THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN lo' ESSAYS ON THE FINE ARTS I'RINTED BY BALLANTVNE AND COMPANY EDINBURGH AND LONDON ESSAYS ON THE FINE ARTS By WILLIAM HAZLITT A NEH^ E/>jri(h\' \V. CAllEW JIAZLITT LONDON REEVES AND 1 I J i N E 11 185 FLEET STREET and lOf. STKAND 1873 PREFACE. The present edition of Hazlitt's Essays on the Fine Arts proceeds on the plan of collecting to- gether, so far as was found practicable, all the papers written on this subject, and not included y in the new collection of Hazlitt's miscellaneous j>! works. A few articles, properly belonging to the series, have been already included iu TahJe-Tdlh and the Plain Speaker^ to whicli the author origin- ally contributed thcni. i The articles headed TJic Character of tilr Jushua ^ lieijnoldsj and An Inqumj nhethcr the Fine Arts are promoted hij Academies^ ^'c, were afterwards incor- ^ porated with tliat entitled the Fi?ie Arts, written for ^ the "Encyclopjudia IJiitannica " in 1824. This cir- \ cumstance had escaped the editor's notice, (»r those ■^ two earlier essays wmiM not have, (if cnurse, been given iu tlieir !3C])aruLo and original .shape also. vi ' l*reface. Ir is pruputetl tliut tlie volume now issued, the Seventh of tlie Series, should be followed by one of Uncollected Papers, with a new and original 2)ortrait of the author from a painting l)y himself. j\Iany of these papers are derived from sources little known. W. C. H. Kensington, April 1873. CONTENTS. PART I. FA<3B On Hatdos's Solomon, . , . . . 1 An Ixquiry whether the Fine Arts are promoted by Academies and Public Institutions, ... 4 Character of Sir Joshua Reynolds, ... 24 On the Catalogue RAisoNNf op the British Institution, 40 West's Picture of Death on the Pale Horse, . . 70 On Farinoton's Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, . . 78 On Originality, ...... 120 On the Ideal, ...... 128 On Judging of Pictures ..... 136 On William's Vunvs of Greece, . . . .141 On the Portrait op an English Lady, by Vandyck, . 145 On Lady Morgan's Life of Salvator Rosa, . . 165 On Hogarth's Marriage a-la-Mode, . . . 208 On THE Fine Arts, ...... 217 On the Elgin Marbles, ..... 278 The Vatican, ...... 309 English Students at Rome . . . .321 FoNTHiLL Abbey, ...... 334 VIU Contents. On Flaxman's Lectures on Sculpture, Royal Academy, PAGE 345 370 PART II. Sketches op the phincipal Picture- Galleries in England, &c. Mr Angerstein's Collection, The Dulwich Gallery, The Marquis of Stafford's Gallery, The Pictures at Windsor Castle, The Pictures at Hampton Court, . The Grosvenor Collection of Pictures, Pictures at Wilton, Stoxjrhead, &c., Pictures at Burleigh House, Pictures at Oxford and Blenheim, 372 385 400 414 423 433 443 452 462 HAZLITT'S CRITICISMS ON ART. ON HAYDOX'S SOLOMON.- The Tenth Exhibition of the Society of Painters in Oil and Water Colours opened on ^londay last. The pro- ductions of Glover, Cristall, De Wint, od(B is not in- applicable to this picture. It exhibits fine studies and original fragments of a great work — it has many powerful starts of genius — without conveying that impression of uniform consistency and combined effect which is sometimes attained by the systematic mechanism of well-disciplined dullness, and at others is the immediate emanation of genius. That which strikes the eye most on entering the room, and on which it dwells with the greatest admiration afterwards, are the figures of the two Jewish doctors on the left side of Solomon. We do not recollect any figures in modern pictures which have a more striking effect. We say this, not only with respect to the solid mass of colour which they project on the eye, the dark draperies contrasting finely with the paleness of the countenances, but also with respect to the force, truth, and dramatic opposition of character displayed in them. The face of the one is turned in anxious expectation towards the principal actors in the scene ; the other looking downwards appears lost in inward meditation upon it. The one is eagerly watching for the catastrophe — the other seems endeavouring to anticipate it. Too much praise cannot be given to the conception of the figure of Solomon, which is raised above the rest of the picture, and placed in the centre — the face fronting, and looking down, the action balanced and suspended, and the face intended to combine the different characters of youth, beauty, and wisdom. Such is evidently the conception of the painter, which we think equally striking and just ; but we are by no means satisfied that he has succeeded in embodying this idea, except as far as relates to the design. The expression of the countenance of the youthful judge, which ought to convey the feeling of calm penetration, we think, de- generates into supercilious indifference ; the action given Haydon's Solomon. 3 to the muscles is such as to destroy the beauty of the features, without giving force to the character, and, instead of tlie majesty of conscious power and intellect, there is an appearance of Languid indecision, which seems to shrink with repugnance from the difficulties which it has to encounter. The colouring of the head is unexceptionable. In the face of the good mother the artist has, in our opinion, succeeded in overcoming that which has been always considered as the greatest difficulty of the art — the union of beauty with strong expression. The whole face exhibits the internal workings of maternal love and fear ; but its death-like paleness and agony do not destroy the original character of feminine beauty and delicacy. The attitude of this figure is decidedly bad, and out of nature as well as decorum. It is one of those sprawling, extra- vagant, theatrical French figures, in which a common action is strained to the extremity of caricature. The action and expression of the executioner are liable to the same objection. lie is turbulent and fierce, instead of being cold and obdurate. He should not bluster in the part heroically like an actor — it is his office. On the whole, we think this picture decidedly superior to any of this artist's former productions, and a proof not only of genius, but of im- proved taste and judgment. In speaking of it with freedom, we trust we shall best serve both him and the art. ( 4 ) AN INQUIRY Whether the Fine Arts are promoted by Academies AND Public Institutions.* " It was ever the trick of our English nation, if they had a good thing, to make it too common," The Directors of the British Institution conclude the preface to their catalogue of the works of Hogarth, Wilson, &c., in the following words : — "The present exhibition, while it gratifies the taste and feeling of the lover of art, may tend to excite animating reflections in the mind of the artist : if at a time when the art received little comparative support stick too7'hs were produced, a reasonable hop>e may he entertained that we shall see productions of still hir/her attainment under more en- couraging circumstances. " It should seem that a contrary conclusion might more naturally have suggested itself from a contemplation of the collection with which the Directors of the Institution have so highly gratified the i^ublic taste and feeling. When the real lover of art looks round and sees the works of Hogarth and of Wilson — works which were produced in obscurity and poverty — and recollects the pomp and pride of patronage under which these works are at present re- commended to public notice, the obvious inference which strikes him is — how little the production of such works depends on " the most encouraging circumstances." The visits of the gods of old did not always add to the felicity of those whose guests they were ; nor do we know that the countenance and favours of the great will lift the arts * Champion, August 28 and September 11, 1814. An Inquiry. 5 to that height of excellence, or will confer all those ad- vantages which are expected from the proffered boon. The arts are of humble growth and station ; they are the product of labour and self-denial ; they have their seat in the heart of man and in his imagination ; it is there they labour, have their triumphs there, and, unseen and un- thought of, perform their ceaseless task. Indeed, patronage and works of art deserving patronage rarely exist together, for it is only when the arts have attracted public esteem, and reflect credit on the patron, that they receive this flattering support, and then it generally proves fatal to them. We really do not see how the man of genius should be improved by being transplanted from his closet to the ante-chambers of the great, or to a fashionable rout. He has no business there — but to bow, to flatter, to smile, to submit to the caprice of taste, to adjust his dress, to think of nothing but his own person and his own interest, to talk of the antique, and furnish designs for the lids of snuff- boxes, and ladies' fans ! The passage above alluded to evidently proceeds on the common mistaken notion that the progress of the arts depends entirely on the cultivation and encouragement bestowed on them ; as if taste and genius were perfectly mechanical, arbitrary things — as if they could be bought and sold, and regularly contracted for at a given price. It confounds the fine arts with the mechanic arts — art with science. It supposes that feeling, imagination, invention arc the creatures of positive institution ; that the temples of the muses may be raised and supported by voluntary contribution ; that we can enshrine the soul of art in a stately pile of royal patronage, inspire corporate bodies witli taste, and carve out the direction to fame in letters of stone on the front of public buildings. Tiiat the arts in any country may be at so low an ebb as to be capable of great improvement by positive means, so as to reach the common level to which such means can carry thcni, there 6 jin Inquiri/. is no doubt or question ; but after they have in any par- ticular instance, by native genius and industry, reached their highest eminence, to say that they Avill, by mere artificial props and officious encouragement, arrive at a point of "still higher attainment," is assuming a good deal too much. Are we to imderstand that the laudable efforts of the British Institution are likely, by the mere operation of natural causes, to produce a greater comic painter, a more profound describer of manners than Hogarth ? or even that the lights and expectations, held out in the preface to the British catalogue, will enable some one speedily to surpass the general excellence of Wilson's landscapes 1 Is there anything in the history of art to M'arrant such a conclusion — to support this theory of progressive per- fectibility under the auspices of patrons and vice-jjatrons, presidents and select committees? On the contrary, as far as the general theory is concerned, the traces of youth, manhood, and old age are almost as distinctly marked in the history of the art as of the in- dividual. The arts have in general risen rapidly from their first obscure dawn to their meridian height and greatest lustre, and have no sooner reached this proud eminence than they have as rapidly hastened to decay and dissolu- tion. It is a little extraordinary, if tlie real sources of per- fection are to be sought in schools, in models, and public institutions, that wherever there are schools, models, and public institutions, there the arts should regularly disappear — that the efi"ect should never follow from the cause. The Greek statues remain to this day unrivalled — the undisputed standards of the most perfect symmetry of form. What then has the genius of progressive improvement been doing all this time 1 Has he been reposing after his labours ? How is it that the moderns are still so far behind, notwith- standing all that was done ready to tlicir hands by the ancients — when they possess a double advantage over them, and have not nature only to form themselves upon, but An Inquiry. 7 nature and the antique ? In Italy the art of painting had the same fate. After its long and painful struggles in the time of the earlier artists — Cimabue, Ghirlandajo, Masaccio, &c. — it burst out with a light too dazzling to behold in the works of Titian, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Correggio, which was reflected, with diminished lustre, in the productions of their immediate disciples — lingered for awhile with the school of Domenichino and the Caracci — and expired with Guido Pteni. For with him disappeared " the last of those bright clouds That, on the unsteady breeze of honour, sailed In long procession, calm and beautiful." From that period painting sank to so low a pitch in Italy as to excite our pity or contempt. There is not a single name to redeem its f;ided glory from utter oblivion. Yet this has not been owing to any want of Dilettanti and Delia Cmscan societies — of academies of Florence, of Bologna, of Piirma, and Pisa — of honorary members and foreign correspondents — of pupils and teachers, professors and patrons, and the whole buzzing tribe of critics and connoisseurs. Art will not be constrained by mastery, but, at sight of the formidable array prepared to receive it, " Spreads its light wings, and in a moment flies." The genius of painting lies buried under the Vatican, or skulka behind some old portraits of Titian, from which it stole out lately to paint a miniature of Lady Montagu ! What has become of the successors of llubens, Rembrandt, and Vandyck? What have the French academicians ever done for the arts, or what will thoy ever do, but add intolerable grimace and afTuctation to centos of heads from the antique — antl caricature Greek forms by putting them with the nighty French attitudes 1 Was Claude Lorraine or Nicohw Poussin formed by the rules of Do Piles or Du Fresnoy ? There arc no general tickets of admission to the temple of fame, transferable to large societies or 8 An Inquiry. organised bodies — the paths leading to it are steep and narrow, for by tlie time they are worn plain and easy the niches are full. What extraordinary advances have we made in our own country in consequence of the establish- ment of the Royal Academy 1 What greater names has the British school to boast than those of Hogarth, Reynolds, and Wilson, who owed nothing to it 1 Even the venerably president of the Royal Academy was one of its founders. It is plain, then, that the sanguine anticipation of the pre- face-writer, however amiable and patriotic in its motive, has little foundation in fact. It has even less in the true theory and principles of excellence in the art. " It has been often made a subject of complaint," says a contemporary critic, " that the arts in this country and in modern times have not kept pace with the general progress of society and civilisation in other respects, and it has been proposed to remedy the deficiency by more carefully availing ourselves of the advantages which time and cir- cumstances have placed within our reach, but which we have hitherto unaccountably neglected — the study of the antique, the imitation of the best models, the formation of academies, and tbe distribution of prizes. "First. The complaint itself of the want of progressive perfection in the art is unreasonable ; for the general analogy appealed to in support of the regular advances of art to higher degrees of excellence, totally fails ; it applies to science, not to art. " Secondly. The expedients proposed to remedy the evil by adventitious helps are only calculated to confirm it. The arts hold immediate communication with nature, and must be derived from that source. When the original impulse no longer exists, when the inspiration of genius is fled, all the attempts to recall it are no better than the tricks of galvanism to restore the dead to life. The arts may be .said to resemble Antaeus in his struggle with Hercules, who was strangled whdn he was raised above the ground, An Inquiry. 9 and only revived and recovered his strength, -when he touched his mother earth. " We intend to offer a few general observations in illus- tration of this view of the subject, which appears to us to be just. There are three ways in which institutions for the promotion of the fine arts may be supposed to f^ivour the object in view — either by furnishing the best models to the student, or by holding out the prospect of immediate patronage and reward, or by diffusing a more general taste for the arts. All of these, so far from answering the end proposed, will be found on examination to have a contrary tendency. There are three ways in which academies or public in- stitutions might be supposed to promote the fine arts — either by furnishing the best models to the student, or by holding out immediate emolument and patronage, or by improving the public taste. We shall consider each of these in order. A constant reference to the best models of art neces- sarily tends to enervate the mind, to intercept our view of nature, and todistract the attention by a variety of unattainable excellences. An intimate acquaintance with the works of the celebrated masters may, indeed, add to the indolent refinements of taste, but will never produce one work of original geniu!} — one great artist. In proof of the general truth of this observation, we might cite the works of Carlo Maratti, of Raphael Mengs, or of any of the cfTeniiiiate school of critics and cnpyists who have attemjitcd to blend the borrowed beauties of other.s in a perfect whole. What do they contain but a negation of every excellence which they j)rctcnd to coml)inc ? Inoffensive insipidity i.s the utmf).st that can ever l)c cxi)cctcd, because it is tlic utmost that ever was attained, from the desire to produce a balance of good qualities, and to animate lifeless compositions by the transfusion of the .spirit of originality. Tlie thoughtless imitator, in his attempts to grasp all, loses liis hold of that 10 An Inquiry. which was placed within his reach, and from aspiring at universal excellence sinks into uniform mediocrity.* Be- sides, the student who has models of every kind of excellence constantly before him, is not only diverted from that par- ticular walk of art in which, by patient exertion, he might have obtained ultimate success, but from having his imagi- nation habitually raised to an overstrained standard of refinement, by the sight of the most exquisite examples of the art, becomes impatient and dissatisfied with his own attempts, wishes to reach the same perfection all at once, or throws down his pencil in despair. Thus the young enthusiast, whose genius and energy were to rival the great masters of antiquity, or create a new era in the art itself, baflSed in his first sanguine expectations, reposes in indolence on what others have done — wonders how such perfection should have been achieved, grows familiar with the minutest peculiarities of the different masters, flutters between the colouring of Rubens and the grace of Raphael, finds it easier to copy pictures than to paint them, and easier to see than to copy them, takes infinite pains to gain admission to all the great collections, lounges from one auction-room to another, and writes newspaper criticisms on the fine arts. Such was not Correggio ; he saw and felt for himself ; he was of no school, but had his own world of art to create. That image of truth and beauty which existed in his mind he was forced to construct for himself without rules or models. As it could only have arisen in his mind from the * There is a certain pedantry, a given division of labour, an almost exclusive attention to some one object, wliich is necessary in art, as in all the works of man. \yithout this, the unavoidable consequence is a gradual dissijiation and prostitution of intellect, which leaves the mind witliout energy to devote to any pursuit the pains necessary to excel in it, and suspends every purpose in irritable imbecility. But the modern painter is bound not^only to run the circle of his own art but of all others. He must be "statesman, chemist, fiddler, and buffoon. " ■ He must have too many accomplishments to excel in his profession. When every one is bound to know everything, there is no time to do anything. An Inquiry. 11 contemplation of nature, so be could only hope to embody it to others by the imitation of nature. We can conceive the work growing under his hands — by slow and patient touches approaching nearer to perfection, softened into finer grace, gaining strength from delicacy, and at last reflecting the pure image of nature on the canvas. Such is always the true progress of art ; such are the necessary means by which the greatest works of every kind have been produced. They have been the effect of power gathering strength from exercise, and warmth from its own impulse — stimulated to fresh efforts by conscious success, and by the surprise and strangeness of a new world of beauty opening to the delighted imagination. The triumphs of art were victories over the difficulties of art ; the prodigies of genius, the result of that strength which had grappled with nature. Titian copied even a plant or a piece of common drapery from the objects themselves ; and Raphael is known to have made elaborate studies of the principal heads in his pictures. All the great painters of this period were thoroughly grounded in the first principles of their art ; had learned to copy a head, a hand, or an eye, and had acquired patience to finish a single figure, before they under- took to paint extensive compositions. They knew that, though Fame is represented with her head above the cloud.s, licr feet rest upon the earth. Genius can only have its full scope where, though much may have been done, more remains to be done ; where models exi.st chiefly to show the deficiencies of art, and where the perfect idea is left to be filled up in tlic painter's imagination. Where the stimulus of novelty and of necessary exertion is want- ing, generations repose on what lias been done for them by their predecessors, as individuals, after a certain period, rest satisfied with the knowledge they have already acquired. To proceed to the proposed advantages to be derived, in a pecuniary point of view, from the public patronage of the 12 An Inquiry. arts. It in this respect unfortunately defeats itself ; for it multiplies its objects faster than it can satisfy their claims, and raises up a swarm of competitors for the prize of genius from the dregs of idleness and dulness. The real patron is anxious to reward merit, not to encourage gratuitous pre- tenders to it — to see that the man of genius takes no detriment ; that another Wilson is not left to perish for want — not to propagate the breed, for that he knows to be impossible. But there are some persons who think it is essential to the interests of art, to keep up " an airy of children" — the young fry of embryo candidates for fame — as others think it essential to the welfare of the kingdom to preserve the spawn of the herring fisheries. In general, public, that is, indiscriminate patronage is, and can be, nothing better than a species of intellectual seduction, by administering provocatives to vanity and avarice — it is leading astray the youth of this nation by fallacious hopes which can scarcely ever be realised — it is beating up for raw dependents, sending out into the highways for the halt, the lame and the blind, and making a scramble among a set of idle boj-s for prizes of the first, second, and third class, like those we make among children for gingerbread toys. True patronage does not consist in ostentatious professions of high keeping, and promiscuous intercourse with the arts. At the same time, the good that might be done by private taste and benevolence is in a great measure prevented. The moment that a few individuals of taste and liberal spirit become members of a public body they are no longer any thing more than parts of a machine, which is usually wielded at will by some overbearing, officious intruder — their good sense and good nature are lost in a mass of ignorance and presumption, their names only serve to reflect credit on proceedings in which they have no share, and which are determined upon by a majority of persons who have no interest in the arts but what arises from the importance attached to them by regular organisation, and An Inquiry. 13 no opinions but what are dictated to them by some self-con- stituted judge. "Whenever vanity and self-importance are (as in general they must be) the governing principles of systems of public patronage, there is an end at once of all candour and directness of conduct. Their decisions are before the public ; and the individuals who take the lead in these decisions are responsible for them. They have there- fore to manage the public opinion in order to secure that of their own body. Hence, instead of giving a firm, manly, and independent tone to that opinion, it is their business to watch all its caprices, and foUow it in every casual turning. They dare not give their sanction to sterling merit, strug- gling with difficulties, but take every advantage of its success to reQect credit on their own reputation for sagacity. Their taste is a servile dependent on their vanity, and their patronage has an air of pauperism about it. They neglect or treat with insult the favourite whom they suspect of having fallen oflf in the opinion of the public ; but if he is able to recover his ground without their assistance, are ready to heap their mercenary bounties upon those of others — greet him with friendly congratulations, and share his triumph with him. Perhaps the only public patronage which was ever really useful to the arts, or worthy of them, was that •which they received, first in Greece and then in Italy, from the religious institutions of the countiy ; when the artist felt himself, as it were, a servant at the altar ; when his hand gave a visible form to gods or angels, heroes or apostles ; and when the enthusiasm of genius was exalted by mingling with the flame of national devotion. The artist was not here degraded by being made the de- pendent on the caprice of wealth or fashion, but felt liimself at once a public benefactor, lie had to embody by the highest effort of his art subjects which were sacred to the imagination and feelings of the spectators : there was' a common link, a" mutual symimthy, between them, 14 An Inquinj. ill their common faith.