693–1694’, fo. 40v.

³⁵ Correspondence between Frances, countess of Hartford, (afterwards duchess of Somerset) and Henrietta Louisa, countess of Pomfret, between the years 1738–1742 (3 vols., London, 1805), i, p. 211. This was a view that her grandson, the earl of Winchelsea, reiterated over forty years later. LLRRO Finch MSS Box 4953 Bundle 32, correspondence of George, earl of Winchelsea with his mother, letter dated 3 Apr. 1773.

³⁶ BL Add. MS 39787, correspondence of Ann Flaxman, fo. 30.

³⁷ Thompson, Travels of the late Charles Thompson Esq, i, p. 99, observed of the Tuscan order exemplified in the Palazzo Pitti that ‘this Manner of Building is where great rough Stones are set jutting out beyond the plain Superficies; which has been imitated by several English Noblemen, particularly the Earl of Burlington, in the Pillars before his House in Piccadilly’. See also Wright, Observations, ii, p. 393, or Colyer, R. J., ‘A Breconshire gentleman in Europe, 1737–1738’, National Library of Wales Journal, 21 (1979–80), p. 285Google Scholar.

³⁸ Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower, Selections from the letters of de Brosses (London, 1897), p. 71. French visitors were not uniformly admiring of Italian baroque architecture, however, particularly in its more extreme forms in Naples. As the eighteenth century progressed their attitude became progressively more critical of the ‘mauvais gout’ of Neapolitan ecclesiastical architecture (Anthony Blunt, ‘Naples as seen by French travellers, 1630–1780’, in Francis Haskell, Anthony Levi, and Robert Shackleton, eds., The artist and the writer in France: essays in honour of Jean Seznec (Oxford, 1974), pp. 1–14.

³⁹ Sharp, Letters from Italy, p. 244.

⁴⁰ Lady Mary Coke wrote that ‘I am much better pleased with the town [Florence] and country about it then [sic] I am with any other part of Italy I have seen’, quoted in Andrew Moore, Norfolk and the Grand Tour (Fakenham, 1985), p. 68.

⁴¹ For example, Mary Berry noted that she and her sister were not allowed into the amphitheatre castrense because they were women (Lady Theresa Lewis, ed., Extracts of the journals and correspondence of Miss Berry from the year 1783–1852 (3 vols., London, 1865), i, p. 95); Lady Miller did not accompany her husband to view a bridge built by Augustus because access was said to be difficult, Letters from Italy, ii, p. 174.

⁴² Much of Richardson's success as a theorist lay in the fact that he argued that the ‘science of the connoisseur’ was dependent upon the exercise of rational faculties, rather than an innate quality of mind. Whilst he did not explicitly endorse female connoisseurship, those who followed Locke's arguments for the essential equality of mind between the two sexes could find in Richardson ample justification for women venturing to pronounce upon art. Richardson's theories of connoisseurship are discussed in Carol Gibson Wood, Jonathan Richardson (London, 2000).

⁴³ Nigel Llewellyn, ‘“Those loose and immodest pieces”: Italian art and the British point of view’, in Shearer West, ed., Italian culture in northern Europe in the eighteenth century (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 67–100. Llewellyn's focus on paintings of male tourists viewing works of art gives undue emphasis to the male gaze and underestimates the extent to which women travelled in the company of men, particularly in the period after 1740.

⁴⁴ Miller, Letters from Italy, ii, p. 111.

⁴⁵ Alexander Drummond, Travels through different cities of Germany, Italy, Greece, and several parts of Asia (London, 1754), p. 41; Mann to Walpole, 4 July 1744, in Dr Doran, ‘Mann’ and manners at the court of Florence, 1740–1786 (2 vols., London, 1876), i, p. 186.

⁴⁶ Sacheverall Stevens, Miscellaneous remarks made on the spot, in a late seven years tour through France, Italy, Germany and Holland (London, 1756), p. 128.

⁴⁷ For biographical details, see Ingamells, Dictionary, pp. 246–7, 959–60, 725–7.

⁴⁸ Brian Moloney, Florence and England: essays on cultural relations in the second half of the eighteenth century (Florence, 1969), pp. 131–6.

⁴⁹ LLRRO Finch MSS Box 4953, Bundle 32, correspondence of George, earl of Winchelsea with his mother, letter dated 20 Dec. 1772.

