ii VII. 1. Letters from an Irish Protestant to the People of 2. Blackwood's Magazine VIII.-1. Annual Reports of the Agent for Emigrants at Quebec, 2. New York Shipping and Passenger Returns, 1826 to IX.-1. A Christian Peace Offering; being an Endeavour to 2. The Roman Schism Illustrated, from the Records of X.-1. Animal and Vegetable Physiology, considered with 2. Letters on Natural Magic. By Sir David Brewster XI.-Summary Review of French Catholic Literature, from March to September 1837. Miscellaneous Intelligence 428 452 468 525 • 550 - 557 THE DUBLIN REVIEW. JULY 1837. ART. I.-La Mimica degli Antichi investigata nel Gestire Napolitano. The Gestures of the Ancients sought in the Gesticulations of the Neapolitans. By the Canon Andrea de Jorio. Naples. 1832. WH HEN Italians converse, it is not the tongue alone that has full occupation; their words are sure to have an instrumental accompaniment, in the gestures of their bodies. You never see, among them, two gentlemen standing bolt upright, one with his hands behind his back, and the other leaning on his umbrella, while they resolve to oppose a bill in Parliament, or to file one in Chancery, or determine to protest one in the city. You never see an orator, sacred or profane, screwed down in the middle of his pulpit, or wedged between the benches of his court, or holding hard on the front of his hustings, as though afraid of being run away with by his honourable pillory, and pouring forth impassioned eloquence, with a statuelike stillness of limbs, unless the right arm escape, to move up and down with the regularity of a pump-handle, or inflict, from time to time, a clenching blow upon the subjacent boards. No, it is not so in Italy. Let two friends sit down to solace themselves at the door of a café, in the cool of a summer's evening, or let them walk together along the noisy street of Toledo, at Naples; let their conversation be upon the merest trifle, the present opera, the last festival, or the next marriage, and each speaker, as he utters his opinion in flowing musical sounds, will be seen to move his fingers, his hands, and his entire body, with a variety of gestures, attuned in perfect cadence to the emphasis of his words. See, one of them now is not actually speaking, though the other has ceased; but he has raised his right hand, keeping the points of the thumb and index joined, and the other fingers expanded, and has laid his left gently upon his companion's arm. Depend upon it, his reply is going to open with a sententious saw, some magnificent truism, from which he will draw marvellous consequences. His mouth will open slowly, VOL. III.NO. V. B ere it yields a sound; and when at last Sir Oracle' speaks, the right hand will beat time, by rising and falling on each substantive and verb of the sentence; and at its close, the two wedded fingers will fly apart, and the entire expanded hand waive with grace and dignity outwards, if the propositions be positive. If negative, the fore-finger alone will remain extended, and erect, and be slowly moved backwards and forwards between the interlocutors' faces. When the solemn sentence has been pronounced, and enforced by a dignified toss of the head, it is the other's turn. But the dictum was probably too vague and general to receive a specific reply; and, therefore, reserving his opinion till he has better felt his way, he shakes his head and hands, uttering, you may depend upon it, the monosyllabic but polysemous exclamation "Eh!" which, like a Chinese word, receives its meaning from its varying accent. The active speaker perceives that he has not carried the outworks of his friend's conviction, and addresses himself to a stronger attack. He now assumes the gesture of earnest remonstrance; his two hands are joined palm to palm, with the thumbs depressed, and the fingers closely glued together, (for were the former erect, and the little fingers detached, and especially were they moved up and down, the gesture would signify not to pray but to bray, being the hieroglyphic for a donkey;) and in this position they beat time, moving up and down, while the head is thrown back upon the right shoulder. We can hear the very words too here; they begin for certain with "abbie pazienze," a reproachful expostulation; after which follows a more energetic repetition, slightly varied of what had been previously urged; and, as the sentence closes, the hands are separated, and fly apart. If the point is not carried, the reasoning is enforced by a more personal appeal. All the fingers of the right hand are joined together with the thumb, and their united points are pressed upon the forehead, which bends forward towards the unconvinced and incredulous listener, while a new form is given to the argument. This gesture is a direct appeal to the common sense of the other party; it is like intimating, that, if he have brains he must understand the reasoning. Further obstinacy would lead to altercation, and assent is yielded by a slow shrug, with the head inclined, and the hands separately raised, the palms turned downwards. "E vero," "ha ragione," or "non si può negare," are doubtless the accompanying words. All this is a quiet, friendly scene: and, indeed, there are one • "Bear with me," literally-"have patience." or two more degrees of intensity of expostulation, and energy of gesture, which might be used, but which