* Every other mode of patronage but that which arises either from the general institutions of the country or from the real unaffected taste of indi- viduals, must, we conceive, be illegitimate, corrupted in its source, and either ineffectual or prejudicial to its ob- ject. Positive encouragements and rewards will not make an honest man or a great artist. The assumed 'familiarity and condescending goodness of patrons and vice-patrons will serve to intoxicate rather than to sober the mind, and a card to dinner in Cleveland How or Portland Place will have a tendency to divert the student's thoughts from his morning's work, rather than to rivet them upon it. The device by which a celebrated painter has represented the Virgin teaching the infant Christ to read by pointing with a butterfly to the letters of the alphabet has not been thought a very wise one. Correggio is the most melan- choly instance on record of the want of a proper encourage- ment of the arts : but a golden shower of patronage, tempting as that which fell into the lap of his own Danae, and dropping prize medals and epic mottoes, would not produce another Correggio ! We shall conclude with o8"ering some remarks on the question — whether academies and institutions must not * Of the effect of the authority of the subject of a composition, in suspending the exercise of personal taste and feeling in the specta- tors, we have a striking instance in our own country, where this cause must, from collateral circumstances, operate less forcibly. Mr West's pictures would not be tolerated but from the respect inspired by the subjects of which he treats. When a young lady and her mother, the wife and daughter of a clergjTnan, are told that a gawky ill-favoured youth is the beloved disciple of Christ, and that a tall starched figure of a woman visible near him is the Virgin Mary, whatever they might have thought before, they can no more refrain from shedding tears than if they had seen the vary persons recorded in sacred history. It is not the picture, but the associations con- nected with it, that produce the effect. Just as if the same young lady and her mother had been told, "That is the Emperor Alexander," they would say, " What a handsome man I " or if they were shown the Prince Eegent, would exclaim, '■^ How elegant!" An Inquiry. 15 be supposed to assist the progress of tlie fine arts by pro- moting a wider taste for them. In general, it must happen in the first stages of the arts that, as none but those who had a natural genius for them would attempt to practise them, so none but those who had a natural taste for them would pretend to judge of or criticise them. This must be an incalculable ad- vantage to the man of true genius, for it is no other than the privilege of being tried by his peers. In an age when oonnoisseurship had not become a fashion, when re- ligion, war and intrigue occupied the time and thoughts of the great, only those minds of superior refinement would be led to notice the works of art, who had a real sense of their excellence; and in giving way to the power- ful bent of his own genius the painter was most likely to consult the taste of his judges. He had not to deal with pretenders to taste through vanity, affectation and idle- ness. He had to appeal to the higher faculties of the soul ; to that deep and innate sensibility to truth and beauty which required only an object to have its enthu- siasm excited ; and to that independent strength of mind which, in the midst of ignorance and l>arbarisin, hailed and fostered genius wherever it met with it. Titian was patronised by Charles V. — Count Castiglione was the friend of Raphael. These were true patrons and true critics : and as there were no others (for the world in general merely looked on and wondered), there can be little doubt that such a period of dearth of fictitious patronage would be the most favourable to the full de- velopment of the greatest talents and the attainment of the highest excellence. Tlie diffusion of taste is not, then, tlio same thing as the improvement of taste j but it is only the former of these objects that is promoted by public institutions and other artificial means. The number of candidates for fame, and of pretenders to criticism, is thus increased 16 An Tnquii'i/. beyond all proportion, but the quantity of genius and feeling remains the same, with this difference, that the man of genius is lost in the crowd of competitors who would never have become such but from encouragement and example ; and that the opinion of those few persons whom nature intended for judges is drowned in the noisy decisions of shallow smatterers in taste. The principle of universal suffrage, however applicable to matters of go- vernment, which concern the common feelings and com- mon interests of society, is by no means applicable to matters of taste, which can only be decided upon by the most refined understandings. It is throwing down the barriers, which separate knowledge and feeling from igno- rance and vulgarity, and proclaiming a Bartholomew-fair- show of the fine arts — " And fools rush in where angels fear to tread." The public taste is, therefore, necessarily vitiated, in proportion as it is public : it is lowered with every in- fusion it receives of common opinion. The greater the number of judges, the less capable must they be of judg- ing, for the addition to the number of good ones will always be small, while the multitude of bad ones is end- less, and thus the decay of art may be said to be the necessary consequence of its progress. Can there be a greater confirmation of these remarks than to look at the texture of that assemblage of select critics who every year visit the exhibition at Somerset House from all parts of the metropolis of this United Kingdom ? Is it at all wonderful, that for such a succession of connoisseurs such a collection of works of art should be provided ; Avhere the eye in vain seeks relief from the glitter of the frames in the glare of the pictures ; where Vermillion cheeks make vermillion lips look pale ; where the merciless splendour of the painter's pallet puts nature out of countenance ; and where the unmeaning grimace An Inquiry. 17 of fasliion and fully is almost the only variety in the wide dazzling waste of colour. Indeed, the great error of Bri- tish art has hitherto been a desire to produce popular effect by the cheapest and most obvious means, and at the expense of everything else ; — to lose all the delicacy and variety of nature in one undistinguished bloom of florid health, and all precision, truth, and refinement of charac- ter in the same harmless mould of smiling, self-complacent insipidity, "Pleased with itself, that all the world can please." It is probable that in all that stream of idleness and curiosity which flows in, hour after hour, and day after day, to the richly hung apartments of Somerset-house, there are not fifty persons to be found who can really distinguish a " Guido from a daub," or who would recog- nise a work of the most refined genius from the most com- mon and everyday performance. Come, then, ye banks of Wapping, and classic haunts of Ratcliffe-higliway, and join thy fields, blithe Tothill — let the postchaises, gay with oaken boughs, be put in requisition for school-boys from Eton and Harrow, and school-girls from Hackney and Mile-end, — and let a jury be em2)anellcd to decide on the merits of Haphael, and .... the verdict will be infallible. We remember having been formerly a good deal amused with seeing a smart, handsonie-looking Quaker lad, standing before a picture of Christ as the Saviour of the world, witli a circle of you))g female friends around him, and a newspaper in his hand, out of which he read to his admiring auditors a criticism on the picture ascribing to it every perfection, human and divine. Now, in truth, the colouring was anything but solemn, the drawing anything but grand, the expression anytliing but sublime. The friendly critic had, however, bedaubed it 80 with praise, that it was not easy to gain.say its wondrous excellence. In fact, one of the worst consequences of the B 18 An Ijiqimy. establishment of academics, &,c. is, that the rank and station of the painter throw a lustre round his pictures, which imposes completely on the herd of spectators, and makes it a kind of treason against the art for any one to speak his mind freely, or detect the imposture. If, indeed, the election to title and academic honours went by merit, this might form a kind of clue or standard for the public . to decide justly upon : — but we have heard that genius and taste determine precedence there, almost as little as at court ; and that modesty and talent stand very little chance indeed with interest, cabal, impudence, and cunning. The purity or liberality of professional decisions cannot, therefore, in such cases be expected to counteract the tendency which an appeal to the public has to lower the standard of taste. The artist, to succeed, must let himself down to the level of his judges, for he cannot raise them up to his own. The highest efforts of genius, in every walk of art, can never be properly understood by man- kind in general : there are numberless beauties and truths which lie far beyond their comprehension. It is only as refinement or sublimity are blended with other qualities of a more obvious and common nature, that they pass current with the world. Common sense, which has been sometimes appealed to as the criterion of taste, is nothing but the common capacity, applied to common facts and feelings ; but it neither is, nor pretends to be, the judge of anything else. To suppose that it can really appreciate the excellence of works of high art, is as absurd as to suppose that it could produce them. Taste is the highest degree of sensibility, or the impression of the most culti- vated and sensible minds, as genius is the result of the highest powers of feeling and invention. It may be ob- jected that the public taste is capable of gradual improve- ment, because, in the end, the public do justice to works of the greatest merit. This is a mistake. The reputation, ■ultimately and slow ly affixed to works of genius, is stamped An Inquiry. 19 upon them by authority, not by popular consent, nor the common sense of the world. We imagine that the ad- miration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so. But does not every ignorant connoisseur pretend the satne veneration, and talk with the same vapid assurance, of M. Angelo, though he has never seen even a copy of any of his pictures, as if he had studied them accurately, — merely because Sir J. Reynolds has praised him 1 Is Milton more popular now than when the Paradise Lost was first published ? Or does he not rather owe his reputation to the judgment of a few persons, in every successive period, accumulating in his favour, and overpowering by its weight the public indifference? Why is Shakespeare popular? Not from his refinement of character or sentiment, so much as from his jjower of telling a story, — the variety and invention, — the tragic catastrophe, and broad farce, of his plays. His characters of Imogen or Desdemona, Hamlet or Kent, are little understood or relished by the generality of readers. Does not Boccaccio pass to this day for a writer of ribaldry, because his jests and lascivious tales were all that caught the vulgar car, while the story of the Falcon is forgotten? I beg * to offer one or two explanations with respect to the former part of this paper, which does not appear to rac to Iiave been exactly understood by " A Student of the Boyal Academy. "t The Avholc drift of it is to exi)lode the visionary theory, that art may go on in an infinite series of imitations and improvements. This theory has not a single fact or argument to support it. All the highest efforts of art originate in the imitation of nature, and end there. No imitation of others can carry us • Tho rcmaindtr of tliis jmpor ajijicarrd in tlie Champion of Oct. 21, 1814, in thu form of a letter to the editor. — ICn. t See tlio letter so signed in tho Chamjdon under date of Sept. 25, 1814.-ED, 20 Jn Inquiry, beyond this point, or ever enable us to reach it. The imitation of the works of genius facilitates the acquisition of a certain degree of excellence, but weakens and distracts while it facilitates, and renders the acquisition of the highest degree of excellence impossible. Where- ever the greatest individual genius has been exerted upon the finest models of nature, there the greatest works of art have been produced, — the Greek statues and the Italian pictures. There is no substitute in art for nature ; in proportion as we remove from this original source, we dwindle into mediocrity and flimsiness ; and whenever the artificial and systematic assistance afforded to genius becomes extreme, it overlays it altogether. We cannot make use of other men's minds, any more than of their limbs.* Art is not science, nor is the progress made in the one ever like the progress made in the other. The one is retrograde for the very same reason that the other is progressive ; because science is mechanical, and art is not; and in proportion as we rely on mechanical means, we lose the essence. Is there a single exception to this rule 1 The worst artists in the world are the modern Italians, who live in the midst of the finest works of art : — the persons least like the Greek sculptors are the modern French painters, who copy nothing but the antique. Velasquez might be improved by a pilgrimage to the Vatican, but if it had been his morning's lounge, it would have ruined him. Michael Angelo, the cartoons of Leonardo da A'inci, and the antique, your correspondent tells us, produced llaphael. Why have they produced no second Raphael ? What produced Michael Angelo, * Occasional assistance may be derived from both, but, in general, ■vve must trust to our own strength. "We cannot hope to become rich by living upon alms. Constant assistance is the worst incumbrance. The accumulatii)n of models, and erection of universal scliools for art, improve the genius of the student much in the same way that the encouragement of night-cellars and gin-shops improves the health and morals of the jieople. An Inquiry. 21 Leonardo da Vinci, and the antique 1 Surely not Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the antique ! If Sir Joshua Reynolds would never have observed a certain expression in nature, if he had not seen it in Corrcggio, it is tolerably certain that he would never execute it so well ; and in fact, though Sir Joshua was largely indebted to Correggio, yet his imitations are not equal to the originals. The two little boys in Correggio's Dana'c are worth all the children Sir Joshua ever painted : and the Hymen in the same picture, (with leave be it spoken,) is worth all his works put together. — But the student of the Royal Academy thinks that Carlo ^laratti and Raphael Mengs are only exceptions to the common rule of progressive improvement in the art. If these are the exceptions, whore are the examples 1 If we are to credit him, and it would be uncivil not to do it, they are to be found in the present students of the Royal Academy, whom, he says, it would be unreasonable to confound with such minds as those of Carlo Maratti and Raphael Mcngs. Be it so. This is a point to be decided by time. The whole question was at once decided by the person who said that " to imitate the Iliad, teas not to imitate. Homer." After this has once been stated, it is quite in vain to argue the point further. The idea of piling art on art, and licaping excellence on excellence, is a mere fable; and we may very safely say, that the frontispiece of all such pretended institutions and academics for the promotion of the fine arts, founded on this principle, and " pointing to the skies," should be — " Like a tiill bully, Wlin the head, and lies." Absurd a.s this theory \», it flatters our vanity and our indolence, and these are two great points gained. It is gratifying to 8uppf)sc that art may have gone on from the beginning, reposing upon art, like the Indian elephant and 22 A7i Inquiry. tortoise ; that it has improved, and will still go on improv- ing, without the trouble of going back to nature. By these theorists nature is always kept in the back-ground, or does not even terminate the vista in their prospects. She is a mistress too importunate, and who requires too great sacrifices from the effeminacy of modern amateurs. They will only see her in company, or by proxy, and are as much afraid of being reduced to their shifts with her in private, as Tattle, in Love for Love, was afraid of being left alone with a pretty girl. I can only recollect one other thing to reply to. Your correspondent objects to my having said, " All the great painters of this period were thoroughly grounded in the first principles of their art ; had learned to copy a head, a hand, or an eye," &c. All this knowledge of detail he attributes to academical instruction, and quotes Sir Joshua Reynolds, who says of himself — " Not having had the advantage of an early academical education, I never had that facility in drawing the naked figure, which an artist ought to have." First, I might answer, that the drawing from casts can never assist the student in copying the face, the eye, or the extremities ; and that it was only of service in the knowledge of the trunk and the general propor- tions, which are comparatively lost in the style of English art, which is not naked, but clothed. Secondly, I would say, with respect to Sir Joshua, that his inability to draw the naked figure arose from his not having been accustomed to draw it ; and that drawing from the antique would not have enabled either him or any one else to draw from the naked figure. The difficulty of copying from nature, or in other words of doing anything that has not been done before, or that is worth doing, is that of combining many ideas at once, or of reconciling things in motion : whereas in copying from the antique, you have only to copy still life, and in proportion as you get a knack at the one, you disqualify yourself for the other. An Inquiry. 23 As to what your correspondent adds of painting and poetry being the same thing, it is an old story which I do not believe. But who would ever think of setting up a school of poetry ? Bysshe's Art of Poetry and the Gradiis ad Parnassum are a jest. Eoyal academies and British institutions are to painting, what Bysshe's Art of Poetry and the Gradus ad Parnassum are to the " sister art." Poetry, as it becomes artificial, becomes bad, instead of good — the poetry of words, instead of things. ^Milton is the only poet who gave to borrowed materials the force of originality. ( 2t ) CHARACTER OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.* The authority of Sir Joshua Reynolds, both from his ex- ample and his instructions, has had, and still continues to have a considerable influence on the state of art in this country. That influence has been on the whole unques- tionably beneficial in itself, as well as highly creditable to the rare talents and elegant mind of Sir Joshua, for it has raised the art of painting from the lowest state of degrad- ation, of dry, meagre, and lifeless inanity, to something at least respectable, and bearing an affinity to the rough strength and bold spirit of the national character. Whether the same implicit deference to his authority, which has helped to advance the art thus far, may not, among other causes, limit and retard its future progress ; whether there are not certain original errors both in his principles and practice, which the farther they are pro- ceeded in, the farther they will lead us from the truth; whether there is not a systematic bias from the right line by which alone we can arrive at the goal of the highest excellence, — is a question well worth considering. From the great and substantial merits of the late president we have as little the inclination as the power to detract. But we certainly think that they have been sometimes over-rated from the partiality of friends and from the influence of fashion. However necessary and useful the ebullitions of public or private enthusiasm may be to counteract the common prejudices against new claims to reputation, and to lift rising genius to its just rank, there is a time, when, having accomplished its end, our zeal * Now first republished from the Champion, Oct. 30 and Nov. 6, 1814. -Ed. Character of Sir Joshua, Reynolds. 25 may be suffered to subside into discretion, and when it becomes as proper to restrain our admiration, as it was before to give loose reins to it. It is only by having undergone this double ordeal that reputation can ever be established on a solid basis : — that popularity becomes fame. We shall bes;in with his merits as an artist. There is one error which we wish to correct at setting out, because we think it important. There is not a greater or more un- accountable mistake than the supposition that Sir Joshua Reynolds owed his success or excellence in his profession to his having been the first who introduced into this country more general principles of the art, and who raised portrait- painting to the dignity of history from the low drudgery of copying the peculiarities, meannesses, and details of in- dividual nature, which was all that had been attempted by his immediate predecessors. This is so far from being true, that the very reverse is the fact. If Sir Joshua did not give these details and peculiarities so much as might be wished, those that went before him did not give them at all. These pretended general principles of the art, which, it is said, " alone give value and dignity to it," had been pushed to their cxtremest absurdity before his time ; and it was in getting rid of the mechanical .systematic monotony and middle forms, by the help of which Leiy, Kneller, Hudson, the French painters, and others, carried on their manufactories of face and history i")ainting, and in return- ing (as far as he did) to the trutli and force of individual nature, that the secret both of his fame and fortune lay. The pedantic, servile race of artists, wliidi Reynolds superseded, had carried the abstract principle of improving on nature to such a degree of refinement, that tliL'y left it out altogether, and confounded all the varieties and irregularities of form, feature, character, cx'ijression or attitude in the same artificial mould of fancied grace and fashionable insipidity. The portraits of Kneller, for 2G Character of Sir Joshua Reynolds. example, seem all to have been turned in a machine, the eye-brows are arched as if by a compass, the mouth curled, and the chin dimpled, the head turned on one side, and the hands placed in the same affected position. He thought that beauty and perfection were one, and he very consistently reduced this principle to practice. The jDortraits of this mannerist, therefore, are as like one another as the dresses which were then in fashion, and have the same "dignity and value" as the full-bottomed wigs which they wore. The superiority of Reynolds con- sisted in his being varied and natural, instead of being artificial and uniform. The spirit, grace, or dignity which he added to his portraits, he borrowed from nature, and not from the ambiguous quackery of rules. His feeling of truth and nature was too strong to permit him to adopt the unmeaning style of Kneller and Hudson : but his logical acuteness was not such as to enable him to detect the verbal fallacies and speculative absurdities which he had learned from Richardson and Coypel ; and from some defects in his own practice, he was led to confound negli- gence with grandeur. But of this hereafter. — Sir Joshua Reynolds owed his vast superiority over his contemporaries to incessant practice and habitual attention to nature, to quick organic sensibility, to considerable power of observation, and still greater taste in perceiving and availing himself of the excellencies of others, which lay within his own walk of art. We can by no means look upon Sir Joshua as having a claim to the first rank of genius ; his own account of genius is a sufficient proof of this, for every man, in reasoning on the faculties of human nature, describes the process of his own mind. He would hardly have been a great painter, if other greater painters had not lived before him. He would not have given a first impulse to the art, nor did he advance any part of it beyond the point where he found it. He did not present any new view of nature, nor is he to be placed in the Character of Sir Joshua Beynolds. 27 class with those who did ; — even in colour, his pallet was spread for him by the old masters, and his eye imbibed its full perception of depth, and harmony of tone, from the Dutch and Venetian schools, rather than from nature. His early pictures are poor and flimsy. He, indeed, learned to see the finer qualities of nature through the works of art, which he perhaps might never have dis- covered in nature itself. He became rich by the accumul- ation of borrowed wealth, and his genius was the offspring of taste. He combined and applied the materials of others to his own purpose with admirable success ; he was an industrious compiler, or skilful translator, not an original inventor in art. The art would remain in all its essential elements, just where it is, if Sir Joshua had never lived. He has supplied the industry of future plagiarists •with no new materials. But it has been well observed, that the value of every work of art, as well as the genius of the artist, depends not more on the degree of excel- lence than on the degree of originality displayed in it. Sir Joshua, however, was perhaps the most original imitator that ever appeared in the Avorld : and the reason of this in a great measure was, that he was compelled to combine what he saw in art with what he saw in nature, which was constantly before him. The portrait-painter is, in this resitect, much less liable than the historical painter to deviate into the extremes of manner and affectation, for he cannot contrive to discard nature altogether, under the excuse that nhe only puts him out. He must meet her face to face : and if he is not incorrigible, he will sec something there, that cannot fail to be of service to him. Another circumstance which must have been favourable to Sir Joshua was that, though not the originator in point of time, he was the first Englishman who translated the higher excellences of his profession into his own country, and had the merit, if not of an inventor, of a reformer of the art. His mode of painting had the graces of novelty 28 Character of Sir Joshua Reynolds. in the age and country in wliich he lived ; and he had therefore all the stimulus to exertion which arose from the enthusiastic applause of his contemporaries, and from a desire to expand and refine the taste of the public. To an eye for colour and for effects of light and shade Sir Joshua united a strong perception of individual character, a lively feeling of the quaint and grotesque in expression, and great mastery of execution. He had comparatively little knowledge of drawing, either as it regarded proportion or form.