⁵⁰ See, for example, John Milford, Observations, moral, literary and antiquarian made during a tour through the Pyrenees, South of France, Switzerland, the whole of Italy and the Netherlands, in the years 1814 and 1815 (2 vols., London, 1818), ii, p. 122.

⁵¹ Piozzi, Observations, p. 168.

⁵² Voltaire, The general history and state of Europe (3 vols., Edinburgh, 1758), ii, p. 5.

⁵³ Georges A. Bonnard, ed., Gibbon's journey from Geneva to Rome: his journal from 20 April to 2 October 1764 (London, 1961).

⁵⁴ BL Add. MS 35378, correspondence of Philip Yorke with his uncle, Philip Yorke, second earl of Hardwicke, Philip Yorke to his uncle, 12 Oct. 1778, fo. 245.

⁵⁵ Thomas Watkins, Travels through Switzerland, Italy, Sicily, the Greek Islands to Constantinople, Greece, Ragusa, and the Dalmatian Isles (2 vols., 2nd edn, 1794), i, p. 295, compared its appearance to a harlequin's jacket. Watkins was offended by what he regarded as the medley of different architectural styles heaped together in confusion, but could find no fault with Brunelleschi's dome.

⁵⁶ Wright, Observations, ii, pp. 393–433; Thomas Martyn, A gentleman's guide in his tour through Italy (London, 1787), pp. 320–9.

⁵⁷ The responses of British visitors to the collections in the Uffizi are summarised by Jane Whitehead, ‘British visitors to the Uffizi, 1650–1789’, in Paola Barocchi and Giovanna Ragionieri, eds., Gli Uffizi: quattro secoli di una galleria (Florence, 1983), pp. 287–307.

⁵⁸ See for example, Giuseppe Bianchi, Raggualgio delle antichità e rarità che si conservano nella Galleria Mediceo-Imperiale di Firenze (Florence, 1759).

⁵⁹ Many British visitors, particularly those in Italy for educational purposes, took Italian lessons during their stay, but most seem to have been able to read Italian without any difficulty. Lady Miller, for example, directed her readers who wished for further information on the collections at the duke's gallery to the ‘trumpery books’ sold at all the booksellers in Florence (Miller, Letters from Italy, ii, p. 107).

⁶⁰ Marco Lastri, L'Osservatore fiorentino sugli edifizi della sua patria per servire alla storia della medesima (3 vols., Florence, 1776), i, p. 3.

⁶¹ L'Antiquario fiorentino o sia guida per osservar con metodo le cose notabili della città di Firenze (Florence, 1765), p. 169.

⁶² John Breval, Remarks on several parts of Europe (2 vols., London, 1738), i, p. 162.

⁶³ See, for example, J. R. Hale, ed., The Italian journal of Samuel Rogers edited with an account of Rogers's life and of travel in Italy in 1814–1821 (London, 1956), p. 187.

⁶⁴ See, for example, Francesco Bocchi and Giovannai Cinelli, Le bellezze della città di Firenze dove a pieno di pittura di scultura di sacri templi, di palazzi, i più notabili artifizj, e più preziosi si contengono (Florence, 1677).

⁶⁵ L'Antiquario fiorentino, pp. 13, 93.

⁶⁶ It is worth noting that most of the Florentine guidebooks were addressed to ‘viaggiatori and concittadini’ whereas none of the guidebooks to Rome published in the eighteenth century gave any indication that the authors or editors expected the inhabitants of the city to read them.

⁶⁷ On the study of history and antiquities in Florence and Tuscany during the eighteenth century see Eric Cochrane, Tradition and enlightenment in the Tuscan academies (Rome, 1961), pp. 156–205.

⁶⁸ ‘Mr Drake's tour’, p. 77.

⁶⁹ Giovanni Lami, Lezioni di antichità Toscane e spezialmente della citta di Firenze recitate nell'accademia della crusca (Florence, 1766).