we pass over for fear of becoming tedious. But when the topic of conversation is more exciting, and the feelings of the speakers are more interested, gesture succeeds gesture with wonderful rapidity, and with bolder action; the head and trunk shake and writhe sympathetically with the agitation of the limbs, and long before an angry feeling has been expressed, a stranger fancies that they are in a towering passion, and considers their motions as the senseless and unmeaning convulsions of two madmen. Now, all the time not a finger is moved, not a shoulder shrugged, not a lip compressed or curled, but by rule; that is, without its having a determinate, invariable signification. The book before us undertakes to classify and describe these various gesticulations, with reference to the Neapolitans in particular. But our observation has satisfied us, that with few exceptions, they may be considered the conventional language of all Italy. We have found them every where but little varied; and in compensation for such as may be peculiar to Naples, we have noticed several, omitted by the learned and amiable author, but common in other parts. The Canonico De Jorio is well known to most of our countrymen who have visited Naples, as much by the cheerful courtesy, which his knowledge of our language enables him to exercise towards them, as by his learned works upon the antiquities of that city and its vicinity. The present work is drawn up in alphabetical order, and gives the different gestures by which every passion, feeling, and idea, is ordinarily expressed. Considered simply in this light, it is an amusing work to any one sufficiently conversant with Italian manners. But its title suggests that it has a higher aim, and attempts to trace in these modern signs the action of the ancients. In fact, almost every gesture described by the classic authors remains yet in use, with the same signification. But the learned author has sought in this conformity between ancient and modern Italians the explanations of mute monuments, on which the relative positions and feelings of the figures represented can only be conjectured from the action which they use. Having established that in general the same gestures have always expressed the same idea, he examines under what feelings the action represented would now be used, and thus decides its meaning on the monument. These remarks naturally suggest an interesting question,-to what are we to attribute this resemblance between the ancients and moderns? Were these expressive and almost speaking gestures originally invented, and then perpetuated to our times, or are they the result of a natural connexion between them and the ideas they represent? Are they, in other words, conventional or instructive? To this we reply, that they are manifestly of both characters. Some are doubtless of the latter class-such as striking the forehead in disappointment, or pressing the heart in protestation of sincerity or affection. Others are clearly artificial, such as the expression of "to-morrow," by a semicircle formed in the air by the fore finger drawn from below upwards. This sign represents a diurnal revolution of the sun, to be completed before the event alluded to takes place. Even here, therefore, we have a clear reason for the symbol; and it is not difficult to discover one in every other instance. In order to ascertain it, we must observe that these gestures primarily are used with words, and form the usual accompaniment of certain phrases. For these, the gestures become substitutes, and by association express all their meaning, even when used alone. Again, these phrases are often metaphorical, and the gesture represents their literal meaning; and thus becomes, when applied to the figurative, a real metonymy. A few examples will illustrate this observation. Hunger is expressed by beating the ribs with the flat of the hands. This signifies that the sides meet, or are weak from want of something between them. But hunger is a child of poverty; and hence the parent comes to be represented by the same sign. The connexion between the organ of smelling and sagacity is traceable in this latter word, which literally signifies the power of following objects by the scent, as hounds do. The ancients expressed the want of acuteness, or the infliction of a hoax, by reference to the nose,-" suspendere naso," to hang by the nose, is a common phrase in their writings. This connexion of ideas, real or imaginary, is expressed amongst us, and in Germany, in the same manner as in Italy. The thumb applied to the side of the nose, with the hand extended, indicates, as Cruikshanks well knows, that the party aimed at is little better than a goose. With us, however, the action has no corresponding phrase from which its signification can have been drawn. This is to be found in Italian, in which even good writers express the idea "he was tricked or deceived," by "e restato con un' palmo di naso," "he was left with a palm's length of nose." It is manifestly this idea that is expressed by the gesture, which literally describes it, and then follows it in its. metaphorical acceptation. The Canonico De Jorio supposes the expression to have arisen from the manner in which the face is thrust forward, with a gaping mouth and staring eyes, (illustrative characteristics never omitted with the gesture) when a hoax, |