* The beauty of some of his female faces and figures arises almost entirely from their softness and fleshiness. His pencil wanted energy and precision. The expression, even of his best portraits, is neither elevated nor refined : that is, implies neither lofty and impassioned intellect, nor delicate sensibility. He also wanted grace, if grace requires simplicity. The mere negation of stifi'ness and formality is not grace : for looseness and distortion are not grace. His favourite attitudes are not easy and natural, but the affectation of ease and nature. They are violent deviations from a right line. Many of the figures in his fancy-pieces are placed in postures in which they could not remain for an instant without extreme difficulty and awkwardness. We might instance the girl drawing with a pencil, and some * This distinction haa not been sufficiently attended to. Mr West, for example, has considerable knowledge of drawing, as it relates to proportion, to the anatomical measurements of the human body. He has not the least conception of elegance or grandeur of form. The one is matter of mechanical knowledge, the other of taste and feeling. Rubens was deficient in the anatomical measurements, as well as in the marking of the muscles ; but he had as fine an eye as possible for what may be called the picturesque in form, both in the composition of his figures and in the particular parts. In all that relates to the expression of motion, that is, to ease, freedom, and elasticity of form, he was unrivalled. He was as superior to Mr West in his power of drawing, as in his power of colouring.— Correggio's proportions are said to have been often incorrect : but his feeling of beauty and grace of outline were of the most exquisite kind. Character of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 29 otLers.* His portraits are his best pictures, and of these his portraits of men are the best ; his pictures of children are the next in value. He had fine subjects for the former, from the masculine sense and originality of character of many of the persons he painted, and he had also a great advantage (as far as practice went) in painting a number of persons of every rank and description. Some of the finest and most interesting are those of Dr Johnson, Goldsmith (which is too much a mere sketch), Baretti, Dr Burney, John Hunter, and the inimitable portrait of Bishop Newton. The elegant simplicity of character, expression and drawing, preserved throughout the picture, even to the attitude and mode of handling, discover the true genius of a painter. We also remember to have seen a print of Thomas Warton, than which nothing could be more characteristic or more natural. These were all Reynolds's intimate acquaintances, and it could not be said of them that they were men " of no mark or likelihood." Their traits had probably]sunk deep into the artist's mind; he painted them as pure studies from nature, copying the real image existing before him, witli all its peculiarities ; and with as much wisdom as good-nature sacrificing the graces on the altar of friendship. They are downright portraits, and notliing more. What if he bad painted them on the theory of middle forms, or pounded their features together in the same metaphysical mortar? Mr Wcstall might just as well have painted them. They would have been of no more value than his own picture of Mr Tonikins the penman, or Mrs Bobinson, who is i)aintcd with a hat and feather, or Mrs Billington, who is painted as St Cecilia, or than the Prince of Wales and Duke of York, or the portraits of Sir George and Lady I3eaumont. Would the artist in tliis case have conferred tlie same benefit on the public, or have added as much to the stock • Our references arc Kcnerally made to pictures in the late exbibi- tion of Sir JoHliua's w<»rkH in tlio British gallery. 30 Character of Sir Joshua BcTjnolds. of our ideas, as by giving us facsimiles of the most interesting characters of the time, with whom we seem, from his representations of them, to be almost as well acquainted as if we had known them, and to remember their persons as Avell as their writings 1 Yet we would rather have seen Johnson, or Goldsmith, or Burke, than their portraits. This shows that the eflfect of pictures would not have been the worse, if they had been the more finished and more detailed : for there is nothing so true, either to the details or to the general effect, as nature. The only celebrated person of this period whom we have seen, is Mr 'Sheridan, whose face, we have no hesitation in saying, contains a great deal more, and is better worth seeing, than Sir Joshua's picture of him. In his portraits of Avomen, on the contrary (with very few exceptions). Sir Joshua appears to have consulted either the vanity of his employers or his own fanciful theory. They have not the look of individual nature, nor have they, to compensate the want of this, either peculiar elegance of form, refinement of expression, delicacy of complexion, or gracefulness of manner. Vandyck's attitudes have been complained of as stiff and confined. But there is a medium between primness and hoydening. Eeynolds, to avoid the former defect, has fallen into the contrary extreme of negligence and contortion. All his figures, which aim at gentility, are twisted into that serpentine line, the idea of which he ridiculed so much in Hogarth. Indeed, Sir Joshua, in his Discourses, (see his account of Correggio,) speaks of grace as if it were nearly allied to affectation. Grace signifies that which is pleasing and natural in the position and motions of the human form, as beauty is more properly applied to the form itself. Tliat which is inanimate and without motion cannot therefore be graceful ; but to suppose that a figure to be graceful needs only to be put in some languishing, sprawling, or extrava- gant posture, is to mistake flutter and affectation for ease Cliaracter of Sir Josliua Reynolds. 31 and elegance. Sir Josliua seems more tlian once — both theoretically and practically — to have borrowed his idea of positive excellence from a negation of the opposite defect. His tastes led him to reject the faults which he had ob- served in others ; but he had not always power to realize his own idea of perfection, or to ascertain precisely in what it consisted. His colouring, also, wanted that purity, deli- cacy, and transparent smoothness, which give such an exquisite charm to Yandyck's women. Vandyck's portraits — mostly of English women — in the Louvre have a cool, refreshing air about them — a look of simplicity and modesty even in the very tone, which forms a fine contrast to the voluptuous glow and mellow golden lustre of Titian's Italian women. There is a quality of flesh-colour in Vandyck which is to be found in no other painter, neither in Titian, Rubens, nor Eembrandt ; nor is it in Reynolds, for he had nothing which was not taken from those three. It exactly conveys the idea of the soft, smooth, slidino-, continuous, delicately-varied surface of the skin. Correle atid ingenious nian, and dis- grace ourselves ; but we should not hurt a sentiment, we should not mar a principle, we should not invade the sanct- uary of art. Mr Turner's pictures have not, like Claiule's, become a sentiment in the heart of Europe ; his fame lias not been stamped and rendered .sacred by the hand of time. Perhaps it never will.* • In fact, Mr Tumer'H lanrlBcapos arc nothing but itaincJ w.atcr- colour drawingH, loaded with oil-colour. 68 Catalogue Baisonne of the British Institution. We have only another word to add on this very lowest of all subjects. The writer calls in the cant of morality to his aid; he was quite shocked to find himself in the company of some female relations, vis-a-vis with a naked figure of Annibal Caracci's. Yet he thinks the Elgin Marbles likely to raise the morals of the country to a high pitch of refinement. Good. The fellow is a hypocrite too. The writer of the ' Catalogue Raisonne ' has fallen foul of two things which ought to be sacred to Artists and lovers of Art — Genius and Fame. If they are not sacred to them, we do not know to whom they will be sacred. A work such as the present shows that the person who could write it must either have no knowledge or taste for art, or must be actuated by a feeling of the basest and most unaccountable malignity towards it. It shows that any body of men by whom it could be set on foot or encouraged are not an Academy of Art. It shows that a country in which such a publication could make its appearance, is not the country of the Fine Arts. Does the writer think to prove the genius of his countrymen for art by proclaiming their utter insensibility and flagitious contempt for all beauty and excellence in the art, except in their own works 1 No ; it is very true that the English are a shop-keeping nation ; and the ' Catalogue Ptaisonne ' is the proof of it. Finally, the works of the moderns are not, like those of the Old Masters, a second nature. Art, true likeness of nature, " balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast," of what would our Catalogue- mongers deprive us in depriving us of thee and of thy glories, and of the lasting works of the great Painters, and of their names no less magnificent, grateful to our hearts as the sound of celestial harmony from other splieres, walking around us (whether heard or not) from youth to age, the stay, the guide, and anchor of our purest thoughts ; whom, having once seen, we always remember, and who teach us to see all things through them; without whom life would Catalogue Raisonne of the British Institution. 69 be to begin again, and tlie eartli barren ; of Raffaelle, who lifted the human form half way to heaven ; of Titian, who painted the mind in the face, and unfolded the soul of things to the eye ; of Rubens, around whose pencil gorgeous shapes thronged numberless, startling us by the novel accidents of form and colour, putting the spirit of motion into the universe, and weaving a gay fantastic round and Baccha- nalian dance with nature ; of thee, too, Rembrandt, who didst redeem one half of nature from obloquy, from the nickname in the Catalogue, " smoothing the raven down of darkness till it smiled," and tinging it with light-like streaks of burnished ore ; of these, and more of whom the world is scarco worthy ; and what would they give us in return ] A Bartlemy Fair Puppet Show, ]\Irs Salmon's Royal Wax- work, or the Exhibition of the Royal Academy ! ( 70 ) WESTS PICTURE OF DEATH ON THE PALE HORSE.* Mr West's name stands deservedly high in the annals of art in this country — too high for him to condescend to be his own puffer, even at second-hand. He comes forward, in the present instance, as the painter and the showman of the piece ; as the candidate for public applause, and the judge who awards himself the prize ; as the idol on the altar and the priest who offers uj) the grateful incense of praise. He places himself, as it were, before his own performance, with a Catalogue Raisonne in his hand, and, before the spectator can form a judgment on the work itself, dazzles him with an account of the prodigies of art which are there conceived and executed. This is not quite fair. It is a proceeding which, though " it sets on a quantity of barren spectators to admire, cannot but make the judicious grieve." Mr West, by thus taking to himself unlimited credit for "the high endeavour and the glad success," by proclaiming aloud that he has aimed at the highest sub- limities of his art, and as loudly, with a singular mixture of pomposity and phlegm, that he has fully accomjjlished all that his most ardent hopes had anticipated, — must, we should think, obtain a great deal of spurious, catchpenny reputation, and lose a great geal of that genuine tribute of approbation to which he is otherwise entitled, by turning the attention of the well-informed and unprejudiced part of the community from his real and undoubted merits to his groundless and exaggerated pretensions. Self-praise, it is said, is no praise ; but it is worse than this. It either * From the Edinlurgh Magazine, for December 1817. West's Picture of Death on the Pale Horse. 71 shows great weakness and vanity for an artist to talk (or to get another to talk) of his own work, which was pro- duced yesterday, and may be forgotten to-morrow, with the same lofty, emphatic, solemn tone, as if it were already stamped with the voice of ages, and had become sacred to the imagination of the beholder ; or else the doing so is a deliberate attempt to encroach on the right of private judgment and public opinion, which those who are not its dupes will resent accordingly, and endeavour to repel by acts of precaution or hostility. An unsuccessful eflort to extort admiration is sure to involve its own punishment. We should not have made these remarks if the " De- scription of the Picture of Death " had been a solitary in- stance of the kind ; but it is one of a series of descriptions of the same sort — it is a part of a system of self-adulation, which cannot be too much discouraged. Perhaps Mr West may say that the descriptive Catalogue is not his ; that he has nothing to do with its composition or absurdities. But it must be written with his consent and approbation ; and this is a sanction which it ought not to receive. We presume the artist would have it in his option to put a negative on any undue censure or flagrant abuse of his picture ; it must bo equally in his jiower, and it is equally incumbent upon him to reject, with dignified modesty, the gross and palpable flatteries which it contains, direct or by implication. The first notice wo received of this picture was by an advertisement in a morning paper (the editor of which is not apt to hazard extravagant opinions without a prompter), purporting that, '■ in consequence of the President's having devoted a year and a half to its completion, .umI of its having for its subject the Terrible .Sublime, it would place Great Britain in the same conspicuous relation to the rest of Europe in arts, that the l^attle of Waterloo had done in arms !" We shall not stay to decide between the battle and the picture ; but the writer follows up the same idea 72 West's Picture of Death on the Pale Horse. of the Terrible Sublime in the Catalogue, the first paragraph of which is conceived in the following terms : — " The general effect proposed to be excited by this picture is the terrible sublime, and its various modifications, until lost in the opposite extremes of pity and horror, a sentiment which painting has so seldom attempted to awaken, that a particular description of the subject will probably be acceptable to the public." " So shall my anticipation prevent your discovery." Mr AVest here, like Bayes in the 'Rehearsal,' insinuates the plot very profoundly. He has, it seems, opened a new walk in art with its alternate ramifications into the opposite regions of horror and pity, and kindly takes the reader by the hand, to show him how triumphantly he has arrived at the end of his journey. " In poetry," continues the writer, " the same effect is produced by a few abrupt and rapid gleams of descrij^tion, touching, as it were with fire the features and edges of a general mass of awful obscurity; but in painting, such in- distinctness would be a defect, and imply that the artist wanted the power to portray the conceptions of his fancy, Mr West was of opinion that to delineate a physical form, which in its moral impression would approximate to that of the visionary Death of Milton, it was necessary to endow it, if possible, with the appearance of superhuman strength and energy. He has, therefore, exerted the utmost force and perspicuity of his pencil on the central figure." This is " spoken with authority, and not as the scribes." Poetry, according to the definition here introduced of it, resembles a candle-light picture, which gives merely the rim and outlines of things in a vivid and dazzling, but con- fused and imperfect manner. We cannot tell whether this account will be considered as satisfactory ; but Mr West, or his commentator, should tread cautiously on this ground. He may otherwise commit himself, not only in a comparison with the epic poet, but Avith the inspired writer, who only West's Picture of Death on the Pale Horse. 73 uses words. It will hardly be contended, for instance, that the account of Death on the Pale Horse, in the book of Eevelations, never produced its due effect of the terrible sublime, till the deficiencies of the pen were supplied by the pencil. Neither do we see how the endowing a physical form with superhuman strength has any necessary connection with the moral impression of the visionary Death of Milton. There seems to be here some radical mistake in Mr West's theory. The moral attributes of death are powers and effects of an infinitely wide and general description, which no individual or physical form can possibly represent, but by courtesy of speech or by distant analogy. The moral impression of death is essentially visionary ; its reality is in the mind's eye. "Words are here the only things ; and things, physical forms, the mere mockeries of the under- standing. The less definite the conception, the less bodily, the more vast, unformed, and unsubstantial, the nearer does it approach to some resemblance of that omnipresent, lasting, universal, irresistible principle, which everywhere, and at some time or other, exerts its power over all things. Death is a mighty abstraction, like night, or space, or time. He is an ugly customer, who will not be invited to supper, or to sit for his picture. He is with us and about us, but we do not see him. He stalks on before us, and we do not mind liim ; he follows us behind, and we do not look back at him. We do not see him making faces at us in our lifetime ; we do not feel him tickling our bare ribs afterwards, nor look at him through the empty grating of our hollow eyes. Does Mr West really suppose that he has put the very image of death upon his canvas 1 that he has taken the fear of him out of our hearts; that lie has circumscribed his power with a pair of compasses j that he has measured the length f»f his arm with a two-foot rule; that lie has sus- pended the stroke of his dart with a stroke of his pencil ; that he has laid his hands on the universal jjrinciple of de- struction, and hemmed him in with lines and lineaments, 74 West's Picture of Death on the Pale Horse. and made a gazing-stock and a show of him, " under tlie patronage of the Prince Regent " (as that illustrious person has taken, and confined, and made a show of another enemy of the human race) — so that the work of decay and dissolution is no longer going on in nature ; that all we have heard or felt of death is but a fable compared with this distinct, living, and warranted likeness of himl Oh, no ! There is no power in the pencil actually to embody an abstraction, to impound the imagination, to circumvent the powers of the soul, which hold communion with the universe. The painter cannot make the general particular, the infinite and imaginary, defined and palpable, that which is only believed and dreaded, an object of sight. As Mr West appears to have wrong notions of the powers of his art, so he seems not to put in practice all that it is capable of. The only way in which the painter of genius can represent the force of moral truth, is by translating it into an artificial language of his own, — by substituting hieroglyphics for words, and presenting the closest and most striking affinities his fancy and observation can sug- gest between the general idea and the visible illustration of it. Here we think Mr West has failed. The artist has re- presented Death riding over his prostrate victims in all the rage of impotent despair. He is in a great splutter, and seems making a last effort to frighten his foes by an ex- plosion of red-hot thunder-bolts, and a pompous display of his allegorical paraphernalia. He has not the calm, still, majestic form of Death, killing by a look, — withering by a touch. His presence does not make the still air cold. His flesh is not stony or cadaverous, but is crusted over with a yellow glutinous paste, as if it had been baked in a pie. Milton makes Death " grin horrible a ghastly smile," with an evident allusion to the common Death's head ; but in the picture he seems grinning for a wager, with a full row of loose rotten teeth ; and his terrible form is covered with a long black drapery, which would cut a figure in an under- West's Picture of Death on the Pale Horse. 75 taker's shop, and wliich cuts a figure where it is (for it is finely painted), but which serves only as a disguise for the King of Terrors. We have no idea of such a swaggering and blustering Death as this of Mr West's. He has not invoked a ghastly spectre from the tomb, but has called up an old squalid ruflian from a night cellar, and crowned him "monarch of the universal world." The horse on which he rides is not " pale," but white. There is no gusto, no imagination in Mr West's colouring. As to his figure, the description gives an accurate idea of it enough. " His horse rushes forward with the universal wildness of a tempestuous element, breathing livid pestilence, and rearing and trampling with the vehemence of unbridled fury." The style of the figure corresponds to the style of the description. It is over-loaded and top-heavy. The chest of the animal is a great deal too long for the legs. The painter has made amends for this splashing figure of the Pale Horse, by those of the White and Red Horse. They are like a couple of rocking horses, and go as easy. Mr West's vicarious egotism obtrudes itself again oftensively in speaking of the Rider on the White Horse. " As he is supposed," says the Catalogue, " to represent the Gospel, it was requisite that he .should be invested with those ex- terior indications of purity, excellence, and dignity, which are associated in our muids with the name and ofiices of the Messiah. But it was not the Saviour healing and comforting the afl3icted, or the meek and lowly Jesus, bearing with resignation the scorn and hatred of the scofiing multitude, that was to be represented ; it was the King of Kings going forth, conquering and to conquer. He is therefore painted with a solemn countenance, expressive of a mind filled with the thoughts of a great enterprise ; and he advances on- ward in his sublime career with that serene majesty," itc, Now this is surely an unwarrantable assumption of public opinion in a matter of taste. Christ is not represented in this picture as he was in Mr West's two former pictures ; 76 West's Picture of Death on the Pale Horse. but in all three lie gives you to understand that he has re- flected the true countenance and divine character of the Messiah. Multum ahludit imago. The Christs in each picture have a dififerent character indeed, but they only present a va- riety of meanness and insipiditJ^ But the unwary spectator, who looks at the Catalogue to know what he is to think of the picture, and reads all these therefores of sublimity, serenity, purity, &c., considers them as so many infallible inferences and demonstrations of the painter's skill. Mr West has been tolerably successful in the delineation of the neutral character of the " Man on the Black Horse;'' but "the two wretched emaciated figures" of a man and woman before him, "absorbed in the feelings of their own particular misery," are not likely to excite any sympathy in the beholders. They exhibit the lowest stage of mental and physical imbecility, that could never by any possibility come to any good. In the domestic group in the fore- ground, "the painter has attempted to excite the strongest degree of pity which his subject admitted, and to contrast the surrounding objects with images of tenderness and beauty ;" and it is here that he has principally failed. The Dying Mother appears to have been in her lifetime a plaster- cast from the antique, stained with a little purple and yellow, to imitate the life. The "Lovely Infant" that is falling from her breast, is a hideous little creature, with glazed eyes and livid aspect, borrowed from the infant who is fal- ling out of his mother's lap over the bridge, in Hogarth's print of " Gin Lane." The Husband's features, who is placed in so pathetic an attitude, are cut out of the hardest wood, and of the deepest dye ; and the surviving Daughter, who is stated "to be sensible only to the loss she has sustained by the death of so kind a parent," is neither better nor worse than the figures we meet with in the elegant frontis- pieces to history books or family stories, intended as Christmas presents to good little boys and girls. The fore- shortening of the lower extremities, both of the Mother West's Picture of Death on the Pale Horse. 77 and Child, is wretcliedly defective, both in drawing and colourino;. In describing " the anarchy of the combats of men and beasts," Mr "West has attained that sort of excellence which always arises from a knowledge of the rules of composition. His lion, however, looks as if his face and velvet paws were covered with calf's skin, or leather gloves pulled carefully over them ; so little is the appearance of hair given ! The youth in his group, whom !Mr West celebrates for his muscular, manly courage, has a fine rustic look of health and strength about him ; but we think the other figure, with scowling, swarthy face, striking at an animal, is supe- rior in force of character and expression. In the back figure of the man holding his hand to his head (with no very dignified action), the artist has well imitated the bad colour- ing, and stiff, inanimate drawing of Poussin, The remaining figures are not of much importance, or are striking only from their defects. Mr West, however, omits no opportunity of discreetly sounding his own praise. "The story of this group," it is said, " would have been incomplete, had the lions not been shown conquerors to a certain extent, by the two wounded men," &c. As it is, it is perfect ! Admirable critic ! Again we are told, "The pyramidal form of this large division is perfected by a furious bull," etc. Nay, indeed, the form of the pyramid is oven preserved in the title-page of the Catalogue. The prettiest incident in the picture, Ls the dove lamenting over its mate, just killed by the serpent. We do not deny Mr West the praise of in- vention. Upon the whole, we think this the best coloured and most picturesque of all Mr West's productions ; and in all that relates to composition, and the introduction of the ad- juncts of historical design, it show.s, like his other works, the hand of a master. In the same room is the picture of 'Christ Ilcjected.' Alas! how changed, and in how sliort a time ! The colours arc scarcely dry, and it already looks dingj', flat, and faded. ( 78 ) ON FARINGTON'S LIFE OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.