⁷⁰ Bonnard, ed., Gibbon's journey, pp. 133, 146, 175–6. Thomas Coke's purchase of Thomas Dempster's manuscript history of the Etruscans, later published as De Etruria regali libri septem (Florence, 1723–4) had not stimulated any further interest in the Etruscan period amongst British visitors, although it did precipitate further research into Etruscan antiquities amongst a small circle of Florentine antiquaries (M. Cristefani, ‘Sugli inizi dell’ “Etruscheria”: la pubblicazione del De Etruria regali di Thomas Dempster', Mélanges de L'Ecole Française de Rome: Antiquité, 90 (1978), pp. 577–625.

⁷¹ This attitude contrasts with the widespread interest in the history of the Venetian republic. Gibbon and the earl of Cork had both planned to write histories of the Florentine republic. Cork never completed his; Gibbon, however, was distracted by the rather larger task of writing the history of the decline and fall of Rome.

⁷² Duncombe, ed., Letters from Italy, p. 110.

⁷³ Raffaello del Bruno, Ristretto delle cose più notablili della città di Firenze (5th edn, Florence, 1745), pp. 2–5. The British pronounced them the most effeminate of Italians, not only because the men played at cards, whilst their wives flirted with other men, but because they had tamely submitted to the Medici's dismantling all traces of republican freedom (Breval, Remarks on several parts of Europe, i, p. 174).

⁷⁴ On perceptions of Venice see Eglin, Venice transfigured. Visitors to Genoa were generally very favourably impressed by the evidence of commercial wealth.

⁷⁵ Charles Philpot, An introduction to the literary history of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (London, 1798), did not mention Florence in the context of his analysis of the relationship between the rise of commerce and the arts, although he did refer to Venice and Genoa.

⁷⁶ Towner, ‘Grand Tour’, p. 310.

⁷⁷ Young, Travels during the years 1787, 1788 and 1789, pp. 244–6.

⁷⁸ Smith, Sketch of a tour, i, p. 310.

⁷⁹ Young, Travels during the years 1787, 1788 and 1789, p. 242.

⁸⁰ Wahnbaeck, Luxury and public happiness, pp. 73–135. See also n. 23 above.

⁸¹ Charlotte Waldie Eaton, Rome in the nineteenth century (3 vols., Edinburgh, 1820), i, p. 27. See also Morgan, Italy, pp. 9–14.

⁸² On the historiographical developments in this period see Karen O Brien, Narratives of enlightenment: cosmopolitan history from Voltaire to Gibbon (Cambridge, 1997), and J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and religion, ii:Narratives of civil government (Cambridge, 1999).

⁸³ William Robertson, The history of the reign of the Emperor Charles V: with a view of the progress of society in Europe, from the subversion of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the sixteenth century (3 vols., London, 1769), i, p. 36.

⁸⁴ Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, ii, pp. 175–227, offered a detailed discussion of the artists of the trecento and quattrocento (largely drawn from Vasari), presenting them in a rather more positive light than had traditionally been the case.

⁸⁵ These included Thomas Patch, author of The LIFE of Masaccio (Florence, 1772); Charles Townley; Lord Ashburnham; and the earl of Bristol (see Ingamells, Dictionary, for biographical details). It is likely that it was Patch who drew Reynolds's attention to the Masaccio frescos in the Brancacci chapel of Santa Maria del Carmine when Reynolds was in Florence in the 1750s. Reynolds singled the frescos out for particular praise and noted their influence on Michelangelo in his twelfth discourse on art delivered to the Royal Academy in 1784 and published in 1785. Thereafter a visit to the Brancacci chapel entered the tourist itinerary, although prior to the 1780s it was rarely noted: not even Richardson had mentioned the frescos. Very few British observers, however, noted that the cycle of frescos was not the work of Masaccio alone, but a joint effort with Masolino, as the L'Antiquario fiorentino (1765) pointed out, p. 218.

⁸⁶ J. J. Winckelmann, Reflections on the painting and sculpture of the Greeks, trans. Henry Fuseli (London, 1765).

⁸⁷ Rosemary Sweet, Antiquaries: the discovery of the past in eighteenth-century Britain (London, 2004), pp. 238–76.

⁸⁸ This trend had become even more pronounced by the early nineteenth century: see, for example, L. F. M. Gargiolli, Description de la ville de Florence et de ses environs précedée d'un abrége d'histoire Florentine (2 vols., Florence, 1819). See also Luigi Lanzi, Storia pittorica della Italia (3 vols., Bassano, 1795–6). An English translation, by Thomas Roscoe, The history of painting in Italy was published in 1828.