* This, witli regard to its main object, must certainly be regarded as a superfluous publication. Forty years after the death of Sir Joshua, Mr Farington has found himself called upon to put forth a thin octavo volume, to revive the recollection of the dispute between their late President and the Academy, and to correct an error into which Mr Malone had fallen, in supposing that Sir Joshua was not entirely to blame in that business. This is a remarkable instance of the tenaciousness of corporate bodies with respect to the immaculate purity of their conduct. It was at first suggested that printed notes might be sufficient, with references to the pages of Mr Malone's account : but it was finally judged best to give it as a connected narra- tive — that the vindication of the Academy might slip in only as a parenthesis or an episode. So we have a full account of Sir Joshua's birth and parentage, godfathers and godmothers, with as many repetitions beside as were necessary to give a colouring to Mr Farington's ultimate object. The manner in which the plot of the publication is insinuated, is curious and characteristic : but our busi- ness at present is with certain more general matters, on which we have some observations to offer. *' In the present instance," says Mr F., '* we see how a character, formed by early habits of consideration, self- government, and persevering industry, acquired the highest fam.e ; and made his path through life a course of unruffled moral enjoyment. Sir Joshua Reynolds, when young, wrote ruels of conduct for himself. One of his maxims * Fom the Edinburgh Review for August, 1820. Faringtons Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 79 •was, ' that the great principle of being happy in this world, is not to mind or be affected with small things.' To this rule he strictly adhered ; and the constant habit of controlling his mind contributed greatly to that even- ness of temper which enabled him to live pleasantly with persons of all descriptions. Placability of temper may be said to have been his characteristic. The happiness of possessing such a disposition was acknowledged by his friend Dr Johnson, who said, ' Reynolds was the most invulnerable man he had ever known.' " The life of this distinguished artist exhibits a useful lesson to all those who may devote themselves to the same pursuit. He was not of the class of such as have been held up, or who have esteemed themselves, to be heaven- born geniuses. He appeared to think little of such claims. It will be seen, in the account of his progress to the high situation he attained in his profession, that at no period was there in him any such fancied inspiration ; on the contrary, every youthful reader of the Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds may feel assured, that his ultimate success will be in proportion to the resolution with which he follows his example." This, we believe, is the current morality and philosophy of the present day ; and therefore it is of more consequence to observe, that it ai)pears to us to be a mere tissue of sophistry and folly. And first, .is to happiness depending on "not being affected witli small things," it seems plain enough, that a continued flow of pleasurable sensations cannot depend every moment on great objects. Children are supposed to have a fair share of enjoyment ; and yet this arises chiefly from their being delighted with trifles — " pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw." Tiie reason why we so .seldom carry on tlio happy vivacity of early youth into niaturcr age is, that we form to ourselves a higher standard of enjoyment than wo can realise ; and that our passions gradually fasten on certain favourite 80 Farington's Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. objects ■R-bicli, in proportion to their magnitude, are of rare occurrence, and for the most part out of our reach. The example, too, which suggested these general remarks, actually exposes their fallacy. Sir Joshua did not owe his happiness to his contempt of little things, but to his success in great ones — and it was by that actual success, far more than by the meritorious industry and exertion that contributed to it, that he was enabled to disregard little vexations. Was Richardson, for example, who, it is observed afterwards, " had merit in his profession, but not of a high order, though he thought so well on the subject of art, and had practised it so long," to feel an equal moral enjoyment in the want of equal success 1 Was the idea of that excellence, which he had so long laboured in vain to realise, to console him for the loss of that "highest fame,'' which is here represented as the invariable concomi- tant of persevering industry ; or was he to disregard his failure as a trifle 1 Was the consciousness that he had done his best, to stand him instead of that " unruffled moral enjoyment " which Sir Joshua owed in no small degree to the coronet-coaches that besieged his doors, to the great names that sat at his table, to the beauty that crowded his painting room, and reflected its loveliness back from the lucid mirror of his canvas ? These things do indeed put a man above minding little inconveniences, and " greatly contribute to that evenness of temper, which enables him to live pleasantly with persons of all de- scriptions." But was Hudson, Sir Joshua's master, who had grown old and rich in the cultivation of his art, and who found himself suddenly outdone and eclipsed by his pupil, to derive much unruffled enjoyment from this petty circumstance, or to comfort himself with one of those maxims which young Reynolds had written out for his conduct in life ? When Sir Joshua himself lost the use of one of his eyes, in the decline of his life, he became peevish, and did not long survive the practice of his Farincjton's Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 81 favourite art. Suppose the same loss to have happened to him in the meridian of his fame, we fear that all his con- sciousness of merit, and all his efforts of industry, would have been insufficient to suppy that unruffled felicity which we are here taught to refer exclusively to these high sources. The truth is, that these specious maxims, though they seem at first sight to minister to content, and to encourage meritorious exertion, lead in fact to a wrong estimate of human life, to unreasonable anticipations of success, and to bitter repinings and regrets at what, in any reverse of fortune, we think the injustice of society and the caprice of nature. We have a very remarkable instance of this process of mental sophistication, or the setting up a theory against experience, and then wondering that human nature does not answer to our theory, in what our author says on this very subject of Hudson, and his more fortunate scholar afterwards. " It might be thought that the talents of Reynolds, to which no degree of ignorance or imbecility in the art could be insensible, added to his extraordinary reputation, would have extinguished every feeling of jealousy or rivalship in the mind of his master Hudson ; but the malady was so deeply seated as to defy the usual remedies ap[>lied by time and reflection. Hud- son, when at the head of his art, admired and praised by all, had seen a youth rise up and anniliilate both his in- come and his fame ; and he never could divest his mind of the feelings of mortification caused by tlie loss he had su.stained." This Mr Faringtoii actually considers as something quite extraordinary and unreasonable ; and which might have been easily prevented by a diligent study of Sir Joshua's admirable aphorisms, again.st being afTccted by small things. Such is our Academician's ethical Bini[>licity and enviable ignorance of the world ! One would think that the name of Ilud.son, which occurs frequently in these pages, might have taught our f 82 Faringtous Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. learned author some little distrust of that other favourite maxim, tliat genius is the effect of education, encourage- ment, and practice, which is the basis of his whole moral and intellectual system, and is thus distinctly announced and enforced in a very elaborate passage. " With respect to his (Sir Joshua's) early indications of talent for tlie art he afterwards professed, it would be idle to dwell upon them as manifesting anything more than is common among boys of his age. As an amusement he probably preferred drawing to any other to which he was tempted. In the specimens which have been preserved, there is no sign of premature ingenuity ; his history is, in this respect, like what might be written of many other artists, perhaps of artists in general. Ilis attempts were applauded by kind and sanguine friends ; and this encour- ~aged him to persevere till it became a fixed desire in him ta make further proficiency, and continually to request that it might be his profession. It is said, that his pur- pose was determined by reading Richardson's " Treatise on Painting." Possibly it might have been so ; his thoughts having been previously occupied with the subject. Dr Johnson, in his Life of Cowley, writes as follows — " In the windows of his mother's apartment lay Spenser's "Faerie Queen,'' which he very early took delight to read, till by feeling the charms of verse, he became, as he re- lates, irrecoverably a poet. Such are the accidents which, sometimes remembered, and perhaps sometimes forgotten, produce that peculiar designation of mind, and propensity for some certain science or employment, which is com- monly called Genius. The true genius is a man of large general powers accidentally determined in some particular direction. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great painter of the present age, had the first fondness for his art excited by the perusal of Pachardson's " Treatise." In this definition of genius, Reynolds fully concurred with Dr Johnson ; and he was himself an instance in proof of its truth. Faringioiis Life of Sir Joshua RepioJds. 83 He had a sound natural capacity, and, by observation and long-continued labour, always discriminating with judg- ment, he obtained universal applause, and established his claim to be ranked amongst those to whom the highest praise is due ; for his productions exhibited perfect origin- ality. No artist ever consulted the works of eminent predecessors more than Sir Joshua Reynolds. He drew from every possible source something which might improve his practice ; and he resolved the whole of what he saw in nature and found in art, into a union which made his pictures a singular display of grace, truth, beauty, and richness." From the time that "Mr Locke exploded innate ideas in the commencement of the last century, there began to be a confused apprehension in some speculative heads, that there could be no innate faculties either ; and our half- metaphysicians have been floundering about in this notion ever since : as if, because there are no innate ideas, that is, no actual impressions existing in the mind without ob- jects, there could be no peculiar capacity to receive them from objects ; or as if there might not be as great a difference in the capacity itself as in the outward objects to be impressed upon it. We might as well deny at once, that there are organs or faculties to receive impres- sions, because there are no innate ideas, as deny that there is an inherent diflTerciicc in the organs or faculties to receive impressions of any particular kind. If the capacity exists (which it must do), there may, nay we should say there must, be a difTorcnce in it in different persons, and with respect to different things. To allege tliat there is such a difference, no more implies tlic doctrine of innate idea.s, than to .say, that the brain of a man is more fitted to discern external objects than a l^lock of marble, imports that tlierc arc innate idc.us in the brain, or in tho block of marble. The impression, it is true, does not exist in the sealing-wax till the seal lias been applied to it : 84 Faringiotis Life of Sir Joshua Bcynolds. but there was the previous capacity to receive the impres- sion ; and there may be, and most probably is, a greater degree of fitness in one piece of sealing-wax than in another. That the original capacity, the aptitude for certain impressions or pursuits, should be necessarily the same in different instances, with the diversity that we see in men's organs, faculties, and acquirements of various kinds, is a supposition not only gratuitous, but absurd. There is the capacity of animals, the capacity of idiots, and of half idiots and half madmen of various descrip- tions ; there is capacity, in short, of all sorts and degrees, from an oyster to a Newton : yet we are gravely told, that wherever there is a power of sensation, the genius must be the same, and would, with proper cultiva- tion, produce the same effects. " No," say the French materialists ; but in minds commonly well organised {communement hlc7i organises) the results will, in the same given circumstances, be the same." That is, in the same circumstances, and with the same average capacity, there will be the same average degree of genius or imbecility — which is just an identical proposition. To make any sense at all of the doctrine, that circum- stances are everything, and natural genius nothing, the result ought at least to correspond to the aggregate of impressions, determining the mind this way or that, like so many weights in a scale. But the advocates of this doctrine allow that the result is not by any means accord- ing to the known aggregate of impressions; but, on the contrary, that one of the most insignificant, or one not at all perceived, will turn the scale against the bias and ex- perience of a man's whole life. The reasoning is here lame again. These persons wish to get rid of occult causes, to refer everything to distinct principles and a visible origin ; and yet they say that they know not how it is that in spite of all visible circumstances, such a one Farlngtoiis Life of Sir Josliua Reynolds. 85 should be an incorrigible blockhead, and such another an extraordinary genius ; but that no doubt there was a secret influence exerted, a by-play in it, in which nature had no hand, but accident gave a nod, and in a lucky or unlucky minute fixed the destiny of both for life by some slight and transient impulse ! Now this is like the reasoning of the astrologers, who pretend that your whole history is to be traced to the constellation under which you were born ; and when you object that two men born at the same time have tlie most different character and fortune, they answer, that there was an imperceptible interval be- tween the moment of their births, that made the whole difference. But if this short interval, of which no one could be aware, made the whole difference, it also makes their whole science vain. Besides, the notion of an acci- dental impulse, a slight turn of the screws giving a total revulsion to the whole frame of the mind, is only intelli- gible on the supposition of an original or previous bias which falls in with tluxt impression, and catches at the long wished-for opportunity of disclosing itself : — like com- bustible matter meeting with the spark that kindles it into a flame. But it is little less than sheer nonsense to maintain, while outward impressions are said to be every- thing, and the mind alike indifferent to all, that one single unconscious impression shall decide upon a man's whole character, genius, and pursuits in life, — and all the rest thenceforward go for nothing. Again, we hear it said that the difference of understand- ing or character is not very apparent at first, — though this is not unifurndy true. I'ut neither is the difference between an oak or a briar very great in the seed or in the shoot ; yet will any one deny that the germ is there, or that the soil, culture, the sun and heat, alone [ roduce the difference 1 So circumstances arc necessary to the mind ; but the mind is necessary to circumstances. The ultimate success depends on the joint action of both. They were fools who believed 8G Fariiigtons Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. ill innate ideas, or talked of " heaven-born genius " without any means of developing it. They are greater, because more learned, fools, who assert that circumstances alone can create or develop genius, where none exists. We may distinguish a stature of the mind as well as of the body, — a mould, a form, to which it is predetermined irrevocably. It is true that exercise gives strength to the faculties both of mind and body ; but it is not true that it is the only source of strength in either case. Exercise will make a weak man strong, but it will make a strong man stronger. A dwarf will never be a match for a giant, train him ever so. And are there not dwarfs as well as giants in intellect ? Appearances are for it, and reason is not against it. There are, beyond all dispute, persons who have a talent for particular things, which, according to Dr Johnson's definition of genius, proceeds from " a greater general capacity accidentally determined to a particular direction." But this, instead of solving, doubles the miracle of genius; for it leaves entire all the former objections to inherent talent, and supposes that one man " of large general capa- city " is all sorts of genius at once. This is like admitting that one man may be naturally stronger than another — but denying that he can be naturally stronger in the legs or the arms only ; and deserting the ground of original equality, would drive the theorist to maintain that the inequality which exists must always be universal, and not particular, although all the instances we actually meet with are particular only. Now, surely we have no right to give any man credit for genius in more things than he has shown a particular genius in. In looking round us in the world, it is most certain that we find men of large general capacity and no jjarticular talent, and others with the most exquisite turn for some particular thing, and no general talent. Would Dr Johnson have made Reynolds, or Goldsmith Burke, by beginning early and continuing late? We should make strange havoc by this arbitrary Faringtons Life of Sir Joslaia Eeynolds. 87 transposition of genius and industry. Some persons cannot for their lives understand the first proposition in Euclid. Would they ever make great mathematicians ; or does this incapacity preclude them from ever excelling in any other art or mystery ? Swift was admitted by special grace to a bachelor's degree at Dublin College, which, however, did not prevent him from writing ' Gulliver's Travels ; ' and Claude Lorraine was turned away by his master from the trade of a pastry-cook, to which he was apprenticed, for sheer stupidity. People often fail most in what they set themselves most diligently about, and discover an unaccountable hiaclc at sometlun<' else without any effort or even consciousness that tliey possess it. One great proof and beauty of works of true genius is the ease, simplicity, and freedom from conscious eflfort which pervades them. Not only in different things is there this difference of skill and aptness displayed ; but in the same thing to which a man's attention is contin- ually directed, how narrow Is the sphere of human excel- lence, how distinct the line of pursuit which Nature has marked out even for tliose whom she has most favoured ! Thus in painting : Raffaclle excelled in drawing, Titian in colouring, llenibrandt in chiaroscuro. A small part of nature was revealed to each by a peculiar felicity of con- formation ; and they would have made sad work of it, if each had neglected his own advantages to go in search of those of others, on the principle that genius is a large general capacity, transferred by will or accident to some particular channel. It may be said that in all these cases it is habit, not nature, that produces the disqualification for different pursuits. ]jut if the bias given to the mind l)y a parti- cular study totally unfits it for others, is it not probable that there is something in the nature of those studies which requires a particular bias and structure of the faculties to excel in them from the very first ? If genius 88 Faringtons Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. were, as some pretend, the mere exercise of general power on a particular subject, without any difference of organs or subordinate faculties, a man would improve equally in everything, and grow wise at all points ; but if, besides mere general power, there is a constant exercise and sharpening of different organs and faculties required for any particular pursuit, then a natural susceptibility of those organs and faculties must greatly assist him in his progress. To argue otherwise is to shut one's eyes to the whole mass of inductive evidence, and to run headlong into a dogmatical theory, depending wholly on presump- tion and conjecture. We would sooner go the whole length of the absurdities of craniology, than get into this flatting machine of the original sameness and indiscri- minate tendency of men's faculties and dispositions. A painter, of all men, should not give iu to any such notion. Does he pretend to see differences in faces, and will he allow none in minds ? Or does he make the outline of the head the criterion of a corresponding difference of character, and yet reject all distinction in the original conformation of the soul ? Has he never been struck with family likenesses ? And is there not an inherent, inde- structible, and inalienable character to be found in the individuals of such families, answering to this physiogno- mical identity, even in remote branches, where there has been no communication when young, and where the situation, pursuits, education, and character of tlie indi- viduals have been totally opposite ? Again, do we not find persons with every external advantage without any intellectual superiority, and the greatest prodigies emerge from the greatest obscurity 1 What made Shakspeare 1 Not his education as a link boy or a deer stealer. Have there not been thousands of mathematicians, educated like Sir Isaac Newton, who have risen to the rank of senior wranglers, and never been heard of afterwards 1 Did not Hogarth live in the same age with Hay man 1 Who will Faringtons Life of Sir Joshua Beynolds. 89 believe that Highmore could, by any exaggeration of circumstances, have been transformed into Michael Angelo ; that Hudson was another Yandj'ck incognito; or that Reynolds would, as our author dreads, have learned to paijit like his master, if he had stayed to serve out his apprenticeship with him ? The thing was impossible. Hudson had every advantage, as far as Mr Farington's mechanical theory goes (for he was brought up under Eichardson), to enable him to break through the trammels of custom, and to raise the degenerate style of art in his day. Why did he not ? He had not original force of mind either to inspire him with the conception or to impel him to execute it. Why did Reynolds burst through the cloud that overhung the region of art, and shine out, like the glorious sun, upon his native land ? Because he had the genius to do it. It was nature working in him, and forcing its way through all impediments of ignorance and fashion, till it found its native element in undoubted excellence and wide-spread fame. His eye was formed to drink in light, and to absorb the splendid effects of shadowy obscurity ; and it gave out what it took in. He had a strong intrinsic perception of grace and expression ; and he could not be .satisfied with tlie stiff, formal, inani- mate models he saw before him. There are, indued, certain minds that seem formed as conductors to truth and beauty, as the hardest metals carry off the electric fluid, and round which all examples of excellence, whether in art or nature, play harmless and ineffectual. Reynolds was not one of these ; but the instant he saw gorgeous truth in natural objects or artificial models, his mind " darted contagious fire.'' It is said that he suri)assed his servile predecessors by a more diligent study and more careful imitation of nature. Rut how was he attracted to nature, but by the sympatliy of real taste and genius 1 He also copied the pf)rtrait3 of Gandy, an obscure but ex- cellent artist of his native county. A blockhead would 90 Faringtons Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. have copied Lis master, and despised Gandy ; but Gaudy's style of painting satisfied and stimulated Lis ambition, because he saw nature there. Hudson's made no impres- sion on Lim, because it presented nothing of tLe kind, WLy, then, did Reynolds perform what he did 1 From the force and bias of his genius. Why did he not do more 1 Because his natural bias did not urge him farther. As it is the property of genius to find its true level, so it cannot rise above it. He seized upon and naturalised the beauties of Rembrandt and Rubens, because they were connate to his own turn of mind. He did not at first in- stinctively admire, nor did he ever, with all his profes- sions, make any approach to the high qualities of Raffaelle or Michael Angelo, because there was an obvious incom- patibility between them. Sir Joshua did not, after all, found a school of his own in general art, because he had not strength of mind for it. But he introduced a better taste for art in this country, because he had great taste himself, and sufficient genius to transplant many of the excellences of others. Mr FarinQ;ton takes the trouble to vindicate Sir Joshua's title to be the author of his own Discourses, though this is a subject on which we have never entertained a doubt, and conceive, indeed, that a doubt never could have arisen, but from estimating the talents required for painting too low in the scale of intellect, as something mechanical and fortuitous, and from making literature something exclusive and paramount to all other pursuits. Johnson and Burke were equally unlikely to have had a principal or consider- able hand in the Discourses. They have none of the pomp, the vigour, or mannerism of the one, or the bold- ness, originality, or extravagance of the other. They have all the internal evidence of being Sir Joshua's. They are subdued, mild, unaffected, thoughtful, — containing sen- sible observations on which he laid too little stress, and vague theories which he was not able to master. There Faringtons Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 9 1 is the same character of mind in what he wrote, as of eye in what he painted. His style is gentle, flowing, and bland; there is an inefficient outline, with a mellow, felicitous, and delightful filling up. In both the taste predominates over the genius : the manner over the matter ! The real groundwork of Sir Joshua's Discourses is to be found iu Richardson's Essays. We proceed to Mr Farington's state of art in this country, a little more than half a century ago, which is no less accurate than it is deplorable : and it may lead us to form a better estimate of the merits of Sir Joshua in rescuing it from this lowest point of degradation, and per- haps assist our conjectures as to its future progress and its present state. It was the lot of Sir Joshua Reynolds to be destined to pursue the art of painting at a period, when the extra- ordinary effort he made came with all the force and effect of novelty. He appeared at a time when the art was at its lowest ebb. What might be called an English school had never been formed. All that Englishmen had done was to copy, and endeavour to imitate, the works of eminent men, who were drawn to England from other countries by encouragement, which there was no induce- ment to bestow upon the inferior efforts of the natives of this island. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Frederigo Zucchero, an Italian, was much employed in England, as had been Hans Holbein, a native of Basle, in a former reign. Charles the First gaA'e great employment to llubens and Vandyck. They were succeeded Ity Sir Peter Lely, a native of Soest in Westi)halia ; and Sir Godfrey Kneller came from Lubec to be, for a while, Lely's com- petitor; and after his deatli, he may be said to have had tiie whdle command of the art in Kiigland. He was suc- ceeded by Richardson, the first Hngii.sh painter that stood at the head of portrait painting in this c(mntry. llichard- son had merit in his profession, but not of a high order ; 92 Faringlons Life of Sir Joshua Bet/nolds. and it was remarkable, that a man who thought so well on the subject of art, and more especially who practised so long, should not have been able to do more than is mani- fested in his works. He died in 1745, aged 80. Jervas, the friend of Pope, was his competitor, but very inferior to him. Sir James Thornhill, also, was contemporary with Richardson, and painted portraits ; but his reputa- tion was founded upon his historical and allegorical com- positions. In St Paul's Cathedral, in the Hospital at Greenwich, and at Hampton Court, his principal works are to be seen. As Ptichardson in portraits, so Thornhill in history painting, was the first native of this island who stood pre-eminent in the line of art he pursued at the period of his practice. He died in 1732, aged 56. " Horace Walpole, in his * Anecdotes of Painting,' ob- serves, that ' at the accession of George the First the arts were sunk to the lowest state in Britain.' This was not strictly true. Mr AValpole, who published at a later time, should have dated the period of their utmost degradation to have been in the middle of the last century, when the names of Hudson and Hayraan were predominant. It is true Hogarth was then well known to the public; but he was less so as a painter than an engraver, though many of his pictures representing subjects of humour and cha- racter are excellent ; and Hayman, as a history painter, could not be compared with Sir James Thornhill. " Thomas Hudson was a native of Devonshire. His name will be preserved from his having been the artist to whom Sir Joshua Reynolds was committed for instruction. Hudson was the scholar of Richardson, and married his daughter ; and after the death of his father-in-law, suc- ceeded to the chief employment in portrait painting. He was in all respects much below his master in ability, but being esteemed the best artist of his time, commissions flowed in upon him, and his business, as it might truly be termed, was carried on like that of a manufactory. To Farington's Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 93 his ordinary heads draperies were added by painters who chiefly confined themselves to that line of practice. No time was lost by Hudson in the study of character, or in the search of variety in the position of his figures ; a few formal attitudes served as models for all his subjects ; and the display of arms and hands, being the more difficult parts, was managed with great economy, by all the con- trivances of concealment. " To this scene of imbecile performance Joshua Rey- nolds was sent by his friends. He arrived in London on the 14th of October 1741, and on the 18th of that month he was introduced to his future preceptor. He was then aged seventeen years and three months. The terms of the agreement were, that provided Hudson approved him, he was to remain four years ; but might be discharged at pleasure. He continued in this situation two years and a half, during which time he drew many heads upon paper ; and in his attempts in painting succeeded so well in a portrait of Hudson's cook as to excite his master's jealousy. In this temper of mind Hudson availed himself of a very trifling circumstance to dismiss him. He had one evening ordered Reynolds to take a picture to Van Haaken, the drapery painter, but as the weather proved wet, he post- poned carrying it till next morning. At breakfast Hudson demanded why he did not take the picture the evening before ? Reynolds replied, that ' he delayed it on account of the weather ; but that the picture was delivered that morninf' before Van Haakon rose from bed.' Hudson then said, ' You have not obeyed my orders, and shall not stay in my house.' On this peremptory declaration, Rey- nolds urged that he might be allowed time to write to his father, who might otherwise tliiiik lie had committed some great crime. Hudson, tlioiigh n'liroachcd by lii.s own servant for this unrca.sonablc and violent conduct, per- sisted in his determination ; accordingly, Reynolds went that day from Hudson's house to an uncle who resided hi 94 Faringtons Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. the Temple, and from thence wrote to Lis father who, after consulting his neighbour Lord Edgcumbe, directed him to come down to Devonshire. " Thus did our great artist commence his professional career. Two remarks may be made upon this event. First, by quitting Hudson at this early period, he avoided the danger of having his mind and his hand habituated to a mean practice of the art, which, when established, is most difficult to overcome. It has often been observed in the works of artists who thus began their practice, that, though they rose to marked distinction, there have been but few who could wholly divest themselves of the bad effects of a long-continued exercise of the eye and the hand in copying ordinary works. In Hudson's school this was fully manifested. Mortimer and Wright of Derby were his pupils. They were both men of superior talents ; but in portraits they never succeeded beyond what would be called mediocre performance. In this line their pro- ductions were tasteless and laboured ; fortunately, how- ever, they made choice of subjects more congenial with their minds. Mortimer, charmed with the wild spirit of Salvator Rosa, made the exploits of lawless banditti the chief subjects of his pencil, while Wright devoted himself to the stndy of objects viewed by artificial light, and to the beautiful effects of the moon upon landscape scenery ; yet even in these, though deserving of great praise, the effects of their early practice were but too apparent ; their pictures being uniformly executed with what artists call a heav)'' hand." This is a humiliating retrospect for the lovers of art, and of their country. In speculating upon its causes, we are half afraid to hint at the probable effects of climate, — so much is it now the fashion to decry what was once so much over-rated. Our theoretical opinions are directed far more frequently by a spirit of petulant contradiction than of fair inquiry. We detect errors in received systems, Faritujton's Life of Sir Joshua Eeynolds. 95 and then run into the contrary extreme to show how wise we are. Thus one folly is driven out by another ; and the history of philosophy is little more than an alternation of blind prejudices and shallow paradoxes. Thus climate was everything in the days of ^Montesquieu, and in our day it is nothing. Yet it was but one of many co-operating causes at first, and it continues to be one still. In all that relates to the senses, physical causes may be allowed to operate very materially, without much violence to ex- perience or probability. " Are the English a musical people ] " is a question that has been debated at great length, and in all the forms. But whether the Italians are a musical people is a question not to be asked, any more than whether they have a taste for the fine arts in general. Nor docs the subject ever admit of a question, where a faculty or genius for any particular thing exists in the most eminent degree : for then it is sure to show itself, and force its way to the light, in spite of all obstacles. That which no one ever denied to any people, we may be sure they actually possess : that which is as often denied as allowed them, we may be sure they do not possess in a very eminent degree. That to which we make the angriest claim, and dispute the most about, whatever else may be, is not our forte. The French are alluwcd by all the world to bo a dancing, talking, cooking people. If the Engli-sh were to set up the same preten- sions, it would be ridiculous. But then they say they have other excellences ; and having these, they would have the former too. They think it hard to be set down as a dull, plodding people; but is it not equally hard upon others to be called vain and light? Thoy tell us they are the wisest, the freest, and most moral people on the face of the earth, without the frivolous acconqilish- ments of their neighbours; but they insist ui)on having these too, to be upon a par in everything with the rest of the world. Wc hav6 our bards and sages (" better none") 96 Faring tons Life of Sir Joshua Ileynolds. our prose writers, our mathematicians, our inventors in useful and meclianic arts, our legislators, our patriots, our statesmen, and our fighting men, in the field and in tlie ring : — In these we challenge, and justly, all the world. We are not behind-hand with any people in all that depends on hard thinking and deep and firm feeling, on long heads and stout hearts. But why must we excel also in the reverse of these, — in what depends on lively preceptions, on quick sensibility, and on a voluptuous eflfeminacy of temperament and character 1 An English- man does not ordinarily pretend to combine his own gravity, plainness, and reserve, with the levity, loquacity, grimace, and artificial politeness (as it is called) of a Frenchman. Why, then, will he insist upon engrafting the fine upon the domestic arts, as an indispensable con- summation of the national character ? We may indeed cultivate them as an experiment in natural history, and produce specimens of them, and exhibit them as rarities in their kind, as we do hothouse plants and shrubs ; but they are not of native growth or origin. They do not spring up in the open air, but shrink from the averted eye of heaven, like a Laplander into his hut. They do not sit as graceful ornaments, but as excrescences, on the Eng- lish character ; they are " like flowers in our caps, dying or ere they sicken '' — they are exotics and aliens to the soil. We do not import foreigners to dig our canals, or construct our machines, or solve difficult jDroblems in political economy, or write Scotch novels for us, — but we import our dancing masters, our milliners, our Opera our singers, our valets, and our travelling cooks, — as till lately we did our painters and sculptors. The English (we take it) are a nation with certain decided features and predominating traits of character ; and if they have any characteristics at all, this is one of them, that their feelings are internal rather than external, reflex rather than organic, — and that they are more in- Faringtons Life of Sir Joslaia Reynolds. 07 clined to contend ■with pain than to indulge in pleasure " The stern genius of the North," says Schlegel, " throws men back upon themselves." — The progress of the Fine Arts has hitherto been slow, and wavering, and unpro- mising in this country, "like the forced pace of a shuffling nag," not like the flight of Pegasus ; and their encourage- ment has been cold and backward in proportion. They have been wooed and won, — as far as they have been won, which is no further tlian to a mere promise of marriage — "with coy, reluctant, amorous delay." They have not rushed into our embraces, nor been mingled in our daily pastimes and pursuits. It is two hundred and fifty years since this island was civilized to all other intellectual pur- poses ; but, till within half a century, it was a desert and a waste in art. Were there no terrce filii in those days ; no brood of giants to spring out of the ground, aad launch the mighty fragments of genius from their hands ; to beautify and enrich the public mind ; to hang up the lights of the eye and of the soul in pictured halls, in airy porticoes, and solemn temples ; to illumine the land, and weave a garland for their own heads, like the "crown which Ariadne wore upon her bridal-day," and which still shines brighter in heaven 1 There were ; but " their affec- tions did not that way tend." They were of the tribe of Issachar, and not of Judah. There were two sisters, Poetry and Painting ; one was taken, and the other was left. Were our ancestors in.sensiblc to the cliarms of nature, to the music of thought, to deeds of virtue or heroic cntcr- ])ri3e 1 No. But they saw them in their mind's eye; they felt them at their heart's core, and there only. They did not translate tlicir perrc])ti(inH into the language of sense ; tlioy did not embody then) in visible images, but in brcatliing words. They were more taken up with wliat an object suggested to combine with the infinite stores of fancy or trains of feeling, than with the single object a 98 Farmgtons Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. itself ; more intent upon the moral inference, the tendency and the result than the appearance of things, however imposing or expressive, at any given moment of time. If their first impressions were leas vivid and complete, their after-reflections were combined in a greater variety of striking resemblances, and thus drew a dazzling veil over their merely sensitive impressions, which deadened and neutralized them still more. Will it be denied that there is a wide difference, as to the actual result, between the mind of a Poet and a Painter ? Why, then, should not this difference be inherent and original, as it undoubtedly is in individuals, and, to all appearance, in nations ? Or why should we be uneasy, because the same country does not teem with all varieties, and with each extreme of ex- cellence and genius 1* In this importunate theory of ours we misconstrue nature, and tax Providence amiss. In that short but delightful season of the year, and in that part of the country where we now write, there are wild woods and banks covered with primroses and hyacinths for miles together, so that you cannot put your foot between, and with a gaudy show " empurpling all the ground," and branches loaded with nightingales whose leaves tremble with their liquid notes ; yet the air does not resound, as in happier climes, with shepherd's pipe or roundelay, nor are the village maids adorned with wreaths of vernal flowers, ready to weave the braided dance, or " returning with a choral song, when evening has gone down." What is the reason ? " We also are not Arcadians !" We have * "VVe are aware that time conquers even nature, and that the cha- racters of nations change with a total change of circumstances. The modern Italians are a very different race of people from the ancient Komans. This gives us some cliance. In tlie decomposition and de- generacy of the sturdy old English character, wliich seems fast approaching, the mind and muscles of the country may be suflSciently relaxed and softened to imbibe a taste for all the refinements of luxury and show ; and a century of slavery may yield us a croi) of the line arts, to be soon buried in sloth and barbarism again. Farinrjtons Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 99 not the same animal vivacity, the same tendency to ex- ternal delight and show, the same ear for melting sounds, the same pride of the eye or voluptuousness of the heart. The senses and the mind are differently constituted ; and the outward influences of things : climate, mode of life, national customs and character, have all a share in pro- ducing the general effect. We should say that the eye in warmer climates drinks in greater pleasure from external sights, is more open and porous to tliem, as the ear is to sounds ; that the sense of immediate delight is fixed deeper in the beauty of the object ; that the greater life and ani- mation of character gives a greater spirit and intensity of expression to the face, making finer subjects for liistory and portrait ; and that the circumstances, in which a people are placed in a genial atmosphere, are more favourable to the study of nature and of the human form. Claude could only have painted his landscapes in the open air ; and the Greek statues were little more than copies from living, every-day forms. Such a natural aptitude and relish for the impressions of sense gives not only more facility, but leads to greater patience, refinement, and perfection iu tlie execution of works of art. What our own artists do is often up-hill work, against the grain ; — not persisted in and brought to a conclusion for the love of the thing ; but, after the first dash, after the subject is got in, and tlie gross general efTect produced, they grudge all the rest of their labour as a waste of time and pains. Their object is not to look at nature but to have their picture exhibited and sold. The want of intimate symjiathy with, and entire repose on, nature not only leaves their productions hard, violent, and crude, but frequently renders them impatient, wavering, and dissatisfied with their own walk of art, and never easy till they get into a dilTerent or higher one, where they think they can earn more money or fame with less trouble. By beginning over again, by having the same preliminary 100 Faringtons Life of Sir Joshua Reijnolds. ground to go over, with new subjects or bungling experi- ments, they seldom arrive at that nice, nervous point that trembles on perfection. This last stage, in which art is, as it were, identified with nature, an English painter shrinks from with strange repugnance and peculiar abhorrence. The French style is the reverse of ours ; it is all dry finishing without effect. "We see their faults, and, as we conceive, their general incapacity for art ; but we cannot be persuaded to see our own. The want of encouragement, which is sometimes set up as an all-sufficient plea, will hardly account for this slow and irregular progress of English art. There was no premium offered for the production of dramatic excellence in the age of Elizabeth ; there was no society for the encouragement of works of wit and humour in the reign of Charles II. ; no committee of taste ever voted Congreve, or Steele, or Swift, a silver vase or a gold medal for their comic vein ; Hogarth was not fostered in the annual exhibitions of the Koyal Academy. In plain truth that is not the way in which that sort of harvest is produced. The seeds must be sown in the mind ; there is a fulness of the blood, a plethoric habit of thought, that breaks out with the first opportunity on the surface of society. Poetry has sprung up indigenously, spontaneously, at all times of our history and under all circumstances, with or without encouragement ; it is therefore a rich natural product of the mind of the country, unforced, unpampered, unso- phisticated. It is obviously and entirely genuine, " the nnbought grace of life." If it be asked, why Painting has all this time kept back, has not dared to show its face, or retired ashamed of its poverty and deformity, the answer is plain — because it did not shoot out with equal vigour and luxuriance from the soil of English genius — because it was not the native language and idiom of the country. Why, then, are we bound to suppose that it will'shoot up now to an unequalled height — why are we confidently told Farbujtons Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 101 and required to predict to others that it is about to pro- duce wonders, when we see no such thing ; when these very persons tell us that there has been hitherto no such thing, but that it must and shall be revealed in their time and persons? And though they complain that that public patronage which they invoke, and which they pretend is alone wanting to produce the high and palmy state of art to which they would have us look forward, is entirely and scandalously withheld from it, and likely to be so ! We turn from this subject to another not less melan- choly or singular, — from the imperfect and abortive at- tempts at art in this country formerly to its present state of degeneracy and decay in Italy. Speaking of Sir Joshua's arrival at Rome in the year 1749, Mr Farington indulges in the following remarks : — " On his arrival at Eome, he found Pompeo Battoni, a native of Lucca, possessing the highest reputation. His name was, indeed, known in every part of Europe, and was everywhere spoken of as almost another Raftaelle ; but in that great school of art such was the admiration he excited, or rather such was the degradation of taste, that the students in painting had no higher ambition than to be his imitators, " Battoni had some talent, but his works are dry, cold, and insipid. That such performances should have been so extolled in the very scat and centre of the fine arts, seems wondorfuL But in this manner has public taste been operated upon ; and from the period, when art was carried to the highest point of excellence known in modern times, it lias thus gradually declined. A succession of artists followed each other who, being esteemed the most eminent in their own time, were prai.sed extravagantly by an ignorant public ; and in tlie several .schools they estab- lished their own productions were the only objects of study. "So widely .'Spread was the fame of Battnni, that, before 102 Farlncjtons Life of Sir Joshua Beynolds. "Reynolds left England, his patron, Lord Edgcnmbe, strongly urged the expediency of placing himself under tlie tuition of so great a man. This recommendation, however, on seeing the works of that master, he did not choose to follow, which showed that he was then above the level of those whose professional views all concentrated in the productions of the popular favourite. Indeed nothing could be more opposite to the spirited execution, the high relish of colour, and powerful effect, which the Avorks of Reynolds at that time possessed, than the tame and inanimate pictures of Pompeo Battoni. Taking a wiser course, therefore, he formed his OAvn plan, and studied chiefly in the Vatican, from the works of Jylichael Angelo, Eaffaclle, and Andrea del Sarto, with great dili- gence ; such indeed was his application, that to a severe cold, wliicli he caught in those apartments, he owed the deafness which continued during the remainder of his life." This account may serve to show that Italy is no longer Italy ; why it is so, is a question of greater diffi- culty. The soil, the climate, the religion, the people are the same ; and the men and women in the streets of Rome still look as if they had walked out of Raffaelle's pictures ; but there is no Raffaelle to paint them, nor does any Leo arise to encourage them. This seems to prove that the perfection of art is the destruction of art ; that the models of this kind, by their accumulation, block up the path of genius ; and that all attempts at distinction lead, after a certain period, to a mere lifeless copy of what has been done before, or a vapid, distorted, and extravagant caricature of it. This is but a poor prospect for those who set out late in art, and who have all the excellence of their predecessors, and all the fastidious refinements of their own taste, the temptations of in- dolence, and the despair of vanity, to distract and encum- ber their efforts. The artists, who revel in the luxuries of Faringtons Life of Sir Joshua Beynolds. 