⁸⁹ CUL Add. MS 4155, ‘Sir Richard Colt Hoare’s notes on paintings’, fo. 82.

⁹⁰ Bodl. MS Finch e 14, ‘Journals of Robert Finch’, fo. 238.

⁹¹ James Dallaway, Anecdotes of the arts in England (London, 1800), p. 7.

⁹² The antiquary Thomas Kerrich (who had travelled to Italy 1772–4) struggled to find adequate vocabulary with which to describe the twisted pillars characteristic of much Lombard and Tuscan architecture: he resorted to his own neologism of ‘twistifications’. Bodl. MS Douce d. 36, correspondence of Francis Douce, Kerrich to Francis Douce, 28 Mar. 1814, fo. 117.

⁹³ Joseph Trapp's English translation of A picture of Italy (London, 1791), p. 159, described the duomo as a ‘worthy monument of republican splendour’.

⁹⁴ Henry Coxe, Picture of Italy; being a guide to the antiquities and curiosities of that classical and interesting country (London, 1815), p. 381.

⁹⁵ Sweet, Antiquaries. The interest of Tuscans in their republican past was particularly evident in Pisa and concentrated upon the construction and ornamentation of the Campo Santo. See Cooper, Robyn, ‘“The crowning glory of Pisa”: nineteenth-century reactions to the Campo Santo’, Italian Studies, 37 (1982), pp. 72–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cooper also devotes considerable attention to eighteenth-century precursors.

⁹⁶ Oliver Goldsmith, Enquiry into the present state of polite learning (London, 1759), described Dante as little better than a barbarian who ‘addressed a barbarous people in a method suited to their apprehensions’ (Paget Toynbee, Dante in English literature from Chaucer to Cary c. 1380–1844 (2 vols., London, 1909), i, p. xxxii).

⁹⁷ Petrarch was more widely read in the early eighteenth century, but there was similarly a quickening of interest in the last third of the century. See, for example, Susannah Dobson's widely read translation of Jacques de Sade's The life of Petrarch (2 vols., London, 1776).

⁹⁸ Thomas Penrose, A sketch of the lives and writings of Dante and Petrarch (London, 1790).

⁹⁹ The development of interest in Dante and his influence upon English literature was surveyed by Toynbee, Dante in English literature. See also Tinkler-Villani, Valeria, ‘Translation as a metaphor for salvation: eighteenth-century English versions of Dante's Commedia’, Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies, 1 (1991), pp. 92–101Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁰ Richard Hurd, Letters on chivalry and romance (London, 1762); Jean-Baptiste de la Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Memoires de l'ancienne chivalerie (Paris, 1779), and Histoire des troubadours (Paris, 1784), both of which were later translated into English by Susannah Dobson; Lionel Gossman, Medievalism and the ideologies of the enlightenment: the world and work of La Curne de Sainte-Palaye (Baltimore, MD, 1968). For a recent overview of the influence of medievalism on English literature, see Michael Alexander, Medievalism: the middle ages in modern England (London, 2007).

¹⁰¹ BL Add. MS 35378, correspondence of Philip Yorke with his uncle, Philip Yorke, second earl of Hardwicke, Philip Yorke to his uncle, 22 Sept. 1778, fo. 241.

¹⁰² Henry Boyd, A translation of the Inferno of Dante Alighieri, in English verse (London, 1785), pp. 118–48.

¹⁰³ Forsyth, Remarks on antiquities, p. 65; Starke, Letters from Italy, i, p. 268.

¹⁰⁴ Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, i, pp. 5–6. On Roscoe see Donald A. Macnaughton, Roscoe of Liverpool: his life, writings and treasures, 1753–1831 (Birkenhead, 1996), and Bullen, Myth of the Renaissance, pp. 40–52.

¹⁰⁵ Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, i, p. 1.

¹⁰⁶ Hale, ed., Italian journal, p. 206.

¹⁰⁷ This shift in focus was being made explicit in the travel literature of the 1840s. See, for example, the treatment of Florence in John Murray's Hand-book for travellers in Northern Italy (London, 1842).

¹⁰⁸ For a comparative study of some of these changes in the English context, see Rosemary Sweet, The writing of urban histories in eighteenth-century England (Oxford, 1997).