103 genius thus prepared by their predecessors, clog their wings with the honeyed sweets, and get drunk with the intoxicating nectar. They become servitors and lacqueys to Art, not devoted servants of Nature • — the fluttering, foppish, lazy, retinue of some great name. The contem- plation of unattainable excellence casts a film over their eyes, and unnerves their hands. They look on, and do nothing. In Italy it costs them a month to paint a hand, a year an eye ; the feeble pencil drops from their grasp, while they wonder to see an Englishman make a hasty copy of the Transfiguration, turn over a portfolio of Piranesi's drawings for their next historical design, and read Winckelraan on virtu 1 We do much the same here, in all our collections and exhibitions of modern or ancient paintings, and of the Elgin marbles, to boot. A picture gallery serves very well for a place to lounge in, and talk about, but it does not make the student go home and set heartily to work ; he would rather come again and lounge and talk the next day, and the day after that. He can- not do all that he sees there, and less will not satisfy his expansive and refined ambition. lie would be all the painters that ever were — or none. His indolence com- bines with his vanity, like alternate doses of provocatives and sleeping-draughts. He copies, however, a favourite picture (though he thinks copying bad in general) — or makes a chalk-drawing of it — or gets some one else to do it for him. We might go on ; but we have written what many people will call a lampoon already ! There is another view of the subject more favourable and encouraging to ourselves, and yet not immeasurably .so, when all circumstances are considered. All that was possible had been formerly done for art in Italy, so that nothing more was left to be done. That is not the case with 113 yet. Perfection is not the insurmountable obstacle to our success ; we have enough to do, if wc knew how. That is some inducement to proceed. AVc can hardly be 104 Farimjtons Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. retrograde in our course. But there is a difficulty in the way, — no less than our Establishment in Church and State. Rome was the capital of the Christian and of the civilized world. Her mitre swayed the sceptres of the earth, and the Servant of Servants set his foot on the neck of kings, and deposed sovereigns with the signet of the Fisherman. She was the eye of the world, and her word was a law. She set herself up, and said, " All eyes shall see me, and all knees shall bow to me." She ruled in the hearts of the people by dazzling their senses, and making then^ drunk with hopes and fears. She held in her hands the keys of the other world to open or shut ; and she displayed all the pomp, the trappings, and the pride of this. Hom- age was paid to the persons of her ministers ; her worship was adorned and made alluring by every appeal to the passions and imaginations of its followers. Art was ren- dered tributary to the support of this grand engine of power, and Painting was employed, as soon as its fascina- tion was felt, to aid the devotion and rivet the faith of the Catholic believer. Thus religion was made subser- vient to interest, and art was called in to aid in the service of this ambitious religion. The patron-saint of every church stood at the head of his altar ; the meekness of love, the innocence of childhood, '' amazing brightness, purity, and truth," breathed from innumerable representa- tions of the Virgin and Child ; and the Vatican was covered with the acts and processions of Popes and Cardinals, of Christ and the Apostles. The churches were filled with these objects of art and of devotion; the very walls spoke. "A present deity they shout around; a present deity the walls and vaulted roofs rebound." This unavoidably put in requisition all the strength of genius and all the re- .sources of enthusiastic feeling in the country. The spec- tator sympathized with the artist's inspiration. No eleva- tion of thought, no refinement of expression, could outgo the expectation of the thronging votaries. The fancy of Farwgtons Life of Sir Joshua Beynolds. 105 the painter was but a sj)ark kindled from tlie glow of public sentiment. This was a sort of patronage worth having. The zeal, and enthusiasm, and industry of native genius was stimulated to works worthy of such encourage- ment, and in unison with its own feelings. But by degrees the tide ebbed ; the current was dried up, or became stagnant. The churches were all sup2>lied with altar- pieces ; the niches were full, not only with scriptural subjects, but with the stories of every saint enrolled in the calendar, or registered in legendary lore. No more pictures were wanted — and then it was found that there were no more painters to do them ! The art languished, and gradually disappeared. They could not take down the Madonna of Foligno, or new-stucco the ceiling at Parma, that other artists might undo what Raffaelle and Coi-- reggio had done. Some of them, to be sure, did follow this desperate course, and S2>ent their time, as in the case of Leonardo's Last Supper at Milan, in painting over — that is, in defacing the works of their predecessors. After- wards, they applied themselves to landscape and classical subjects with great success for a time, as we see in Claude and N. Poussin, but the original state impulse was gone. What confirms the foregoing account is, that at Venice and other places out of the more immediate superin- tendence of the Papal See, though there also sacred sub- jects were in great request, yet the art being patronized by rich merchants and nobles, took a more decided turn to portraits; — magnificent indeed, and hitherto unrivalled, for the beauty of the costume, the character of the faces, and the marked pretensions of the i)ersons who sat for them, — but still widely remote frfim that public andnational interest that it assumed in the Human school. We see, in like manner, that i)ainting in Holland and Flanders took yet a different direction ; was mostly .scenic and ornamental, or confined to local and personal subjects. Kubcns's pictures, for example, differ from Hanaelle's by i\ 106 Faringtons Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. total want of relicdous enthusiasm and studied refinement of expression, even where the subjects are the same ; and Rembrandt's portraits differ from Titian's in the grossness, and want of animation and dignity, of his characters. There was an inherent difference in the look of a Doge of Venice or one of the Medici family, and that of a Dutch burgomaster. The climate had affected the picture through the character of the sitter, as it affected the genius of the artist (if not otherwise) through the class of subjects he was constantly called upon to paint. What turn painting has lately taken, or is likely to take with us, now remains to be seen. "With the Memoirs of Sir Joshua Mr Farington very properly connects the history of the institution of the rioyal Academy, from which he dates the hopes and origin of all sound art in this country. There is here at first sight an inversion of the usual order of things. The institution of academies in most countries has been coeval with the decline of art ; in ours, it seems, it is the har- binger and main prop of its success. Mr Farington thus traces the outline of this part of his subject with the enthusiasm of an artist and the fidelity of a historian. " At this period (17G0), apian was formed by the artists of the metropolis to draw the attention of their fellow- citizens to their ingenious labours, with a view both to an increase of patronage and the cultivation of taste. Hitherto works of that kind produced in the country were seen only by a few ; the people in general knew nothing of what was passing in the arts. Private collections were then inaccessible, and there were no public ones ; nor any casual display of the productions of genius, except what the ordinary sales by auction occasionally offered. No- thing, therefore, could exceed the ignorance of a people who were iu themselves learned, ingenious, and higlily cultivated in all things, excepting the arts of design. '• In consequence of this privation, it was conceived Faringion's Life of Sh' Joshua Eeynolds. 107 that a Public Exhibition of tlie works of tlie most eminent Artists could not fail to make a powerful impression ; and if occasionally repeated, might ultimately produce the most satisfactory effects. The scheme was no sooner proposed ' than adopted ; and being carried into immediate execu- tion, the result exceeded the most sanguine expectations of the projectors. All ranks of people crowded to see the delightful novelty ; it was the universal topic of con- versation ; and a passion for the arts was excited by that first manifestation of native talent wliich, clierished by the continued operation of the same cause, has ever since been increasing in strength, and extending its effects through every part of the empire. " The history of our Exhibitions affords itself the strongest evidence of their impressive effect upon public taste. At their commencement, though men of enlightened minds could distinguish and appreciate what was excellent, the admiration of the many was confined to subjects either gross or puerile, and commonly to the meanest efforts of intellect; whereas, at this time, the whole train of subjects most popular in the earlier cxliibitions have dis- appeared. The loaf and cheese, tliat could provoke hun- ger, the cat and canary bird, and the dead mackerel on a deal board, have long ceased to produce astonishment and delight ; while truth of imitation now finds in- numeraV^le admirers, though combined witli the high qualities of beauty, grandeur, and taste. " To our Public Exhibitions, and to arrangements that followed in consequence of their introduction, this change must be chiefly attributed. The present generation appears to be composed of a new and, at least with respect to the arts, a superior order of beings, (icnerally speaking, their thoughts, their feeling.s, and language on these subjects differ entirely from what they were sixty years ago. No just opinions were at that time entertained on the merits of ingenious productions f»f this kind. The .state of the 108 Far wg tons Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. public iiiind, incapable of discriiuinating excellence from inferiority, proves incoutrovertibly that a right sense of art in the spectator can only be acquired by long and fre- quent observation ; and that, without proper oppor- tunities to improve the mind and the eye, a nation would continue insensible of the true value of the fine arts. "The first, or probationary, Exhibition which opened April 21st, 1760, was at a large room in the Strand, belonging to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, which had then been instituted five or six years. It is natural to conclude that the first artist in the country was not indifferent to the success of a plan which promised to be so ex- tensively useful. Accordingly, four of his pictures were for the first time here placed before the public, with whom, by the channel now opened, he continued in constant intercourse as long as he lived. " Encouraged by the successful issue of the first experi- ment, the artistical body determined that it should be repeated the following year. Owing, however, to some in- conveniences experienced at their former place of exhi- bition, and also to a desire to be perfectly independent in their proceedings, they engaged, for their next public display, a spacious room near the Spring Gardens' entrance into the Park ; at which place the second Exhibition opened. May 9th, 17G1. Here Reynolds sent his fine picture of Lord Ligonier on horseback, a por- trait of the Rev. Laurence Sterne, and three others. . . . " The artists had now fully proved the efficacy of their plan ; and their income exceeding their expenditure, affording a reasonable hope of a permanent establishment, they thought they might solicit a Royal Charter of Incor- poration ; and having applied to his Majesty for that pur- po.se, he was pleased to accede to their request. This measure, however, which was intended to consolidate the Far'ingtons Life of Sir Joshua licynolds. 109 body of artists, was of no avail ; on the contrary, it was probably the cause of its dissolution ; for in less than four years a separation took place, which led to the establish- ment of the Royal Academy, and finally to the extinction of the incorporated Society. The charter was dated January 26th, 17G5 ; the secession took place in October, 17G8 ; and the Royal Academy was instituted December 10th in the same year." On this statement we must be allowed to make a few remarks. First, the four greatest names in English art, Hogarth, Reynolds, Wilson,* and West, were not formed by the Academy, but were formed before it ; and the first gave it as his opinion that it w^ould be a death-blow to the art. He considered an Academy as a school for ser- vile mediocrity, a hotbed for cabal and dirty competition, and a vehicle for the display of idle j^retensions and empty parade. Secondly, we agree with the writer as to the deplorable state of the art, and of the public taste in general, which, at the period in question, {17G0) was as gross as it was insipid ; but we do not think that it has been improved so much since, as Mr Farington is willing to suppose ; nor that the Academy has taken more than lialf measures for improving or refining it. " They found it poor at first, and kept it so. " They have attended to their own interests, and flattered tlieir customers, while they have neglected or cajoled the I)ublic. They may indeed look back with triumph and pity to " tlie cat and canary bird, the dead mackerel and deal board ; " but they seem to rest satisfied wiLli this con- quest over themselves, and, " leaving the things that are behind, have not pressed forward (with equal ardour) to the things that arc before." Tlieirs is a very moderate, not a radical, reform in this respect. Wo do not find, even in • Tliia name, for Homo reason or other, does not once occur in these Mcmoira. llO Farlncjtons Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. the latest cxliibitions at Somerset House, " innumerable examples of truth of imitation, combined with the high qualities of beauty, grandeur, and taste. " The mass of the pictures exhibited there are not calculated to give the English people a true notion, not merely of high art (as it is emphatically called), but of the genuine objects of art at all. "We do not believe — to take a plain test of the progress we have made — that nine-tenths of the persons who go there annually, and who go through the Catalogue regularly, would know a Guido from a daub — the finest picture from one not badly executed perhaps, but done in the worst taste, and on the falsest principles. The vast majority of the pictures received there, and hung up in the most conspicuous places, are pictures painted to please the natural vanity or fantastic ignorance of the artist's sitters, their friends and relations, and to lead to more commissions for half and whole lengths — or else pictures painted purposely to be seen in the Exhibition, to strike across the Great Room, to catch attention, and force admiration, in the distraction and dissipation of a thousand foolish faces and new gUt frames, by gaudy colouring and meretricious grace. We appeal to any man of judgment, whether this is not a brief, but true summary, of " the annual show " at the Royal Academy 1 And is this the way to advance tlie interests of art, or to fashion the public taste? There is not one head in ten painted as a study from nature, or with a view to bring out the real qualities of the mind or countenance. If there is any such improvident example of unfashionable sincerity, it is put out of countenance by the prevailing tone of rouged and smiling folly and affectation all around it. The only pictures painted in any quantity as studies from nature, free from the glosses of sordid art and the tincture of vanity, are portraits of j^laces ; and it cannot be denied that there are many of these that have a true and powerful look of nature. But then, as if this was a matter of great indifference, and nobody's business to see to, they Farington's Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Ill are seldom anything more than bare sketches, hastily got up for the chance of a purchaser, and left unfinished to save time and trouble. They are not, in general, lofty concep- tions or selections of beautiful scenery, but mere common out-of-door views, relying for their value on their literal fidelity ; and where, consequently, the exact truth and perfect identity of the imitation is the more indispensable. Our countryman, Wilkie, in scenes of domestic and familiar life, is equally deserving of praise for the arrangement of his subjects, and care in the execution ; but we have to lament that he too is in some degree chargeable with that fickle- ness and desultoriness in the pursuit of excellence, which we have noticed above as incident to our native artists, and which, we think, has kept him stationary, instead of being progressive, for some years past. He appeared at one time as if he was near touching the point of perfection in his peculiar department ; and he may do it yet ! But how small a part do his works form of the Exhibition, and how unlike all the rest ! It was the panic-fear that all this daubing and varnishing would be seen through, and the scales fall off from the eyes of the public, in consequence of the exhibition of some of the finest specimens of the Old blasters at the British Insti- tution, that called into clandestine notoriety that disgrace- ful production, the Catalofjue liaisunnc. The concealed authors of that work conceived that a discerning public would learn more of the art from the simplicity, dignity^ force, and truth of these admired and lasting models in a short .season or two, than they Jiad done from the Exhibitions of the Royal Academy for the last fifty years ; tliat they wcjuld .sec that it did not consist entirely in tints and varnishes, and megilps and wa.shes for the skin, but tliat all the effects of colours and charms of cvprcssion miglit be united with purity of tone, with articulate forms and exquisite finishing. They saw thi.s conviction rajiidly taking place in the public mind, and they shrank back 112 Farincjtons Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. from it " with jcalmis leer malign. " They pcrsnaded themselves, and had the courage to try to persuade others, that to exhibit approved specimens of art in general, selected from the works of the most famous and accomplished masters, was to destroy the germ of native art ; was cruelly to strangle the growing taste and enthusiasm of the public for art in its very birth ; was to blight the well-earned reputation, and strike at the honest livelihood of the liberal professors of tlie school of painting in England. They therefore set to work to decry these productions as worth- less and odious in the sight of the true adept ; they smeared over with every epithet of low abuse works and names sacred to fame, and to generations to come; they spared no pains to heap ridicule and obloquy on those who had brought these works forward; they did everything to dis- gust and blind the public to their excellence, by showing in themselves a hatred and a loathing of all high excellence and of all established reputation in art, in which their jialtry vanity and mercenary spite were not concerned. They proved, beyond all contradiction, that to keep back the taste of the town and the knowledge of the student to the point to which the Academy had found it practicable to conduct it by its example, was the object of a powerful and active party of professional intriguers in this country. If the Academy had any hand, directly or indirectly, in this unprincipled outrage upon taste and decency, they ought to be disfranchised (like Grampound) to morrow, as utterly unworthy of the trust reposed in them. The alarm indeed (in one sense) was not unfounded ; for many persons who had long been dazzled, not illumined, by the glare of the most modern and fashionable productions, began to open their eyes to the beauties and loveliness of painting, and to see reflected there, as in a mirror, those hues, those expressions, those transient and heavenly glances (if nature, which had often charmed their own minds, but of which they could find the traces nowhere else, and became Faringtons Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 113 true worshippers at the shrine of genuine art. Whether this taste will spread beyond the immediate gratification of the moment, or stimidate the rising generation to new eflforts, and to the adoption of a new and purer style, is another question ; with regard to which, for reasons above explained, we are not very sanguine. We have a great respect for high art, and an anxiety for its advancement and cultivation ; but we have a greater still for the advancement and encouragement of true art. That is the first and the last step. The knowledge of what is contained in nature is the only foundation of legitimate art ; and the perception of beauty and power, in whatever objects or in whatever degree they subsist, is the test of real genius. The principle is the same in painting an arch- angel's ( r a butterfly's wing ; and the very finest picture in the finest collection may be one of a very common subject. We speak and think of Rembrandt as Rembrandt, of RafTaelle as Rafi"aclle, not of the one as a portrait, of the other as a history, painter. Portrait may become history, or history portrait, as the one or the other gives the soul or the mask of the face. " Tlud is true history, " said an eminent critic, on seeing Titian's picture of Pope Julius 11. and his two nephews. He who should set down Claude as a mere land.scape i)ainter, must know nothing of what Claude was in him.self ; and those wlio class Hogarth as a painter of low life, only show their ignorance of human nature. High art docs not consist in high or epic subjects, but in the manner of treating those subjects; and that manner among us, as far as we have proceeded, has, wo think, been false and cxcnptionablc. We aj)p(al from the common cant on this subji'ct to the Elgin marbles. They are high art con- fessedly : but tliey are also true art, in our sense of the word. They do not deviate from truth and nature in order to arrive at a fancied superiority to truth and nature. They do not represent a vapid abstraction, but the entire, undoubted, concrete object they profess to imitate. They 11 114 Faring Ions Life of Sir Joshua- Reynolds. are like casts of the finest living forms in the world, taken in momentary action. They are nothing more ; and there- fore certain great critics who had been educated in the ideal school of art, think nothing of them. They do not con- form to a vague, unmeaning standard, made out of the fastidious likings or dislikings of the artist ; they are carved out of the living, imperishable forms of nature, as the marble of which they are composed was hewn from its native rock. They contain the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We cannot say so much of the general style of history painting in this country, which has I^roceeded, as a first principle, on the determined and deli- berate dereliction of living nature, both as means and end. Grandeur was made to depend on leaving out the details. Ideal grace and beauty were made to consist in neutral forms, and character, and expression. The first could pro- duce nothing but slovenliness ; the second, nothing but insipidity. The Elgin marbles have proved by ocular demonstration, that the utmost freedom and grandeur of style is compatible with the minutest details, — the variety of the subordinate parts not destroying the masses in the pro. ductions of art more than in those of nature. Grandeur without softness and precision is only another name for grossness. These invaluable fragments of antiquity have also proved beyond dispute, that ideal beauty and historic truth do not consist in middle or average forms, &c., but in harmonious outlines, in unity of action, and in the utmost refinement of character and expression. We there see art following close in the footsteps of nature, and exalted, raised, refined with it to the utmost extent that either was capable of. With us all this has been reversed ; and we liave discarded nature at first, only to flounder about and h»e lost in a Limbo of Vanity. With theni invention rose from the ground of imitation ; with us, the boldness of the invention was acknowledged in proportion as no traces of imitation were discoverable. Our greatest and most sue- Farington's Life of Sir JosJina Reynolds. 115 cessful candidates in the epic walk of art have been those who founded their pretensions to be liistory-painters on their not being portrait-painters. They could not paint that which they had seen, and therefore they must be qualified to paint that which they had not seen. There was not any one part of any one of their pictures good for anything ; and therefore the whole was grand, and an example of lofty art ! There was not, in all probability, a single head in an acre of canvas that, taken by itself, was more than a worthless daub, scarcely fit to be hung up as a sign at an ale-house door ; but a hundred of these bad por- traits or wretched caricatures made by numerical addition an admirable historical picture ! The faces, hands, eyes, feet, had neither beauty, nor expression, nor drawing, nor colouring : and yet the composition and arrangement of these abortive and crude materials, which might as well or better have been left blanks, display the mind of the great master. Not one tone, one line, one look for the eye to dwell upon with pure and intense delight, in all this end- less scope of subject and field of canvas. We cannot say that we in general like very large pictures ; for this reason that, like overgrown men, they are apt to be bullies and cowards. They profess a great deal, and perform little. They are often a contrivance, not to di.splay magnificent conceptions to the greatest advantage, but to throw the spectator to a distance, where it is impossible to distinguish either gross faults or real beauties. The late Mr West's pictures were admirable for tlie com- position and grouping. In tlicse respects they could not be better ; as we .see in the jirint of the dcatli of General Wolfe ; but for the rest, he might as well have set up a parcel of figures in wood, and painted them over with a sign-post brusli, and then copied wliat lie saw, and it would have been juKt as good. His .skill in drawing was confined to a knowledge of mechanical propdrtions and measure- ments and was not guided in the line of beauty, or 110 Farington's Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. employed to give force to expression. He, however, laboured long and diligently to advance the interests of art in this his adopted country ; and if he did not do more, it was the fault of the coldness and formality of his genius, not of the man. Barry was another instance of those who scorn nature, and are scorned by her. He could not make a likeness of any one object in the universe ; when he attempted it, he was like a drunken man on horseback ; his eye reeled, his hand refused its office — and accordingly he set up for an example of the great style in art which, like charity, covers all other defects. It would be unfair at the same tiitie to deny that some of the figures and groups in his picture of the Olympic Games, in the Adelphi, are beautiful designs after the antique, as far as outline is con- cerned. In colour and expression they are like wild Indians. The other pictures of his there are not worthy of notice ; except as warnings to the misguided student who would scale the high and abstracted steep of art, without following the path of nature. Yet Barry was a man of genius, and an enthusiastic lover of his art. But 'he unfortunately mistook his ardent aspiration after excellence for the power to achieve it ; assumed the capacity to execute the greatest works instead of acquiring it ; supposed that " the bodiless creations of his brain" were to start out from the walls of the Adelphi like a dream or a fairy tale ; — and the result has been, that all the splendid illusions of his undigested ambi- tion have, " like the baseless fabric of a vision, left not a wrack behind." His name is not a light or beacon, but a by-word and an ill omen in art. What he has left behind him in writing on the subject contains much real feeling and interesting thought. Mr Fuseli is another distinguished artist who complains that nature puts him out. But his distortions and vagaries are German, and not English ; they lie like a night-mare on the breast of our native art. They are too recondite, obscure, and extravagant for us ; we only want to get over the ground with large clumsy strides, as Faringtons Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 117 fast as we can ; and do not go out of our way in search of absurdity. We cannot consider his genius as naturalised among us, after the lapse of more than half a century ; and if in saying this we do not pay him a compliment, we cer- tainly do not intend it as a very severe censure. Mr Fuseli has wit and words at will ; and though he had never touched a pencil, would be a man of extraordinary pre- tensions and talents. Mr Haydon is a young artist of great promise, and much ardour and energy ; and has lately painted a picture which has carried away universal admiration. Without wishing to detract from that tribute of deserved applause, we may be allowed to suggest (and with no unfriendly voice) that he has there, in our judgment, laid in the groundwork, and raised the scaffolding, of a noble picture ; but no more. There is spirit, conception, force, and effect ; but all this is done by the first going over of the canvas. It is the foundation, not the superstructure of a first-rate work of art. It is a rude outline, a striking and masterly sketch. Milton has given us a description of the growth of a plant — " So from the root Springs lighter the green stalk ; from thence the leaves More airy ; last the bright consummate flower. " And we think this image might be transferred to the slow and perfect growth of works of imagination. We have in the present instance the rough materials, the solid substance and the glowing spirit of art ; and only want the last finish- ing and patient working up. Docs Mr Haydon think this too much to bestow on works designed to breathe the air of immortality, and to .shed the fragrance of thought on a distant age 1 Docs he regard it as beneath him to do what IlafTaelle has done 1 We repeat it, here arc bold contrasts, distinct grouping, a vigorous hand, and striking concep- tions. What remains, then, but that he should add to bold contrasts fine gradations — to masculine drawing nice in- 118 Faring ion's Life of Sir Josltua Reynolds. flections, — to vigorous pencilling those softened and trem- bling hues Avliich hover like air on the canvas, — to massy and prominent grouping the exquisite finishing of every face and figure, nerve and artery, so as to have each part instinct with life and thought and sentiment, and to pro- duce an impression in the spectator not only that he can touch the actual substance, but that it would shrink from the touch 1 In a word, !Mr llaydon has strength ; we would wish him to add to it refinement. Till he does this, he will not remove the common stigma on British Art. Nor do we ask impossibilities of him ; we only ask him to make that a leading principle in his pictures, which he has followed so happily in parts. Let him take his own " Peni- tent Girl " as a model, — paint up to this standard through all the rest of the figures, and we shall be satisfied. His Christ in the present picture we do not like, though in this we have no less an authority against us than Mrs Siddons. ilr Haydon has gone at much length into a description of his idea of this figure in the catalogue, which is a practice we disapprove ; for it deceives the artist himself, and may mislead the public. In the idea he conveys to us from the canvas, there can be no deception. Mr Haydon is a devoted admirer of the Elgin marbles ; and he has taken advantage of their breadth and size, and masses. We would urge him to follow them also into their details, their in- volved graces, the texture of the skin, the indication of a vein or muscle, the waving line of beauty, their calm and motionless expression — into all in which they follow nature. But to do this, he must go to nature and study lier more and more, in the greatest and the smallest things. In short, we wish to see this artist paint a picture (he has now every motive to exertion and improvement), where we shall not only have a striking and imposing effect in the aggregate, but where the impression of the whole shall be the joint and irresistible effect of the value of every part. This is our notion of fine art, which we oflfer to him, not by the Far'mgtorCs Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds. 119 way of disparagement or discouragement, but to do our best to promote the cause of truth, and the emulation of the highest excellence. We had quite forgotten the chief object of Mr Faring- ton's book, Sir Joshua's dispute with the Academy about Mr Bonomi's election ; and it is too late to return to it now. We think, however, that Sir Joshua was in the right, and the Academy in the wrong ; but we must refer those who require our reasons to Mr Farington's account ; who, though he differs from us in his conclusion, has given the facts too fairly to justify any other opinion. He has also soriie excellent observations on the increasing respecta- bility of artists in society, from which, and from various other passages of his work, we are inclined to infer that, on subjects not relating to the Academy, he would be a sen- sible, ingenious, and liberal writer. ( 1^0 ) ON OraGINALITY. OEiGiNALiTy is any conception of things taken immediately from nature, and neither borrowed from, nor common to, others. To deserve this ajipellation, the copy must be both true and new. But herein lies the difficulty of reconciling a seeming contradiction in the terms of the explanation. For as anything to be natural must be referable to a con- sistent principle, and as the face of things is open and familiar to all, how can any imitation be new and striking, without being liable to the charge of extravagance, distortion, and singularity 1 And on the other hand, if it has no such peculiar and distinguishing characteristic to set it off, it cannot properly rise above the level of the trite and common- place. This objection would indeed hold good, and be un- answerable, if nature were one thing, or if the eye or mind comprehended the whole of it at a single glance ; in which case, if an object had been once seen and copied in the most curious and mechanical way, there could be no further addition to, or variation from, this idea without obliquity and affectation. But nature presents an endless variety of aspects, of which the mind seldom takes in more than a part or than one view at a time, and it is in seizing on this un- explored variety, in giving some one of these new but easily recognised features in its characteristic essence, and ac- cording to the peculiar bent and force of the artist's genius, that true originality consists. Eomney, when he was first introduced into Sir Joshua's gallery, said, " there was some- thing in his portraits which had never been seen in the art before, but which every one must be struck with as true and natural the moment he saw it." This could not happen if the human face did not admit of being contemplated in On Originality. Vl\ several points of view, or if the liJind were necessarily faith- ful to the suggestion of sense. Two things serve to per- plex this question : first, the construction of language, from which, as one object is represented by one word, we imagine that it is one thing, and that we can no more conceive differently of the same object than we can pronounce the same word in different ways, without being wrong in all but one of them. Secondly, the very nature of our individual im- pressions puts a deception upon us; for as we know no more of any given object than we see, we very pardonably conclude that we see the whole of it and have exhausted inquiry at the first view, since we can never suspect the existence, of that which from our ignorance and incapacity gives us no inti- mation of itself. Thus, if we are shown an exact likeness of a face, we give the artist credit chiefly for dexterity of hand ; we think that any one who has eyes can see a face ; that one person sees it just like another, that there can be no mistake about it (as the object and the image are in our notions the same) — and that if there is any departure from our version of it, it must be purely fantastical and arbitrary: vinltum ahludit imago. We do not look beyond the surface, or rather we do not see into the surface, which contains a labyrinth of difficulties and distinctions that not all the effects of time, of art, of patience, and study can master or unfold. But let us take this self-evident proposition, the human face, and examine it a little, and we .shall soon be convinced what a Proteus, what an inexplicable riddle it is ! Ask any one who thinks he has a perfect idea of the face of his friend, what the .shape of his nose or any other feature is, and he will presently find his mistake; ask a lover to draw his 'mistress's eyebrow,' it is not merely that his liaud will fail him, but his memory is at fault both for tlic form and colour; he may indeed dream and tell you with the poet, that " Grace ia in all her atepH, heaven in her eye, In every gcHtiire digJiity and lovo ;" but if he wishes to embody his favourite conceit, and to con- 122 On Origirioliiy. vincc any one else of all this by proof positive, he must bor- row the painter's aid. When a young artist first begins to make a study from a head, it is well known that he has soon done, because after he has got in a certain general outline and rude masses, as the forehead, the nose, the eyes, in a general way, he sees no further, and is obliged to stop ; he feels in truth that he has made a very indifferent copy, but is quite at a loss how to supply the defect. After a few months, or a year or two's practice, if he has a real eye for nature, and a turn for the art, he can spend whole days in working up the smallest detail?, in correcting the pre- jiarations, in reflecting the gradations, and does not know when to leave off, till night closes in upon him, and then he sits musing and gazing in the twilight at what remains for his next day's work. Sir Joshua Reynolds used to say, that if ho were not to finish any one of his pictures till he saw nothing more to be done to it, he should never leave off. Titian wrote on his pictures faciehat, as much as to say, that he was about them, but that it was an endless task. As the mind advances in the knowledge of nature, the horizon of art enlarges, and the air refines. Then, in addition to an infinity of details even in the most common object there is the variety of form and of colour, of light and shade, of character and expression, of the voluptuous, the thoughtful, the grand, the graceful, the grave, the gay, the I Icnoiv not ivhat ; which are all to be found (separate or combined) in nature, and which sufficiently account for the diversity of art, and to detect and carry off the spoUa opima of which is the highest praise of human skill and geniu.s. " ^^^iate'e^ Lorraine light-touched with softening hue, Or savage Rosa dashed, or learned Poussin drew," all that we meet with in the master-pieces of taste and genius, is to be found in the previous capacity of nature ; and man, instead of adding to the store, or creating any. thing, either as to matter or manner, can only draw out a On Originality. 123 feeble and imperfect transcript, bit by bit, and one appear- ance after another, according to the peculiar aptitude and affinity that subsists between his mind and some one part. The mind resembles a prism, which collects the various rays of truth, and displays them by different modes and in several parcels. Enough has been said to vindicate both conditions of originality, which distinguish it fi-om irregularity on the one hand, and from vulgarity on the other; and to sliow how a thing may at the same time be both true and new. This novel truth is brought out, when it meets with a strong congenial mind, that is, with a mind in the highest degree susceptible of a certain class of impressions, or of a certain kind of beauty and power ; and this peculiar strength, congeniality, truth of imagination, or command over a certain part of nature, is, in other words, what is meant by genius. This will serve to show why original inventors have in general (and except in what is mechanical) left so little for their followers to improve upon; for as the original invention implies the utmost stretch and felicity of thought, or the greatest strength and sagacity to discover and dig the ore from the mine of truth, so it is hardly to be expected that a greater degree of capacity should ever arise (than the highest) — tliat a greater master should bo afterwards ob- tained in shaping and fashioning the precious materials than in the first heat and eagerness of discovery; or that, if the capacity were equal, the same scope and opi)()rtunity would be left for its exercise in the same field. If the genius were difTereiit, it would then seek dilVcrent objects and a different vent, and open paths to fame and excellence in- stead of treading in old ones. Hence thu well-known observation that, in each particular style or class of art, the greatest worksof genius arc tlic earliest. Hence often the first productions of men of genius are their best. What was that something which Ilomncy siioke of in Ileynolds's pictures that the world had never seen before, but with which they were enchanted the moment they beheld it, and which both 124 On Originality. Iloppner and Jackson, with all their merit, have but faintly imitated 1 It was a reflection of the artist's mind, an ema- nation from his character transferred to the canvas. Itwas an ease, an amenity, an indolent but anxious satisfaction, a grace- ful playfulness, belonging to his disposition, and spreading its charm on all around it, attracting what harmonized with, and softening and moulding Avhat repelled it ; avoiding everything hard, stiff, and formal, shrinking from details, reposing on effect, imparting motion to still life, viewing all things in their *■' gayest, happiest attitudes," and infusing his own spirit into nature as the leaven is kneaded into the dough; still, though the original bias existed in himself, and was thence stamped upon his works, yet the character could neither have been formed without the constant re- currence and pursuit of proper nourishment, nor could it have expressed itself without a reference to those objects, books, and attitudes in nature, which soothed and assimilated with it. "What made Hogarth original and inimitable, but the wonderful redundance, and, as it were, supererogation of his genius, which poured the oil of humanity into the wounds and bruises of human nature, redeemed while it ex- posed vice and folly, made deformity pleasing, and turned misfortune into a jest. But could he have done so if there were no wit or enjoyment in a night cellar, or if the cripple could not dance and sing? No, the moral was in nature ; but let no one dare to insist upon it after him, in the same language and with the same pretensions ! There was Eembrandt ; did he invent the extremes of light and shade, or was he only the first that embodied them? He was so only because his eye drank in light and shade more deeply than any one before or since : and therefore the sunshine huno- iu liquid drops from his pencil, and the dungeon's gloom hovered over his canvas. Who can think of Corre^'sjio with- out a swimming of the head] — the undulating line, the melting grace, the objects advancing and retiring as in measured dance or solemn harmony. But all this fulness, On Originality. 125 roundness, and delicacy existed before in nature, and only found a fit sanctuary in his mind, Tlie breadth and masses of Michael Angelo were studies from nature, which he selected and cast in the mould of his own manly and comprehensive genius. The landscapes of Claude are in a fixed repose, as if nothing could be moved from its place without a violence to harmony and just proportions ; in those of Rubens everything is fluttering and in motion — light and indifferent, as the winds blow where they list. All this is characteristic, original, a different mode of nature, which the artist had the haj)piness to find out and carry to the utmost point of perfection. It has been laid down that no one paints anything but his own character, and al- most features, and the workman is always to 'be traced in the work. Mr Fuseli's figures, if they were like nothing else, were like himself, or resembled the contortions of a dream ; Wilkie's have a parochial air; Ha3fdon's are beroical, Sir Thomas's, genteel. What Englishman could bear to sit to a French artist] What English artist could hope to succeed in a French coquette ? There is not only an individual but a national bias which is observable in the different schools and productions of art. Mannerism is the banc (tliough it is the occasional vice) of genius, and is the worst kind of imitaticjn, for it is a man imitating himself. Many artists go on repeating and caricaturing themselves, till they complain that nature puts them out. Gross plagiarism may consist with great originality. Stcme was a notorious plagi;irist, but a true genius. His Corporal Trim, his Uncle Toby, and Mr Shandy, arc to be found nowhere else. If llaffacllc had done nothing but borrow the two figures from Musaccio, it would have been im- possible to say a word in his defence ; none has a right to hteal who is not rich cnougli to bo robbed by others. So Milton has borrowed more than any (it Iicr wrilrr ; l)ut he has uniformly stamped a character of his own upon it. In what relates to the immediate imitation of nature, people 12G On Originality. find it difficult to conceive of an opening for originality, in- asmuch as tliey think that they themselves are the whole of nature, and that every other view of it is wrong ; in what relates to the productions of imagination or the discoveries of science, as they themselves are totally in the dark, they fancy the whole to be a fabrication, and give the inventor credit for a sort of dealing with the devil, or some preter- natural kind of talent. Poets lay a popular and prescriptive claim to inspiration ; the astronomer of old was thought able to conjure with the stars ; and the skilful leech, who performed unexpected cures, was condemned for a sorcerer. This is as great an error the other way. The vulgar think there is nothing in what lies on the surface, though the learned see beyond it only by stripping off encumbrances, and coming to another surface beneath the first. The difference between art and science is only the difference be- tween the clothed and the naked figure ; but the veil of truth must be drawn aside before we can distinctly see the face. The physician is qualified to prescribe remedies because he is acquainted with the internal structure of the body, and has studied the symptoms of disorders ; the mathematician arrives at his most surprising conclusions by slow and sure steps, and can add discovery to discovery by the very cer- tainty of the hold he has of all the previous links. There is no witchcraft in either case. The invention of the poet is little more than the fertility of a teeming brain — that is, than the number and quantity of associations present to his mind, and the various shapes in which he can turn them without being distracted, or losing a *' semblable coherence " of the parts, as the man of observation and reflection strikes out just and unforeseen remarks by taking off the mask of cu.stom and appearance, or by judging for himself of men and things, without taking it for granted that they are what he has hitherto supposed them, or waiting to be told by others what they are. If there were in our own conscious- ness or experience no foundation for an unusual remark, it On Originalily. 127 would not strike us as a discovery, it would sound like a jeu-d'esprit, a whim, an oddity, or as flat nonsense. The mere mob, " the great vulgar and the small," are not therefore capable of distinguishingbetween originality and singularity, for they have no idea beyond the common-place of fashion or custom. Prejudice has no ears, either for or against itself ; it is alike averse to objections and proofs, for both equally disturb its blind, implicit nations of things. Originality is, then, the strong conception of truth and nature that the mind groans withal, and of which it cannot stay to be delivered by authority or example. It is feeling the ground sufficiently firm under one's feet to be able to go alone. Truth is its essence ; it is the strongest possible feeling of truth ; for it is a secret and instinctive yearning after and approximation towards it, before it is acknowledged by others, and almost before the mind itself knows what it is. Paradox and eccentricity, on the one hand, show a dearth of originality, as bombast and hyperbole show a dearth of invagination ; they are the desperate resources of aflectation and want of power. Originality is necessary to genius ; for when that which, in the first instance, conferred the char- acter, is afterwards done by rule and routine, it ceases to be genius. To conclude : the value of any work of art or science depends chiefly on the rpiantity of originality con- tained in it, and which constitutes either tlie charm of works of fiction, or the improvement to be derived from tho.se of progressive information. But it is not so in mat- ters of opinion, wliere every individual thinks he can judge for hinisclf, and does not wish to be set right. There i.s, consequently, nothing that the world like better than originality of invention, and nothing that they liate worse than originality of thought. Advances in .science were formerly regarded with like jeah)U.s3-, iiiid stigmatized as dangerous by the friends of religion and the state. Galileo was impri.soned in the same city of Florence, where they now preserve his finger pointing to the skies. ( 128 ) ON THE IDEAL. The ideal is the abstraction of anything from all the cir- cumstances that weaken its effect, or lessen our admiration of it ; or it is filling up the outline of truth and beauty existing in the mind, so as to leave nothing wanting, or to desire further. The principle of the ideal is the satisfac- tion we have in the contemplation of any quality or object which makes us seek to heighten, to prolong, to extend that satisfaction to the utmost ; and beyond this we cannot go ; for we cannot get beyond the highest conceivable degree of any quality or excellence diffused over the whole of an object. Any notion of perfection beyond this is a word without meaning — a thing in the clouds. Another name for the ideal is the divine, for what we imagine of the gods is pleasure without pain, power without effort. It is the most exalted idea we can form of humanity. Some persons have hence raised it quite above humanity, and made its essence to consist specifically in the repre- sentation of gods and goddesses, just as if, on the same principle that there are court painters, there were certain artists who had the privilege of being admitted into the mythological heaven, and brought away casts and fac- similes of the mouth of Venus or the beard of Jupiter. The ideal is the impassive and immortal ; it is that which exists in and for itself, or is begot by the intense idea and innate love of it. Hence it has been argued by some, as if it were brought from another sphere, as Raffaelle was said to have fetched his Galatea from the skies ; but it was the gods, the " children of Homer," who peopled the "cloud- capt Olympus." The statue of Venus is not beautiful because it represents a goddess, but it was supposed to On the Ideal 129 represent a goddess because it was in the highest degree (that the art or wit of man could make it) and in every part beautiful. The Venus is only the idea of the most perfect female beauty, and the statue will be none the worse for bearing the more modern name of lilusidora. The ideal is only making the best of what is natural and subject to the sense. Goddesses also walk the earth in the shape of women ; the height of nature surpasses the utmost stretch of the imagination ; the human form is above the image of the divinity. It has been usual to represent the ideal as an abstraction of general nature, or as a mean or average proportion between different qualities and faculties, which, instead of carrying any one to the highest point of perfection or satisfaction, would only neutralise and damp the impression. We take our notions on this subject chiefly from the antique ; but what higher conception do we form of the Jupiter of Phidias than that of power frowning in awful majesty 1 or of the Minerva of the same hand than that of wisdom " severe in youthful beauty ] " We shall do well not to refine on our theories beyond these examples that have been left us — " Ininiitablo on earth by model, Or by Bhading pencil shown." \Vliat is the Venus, the Apollo, the Hercules, but the personification of beauty, grace, and strength, or the dis- playing these several properties in every part of the attitude, face, and figure, and in the utmost conceivable degree, but without confounding the particular kinds of form or ex- pression in an intermediate something, pretending to be more perfect than either ? If the face of the Venus had been soft and feminine, but the figure had not corresponded, then this would have been a defect of the ideal, which subdues the di.scordancc of nature in the mould of passion, and so far from destroying character imj'arts the same character to all, according to a I 130 On the Ideal certain established idea or preconception in the mind. The following up the contrary principle would lead to the inevitable result that the most perfect — that is, the most abstract representation of the human form — could contain neither age nor sex, neither character nor expression, neither the attributes of motion nor of rest, but a mere \inmeaning negation or doubtful balance of all positive qualities ; in fact, to propose to embody an abstraction is a contradiction in terms. Besides, it might be objected captiously that what is strictly common to all is necessarily to be found exemplified in each individual. The attempt to carry such a scheme into execution would not merely supersede all the varieties and accidents of nature, but would effectually put a stop to the productions of art, or reduce them to one vague and undefined abstraction, answering to the word "man." That amalgamation, then, of a number of different impressions into one, which in some sense is felt to constitute the ideal, is not to be sought in the dry and desert spaces or the endless void of meta- physical abstraction, or by taking a number of things and muddling them all together, but by singling out some one thing or leading quality of an object, and making it the pervading and regulating principle of all the rest, so as to produce the greatest strength and harmony of effect. This is the natural progress of things, and accords with the ceaseless tendency of the human mind from the Finite to the Infinite. If I see beauty, I do not want to change it for power ; if I am struck with power, I am no longer in love \vith beauty ; but I wish to make beauty still more beautiful, power still more powerful, and to pamper and exalt the prevailing impression, whatever it be, till it ends in a dream and a vision of glory. This view of the subject has been often dwelt upon. I shall endeavour to supply some inferences from it. The ideal, then it appears by this account of it, is the enhancing and expanding an idea from the satisfaction we take in it, or it is taking away On the Ideal. 131 whatever divides, and adding wliatever increases our sympathy with pleasure and power "till our content is absolute," or at the height. Hence that repose which has been remarked as one striking condition of the ideal ; for, as it is nothing but the continued approximation of the mind to the great and the good, so in the attainment of this object it rejects as much as possible not only the petty, the mean, and disagreeable, but also the agony and violence of passion, the force of contrast, and the extravagance of imagination. It is a law to itself. It relies on its own aspirations after pure enjoyment and lofty contemplations alone, self-moved and self-sustained, without the grosser stimulus of the irritation of the will, privation, or suffering, unless when it is inured and reconciled to the last (as an element of its being) by heroic fortitude, and when " sti-ong patience conquers deep despair." In this sense Milton's " Satan" is ideal, though tragic; for it is permanent tragedy, or one fixed idea without vicissitude or frailty, and where all the pride of intellect and power is bi-ought to bear in confronting and enduring pain. Mr Wordsworth has expressed this feeling of stoical indifference (proof against outward impressions) admirably in the poem of " La- odaniia :" — " Know, virtue were not virtue, if the joys Of Hense were able to return as fast And surely aa they vanisli. Earth destroyB Those rnjitures duly ; Krebus disdains — Calm i)lcaHure8 there aljidu, niajeatic pains." These lines arc a noble description and example of the ideal in poetry. But the ideal is not in general the stronghold of poetry ; for description inwards (to produce any vivid impre.s.sion) requires a translation of the object into some other form, which is the language of metaphor and imagi- nation, a.s narrative can f)nly interest by a succession of events, and a conflict of hopes and fears. Therefore, the sphere of the ideal is in a manner limited to sculpture and 132 071 the Ideal painting, where the object itself is given entire without any possible change of circumstances, and where, though the impression is momentary, it lasts for ever. Hence we may see the failure in Sir Charles Grandison, which is an attempt to embody this perfector ideal character in a suc- cession of actions without passion, and in a variety of situ ations where he is still the same everlasting coxcomb, and where we are tired to death of the monotony, affectation, and self-conceit. The story of " Patient Griselda," however fine the sentiment, is far from dramatic ; for the ideal cha- racter, which is the self-sufficient, the immovable, and the one, precludes change, or at least all motive for, or interest in, the alternation of events, to which it constantly rises superior. Shakespeare's characters are interesting and dramatic, in proportion as they are not above passion and outw^ard circumstances, that is, as they are men, and not angels. The Greek tragedies may serve to explain how far the ideal and the dramatic are consistent ; for the characters there are almost as ideal as their statues, and almost as impassive ; and perhaps their extreme decorum and self- possession are only rendered palatable to us by the story, which nearly always represents a conflict between gods and men. The ideal part is, however, necessary at all times to the grandeur of tragedy, since it is the superiority of cha- racter to fortune and circumstances, or the larger scope of thought and feeling thrown into it, that redeems it from the charge of vulgar grossness or physical horrors. Mrs Siddons' acting had this character ; that is to say, she kept her state in the midst of the tempests of passion, and her eye surveyed not merely the present suflfering but the causes and consequences ; there was inherent power and dignity of manner. In a word, as there is a sanguine temperament, and a health of body and mind which floats us over daily annoyances and hindrances (instead of fasten- ing upon petty and disagreeable details), and turns every- thing to advantage, so it is in art and works of the imagi- On the Ideal. 133 nation, the principle of the ideal being neither more nor less than that fulness of satisfaction and enlargement of comprehension in the mind itself that assists and expands all that accords with it, and throws aside and triumphs over whatever is adverse. Grace in movement is either that which is continuous and consistent, from having no obstacles opposed to it, or that which perseveres in this continuous and equable movement from a delight in it, in epite of interruption or uneven ground ; this last is the ideal, or a persisting in, and giving effect to, our choice of the good, notwithstanding the unfavourableness of the actual or outward circumstances. We may, in like manner, trace the origin of dancing, music, and poetry. Self-pos- session is the ideal in ordinary behaviour. A low or vultjar character seizes on every trifling or painful circumstance that occurs, from irritability or want of imagination to look beyond the moment, while a person of more refinement and capacity, or with a stronger predisposition of the mind to good, and a greater fund of good sense and pleasurable feeling to second it, despises these idle provocations, and preserves an unruffled composure and serenity of temper. This internal character, being permanent, communicates itself to the outward expression in proportionable sweet- ness, delicacy, and unity of effect, whicli it requires all the flame characteristics of the mind to feel and convey to others ; and hence the superiority of Raffaclle's Madonnas over Hogarth's faces. Keeping is not the ideal, for there may be keeping in the little, the mean, and the dis- jointed, witiiout strcngtii, softness, or expansion. Tlie fawns and satyrs of antiquity belong (like otlier fabu- lous creations) rather to the grotesque than tlio ideal. They may be considered, however, as a bastard sjiccics of tlic ideal, for they stamp one prominent character of vice and deformity on the wliole face, instead of going into the minute, uncertain, and shuflling details. As to the rest, the ideal abhors monsters and incongruity. If the 134 On the Ideal. liorses in the Elgin Marbles, or tlie boar of Meleager are ranked with the human figures, it is from their being per- fect representations of the forms and actions of the animals designed, not caricatures half way between the human and the brute. The ideal, then, is the highest point of purity and per- fection to which we can carry the idea of any object or (jiiality. The natural differs from the ideal style, inasmuch as what anything is dilfers from what we wish and can conceive it to be. Many people would substitute the phrase, from what it ought to be, to express the latter part of the alternative, and would explain what a thing ought to be by that which is best. But for myself, I do not understand, or at least it does not appear to me a self- evident proposition, either what a thing ought to be or what it is best that it should be ; it is only shifting the difficulty a remove farther, and begging the question a second time. I may know what is good; I can tell what is better ; but that which is best is beyond me — it is a thing in the clouds. There is perhaps also a species of cant — the making up for a want of clearness of ideas by insinuating a pleasing moral inference — in the words purity and per- fection used above ; but I would be understood as meaning by purity nothing more than a freedom from alloy or any incongruous mixture in a given quality or character of an object, and by perfection completeness, or the extending that quality to all the })arts and circumstances of an object, so that it shall be as nearly as possible of a piece. The imagination does not ordinarily bestow any pains on that which is mean and indifferent in itself, but having conceived an interest in any thing, and the passions being once excited, we endeavour to give them food and scope by making that which is beautiful still more beautiful, that which is striking still more grand, that which is hateful Btill more deformed, through the positive, comparative, and superlative degrees, till the mind can go no farther in this On the Ideal 135 progression of fancy and passion without losing the original idea, or quitting its hold of nature, which is the ground on which it still rests with fluttering pinions. The ideal does not transform any object into something else, or neutralise its character, but, by removing what is irrelevant and supplying what was defective, makes it more itself than it was before. I have included above the Fawns and Satyrs as well as the Heroes and Deities of antique art, or the perfection of deformity as well as of beauty and strength, but any one who pleases may draw the line, and leave out the exceptionable part ; it will make no difference in the principle. Venus is painted fair, with golden locks, but she must not be fair beyond the fairness of woman ; for the beauty we desire is that of woman — nor must the hair be actually of the colour of gold, but only approaching to it, for then it would no longer look like hair, but like something else, and in striving to enhance the effect we should weaken it. Habit as well as passion, knowledge as well as desire, is one part of the human mind ; nor, in aiming at imaginary perfection, are we to confound the understood boundaries and distinct classes of things, or "to o'erstep the modesty of nature." We may raise the superstructure of fancy as high as we please ; the basis is custom. AVe talk in words of an ivory skin, of golden tresses ; but these are only figures of speech, and a poetical licence. llichardson acknowledges that Clarissa's neck was not so white as the lace on it, whatever the poets might say if they had been called upon to describe it. ( 136 ) ON JUDGING OF PICTURES. Painteks assume that none can judge of pictures but themselves. Many do this avowedly, some by implication, and all in practice. They exclaim against any one writing about art who has not served his apprenticeship to the craft, who is not versed in the detail of its mechanism. This has often put me a little out of patience — but I will take patience, and say why. In the first place, with regard to the productions of living artists, painters have no right to speak at all. The way in which they are devoured and consumed by envy would be ludicrous if it were not lamentable. It is folly to talk of the divisions and backbitings of authors and poets while there are such people as painters in the world. I never in the whole course of my life heard one speak in hearty praise of another. Generally they blame downrightly ; but at all events their utmost applause is with a damning reser- vation. Authors — even poets, the genus irritabile — do taste and acknowledge the beauties of the productions of their competitors ; but painters either cannot see them through the green spectacles of envy, or seeing, they hate and deny them the more. In conformity with this, painters are more greedy of praise than any other order of men. ''They gorge the little fame they get all raw" — they are gluttonous of it in their own persons in the proportion in which they would starve others. I once knew a very remarkable instance of this. A friend of mine had written a criticism of an exhibition. In this were mentioned, in terms of the highest praise, the works of two brothers — sufficiently so, indeed, to have satisfied, one would have thought, the most insatiate. I On Judging of Pictures. 137 was going down into the country to the place where these brothers lived, and I was asked to be the bearer of the work in which the critique appeared; I was so, and sent a copy to each of them. Some days afterwards I called on one of them, who began to speak of the review of his pictures. He expressed some thanks for what was said of them, but complained that the writer of it had fallen into a very common error under which he had often suffered — the con- founding, namely, his pictures with his brother's. " Now, my dear sir," continued he, " what is said of me is all very well, but here," turning to the high-wrought panegyric on his brother, " this is all in allusion to my style — this is all with reference to my pictures — this is all meant for me." I could hardly help exclaiming before the man's face. The praise which was given to himself was such as would have called a blush to any but a painter's face to speak of ; but, not content with this, he insisted on appropriating his brother's also ; how insatiate is the pictorial man ! But to come to the more general subject.- I deny in toto and at once the exclusive right and power of painters to judge of pictures. What is a picture made for 1 To convey certain ideas to the mind of a painter, that is, of one man in ten thousand ? No, but to make them apparent to the eye and mind of all. If a picture be admired by none but painters I think it is a strong presumption that the picture is bad. A painter is no more a judge, I suppose, than another man of how people feel and look under certain pa.ssions and events. Everybody sees as well as he whether certain figures on the canvas arc like .such a man, or like a cow, a tree, a bridge, or a windmill. All that the painter can do more than the lay spectator is to tell why and how the merits and defects of a ])icture are produced. I see that such a figure is ungraceful, and o\it of nature — ho shows me that the drawing is faulty, or the foreshortening incorrect. He tlien points out to me whence the blemish arises ; but he is not a bit more aware of the existence of 1 oQ On Jitdging of Pichires. the blemish than I am. In Hogarth's "Frontispiece" I see that the whole business is absurd, for a man on a hill two miles off could not light his pipe at a candle held out of a window close to me ; he tells me that is from a want of perspective — that is, of certain rules by which certain eflfects are obtained. He shows me why the picture is bad, but I am just as well capable of saying " the picture is bad" as he is. To take a coarse illustration, but one most exactly opposite : I can tell whether a made dish be good or bad — whether its taste be pleasant or disagreeable ; it is dressed for the palate of uninitiated people, and. not alone for the disciples of Dr Kitchener and Mr Ude. But it needs a cook to tell one why it is bad ; that there is a grain too much of this, or a drop too much of t'other ; that it has been boiled rather too much, or stewed rather too little. These things, the wherefores, as Squire Western would say, I require an artist to tell me ; but the point in debate — the worth or the bad quality of the painting or pottage — I am as well able to decide upon as any who ever brandished a pallet or a pan, a brush or a skimming-ladle. To go into the higher branches of the art — the poetry of painting — I deny still more peremptorily the exclusiveness of the initiated. It might as well be said that none but those who could write a play have any right to sit on the third row in the pit, on the first night of a new tragedy ; nay, there is more plausibility in the one than the other. No man can judge of poetry without possessing in some measure a poetical mind ; it need not be of that degree necessary to create, but it must be equal to taste and to analyse. Now in painting there is a directly mechanicalpower required to render those imaginations, to the judging of which the mind may be [)erfectly competent. I may know what is a just or a beautiful representation of love, anger, madness, despair, without being able to draw a straight line ; and I do not see how that faculty adds to the capa- bility of 80 judging. A very great proportion of painting On Judging of Fictures. 139 is mechanical. The higher kinds of painting need first a poet's mind to conceive ; very well, but then they need a draughtsman's hand to execute. Now he who possesses the mind alone is fully able to judge of what is produced, even though he is by no means endowed with the me- chanical power of producing it himself. I am far from saying that any one is capable of duly judging pictures of the higher class. It requires a mind capable of estimating the noble, or touching, or terrible, or sublime subjects which they present ; but there is no sort of necessity that we should be able to put them upon the canvas ourselves. There is one point even, on which painters usually judge worse of pictures than the general spectator ; I say usually, for there are some painters who are too thoroughly intel- lectual to run into the error of which I am about to speak. I mean that they are apt to overlook the higher and more mental parts of a picture in their haste to criticise its mechanical properties. They forget the expression in being too mindful of what is more strictly manual. Tliey talk of such a colour being skilfully or unskilfully put iii opposition to another, rather than of the moral contrast of the countenances of a group. They say that the flesh-tints are well brought out, before they sitcak of the face which the flesh forms. To use a French term of nmch condensation, they think of tlie physique before they bestow any attention on the morale. I am tlie farthest in the world from falling into the absurdity of upholding that iiainters should neglect the mcclianical parts of their profession ; for witliout a mastery in them it would bo iini)ossiblc to body forth any imagi- nations, however strong or beautiful. I f pure K 14G On a Portrait hj Vandych. afYection, too fair, too delicate, too soft and feminine for tlie breath of serious misfortune ever to come near, and not to crush it. It is a face, in short, of the greatest purity and sensibilitj', sweetness and simplicity, or such as Chaucer might have described : " Where all is conscience and tender heart." I have said that it is an English face ; and I may add (without being invidious) that it is not a French one. I will not say that they have no face to equal this ; of that I am not a judge ; but I am sure they have no face equal to this, in the qualities by which it is distinguished. They may have faces as amiable, but then the j^ossessors of them will be conscious of it. There may be equal elegance, but not the same ease ; there may be even greater intelligence, but without the innocence ; more vivacity, but then it will run into petulance or coquetry ; in short, there may be every other good quality, but a total absence of all pretension ^to or wish to make a display of it, but the same unaffected modesty and simplicity. In French faces (and I have seen some that were charming both for the features and ex- pression) there is a varnish of insincerity, a something theatrical or meretricious ; but here every particle is pure to the " last recesses of the mind." The face (such as it is, and it has a considerable share both of beauty and meaning) is without the smallest alloy of affectation. There is no false glitter in the eyes to make them look brighter ; no little wrinkles about the corners of the eye-lids, the effect of self-conceit ; no pursing up of the mouth, no significant leer, no primness, no extravagance, no assumed levity or gravity. You have the genuine text of nature without gloss or comment. There is no heightening of conscious charms to produce greater effect, no studying of airs and graces in the glass of vanity. You have not the remotest hint of the milliner, the dancing-master, the dealer in paints and patches. You have before you a real English lady of the seventeenth century, who looks On a Forlrait by Vamhjck. 147 like one because she cannot look otherwise ; whose ex- pression of sweetness, intelligence, or concern, is just what is natural to her, and what the occasion requires ; whose entire demeanour is the emanation of her habitual sentiments and disposition, and who is as free from guile or aftectation as the little child by her side. I repeat that this is not the distinguishing character of the French physiognomj-, •which, at its best, is often spoiled by a consciousness of what it is, and a restless desire to be somethini? more. Goodness of disposition, with a clear complexion and handsome features, is the chief ingredient in English beauty. There is a great difference in this respect between Vandyck's portraits of women and Titian's, of which we may find exam[)le3 in the Louvre. The picture which goes by the name of his "Mistress" is one of the most celebrated of the latter. The neck of this picture is like a broad crystal mirror ; and the hair wiiich she holds so carelessly in her hand is like meshes of beaten gold. The ej'es, which roll in their ample sockets like two shining orbs, and which are turned away from the spectator, only dart their glances the more powerfully into the soul ; and the whole picture is a paragon of frank, cordial grace, and transparent bril- liancy of colouring. Her tight bodice compresses her full but nncly-i)r(»i)ortioned waist ; while the tucker in part conceals and almost clasps the snowy bosom. lUityou never think of any tiling beyond the personal attractions and a cert;iin sfiarkling intelligence. She is not marble, but a line piece of animateil clay. There is none of that retired and shrinking cliaracter, that modesty of demeanour, that sen.sitivc delicacy, that .starts even at the shadow of evil, that arc so evidently to be traced in the portrait by Vandyck. Still there is no positive vice, no meanness, no hypocrisy, but an unconstrained, cl;ustic .spirit of self- enjoyment, more bent cm the end than scrupulous about the means; with firmly-braced nerves and a tincture of vulgarity. She is not like an Engli-sh lady, nor like a lady 1 iS On a rortmit hy Vaivhjck. at all ; but she is a very fine servant-girl, conscious of her advantages, and Avilling to make the most of them. In fact, Titian's " Mistress" answers exactly, I conceive, to the idea conveyed by the English word sweetheart. The ^Mar- chioness of Guasto is a fairer comparison. She is by the supposition a lady, but still an Italian one. There is a honeyed richness about the texture of the skin, and her air is languid from a sense of pleasure. Her dress, though modest, has the marks of studied coquetry about it ; it touches the very limits which it dares not pass : and her eyes, which are bashful and downcast, do not seem to droop under the fear of observation, but to retire from the gaze of kindled admiration, "As if they tlirill'd Frail hearts, yet quenched not!" One might say, with Othello, of the hand with which she holds the globe that is offered to her acceptance : " This hand of yours requires A sequester from liberty, fasting, and pray'r, Much castigation, exercise devout; For here's a young and melting devil here That commonly rebels.' The hands of Vandyck's portrait have the purity and coldness of marble. The colour of the face is such as might be breathed upon it by the refreshing breeze ; that of the Marchioness of Guasto's is like the glow it might imbibe from the golden sunset. The expression in the Eu'-dish lady springs from her duties and her affections ; that of the Italian countess inclines more to her ease and pleasures. The ^Marchioness of Guasto was one of the three sisters to whom, it is said, the inhabitants of Pisa proposed to pay divine honours, in the manner that beauty •\^'a3 wor.shi[)ped by the fabulous enthusiasts of old. Her husband seems to have participated in the common in- fatuation, from the fanciful homage that is paid to her in this allegorical composition ; and if she was at all intoxi- On a Portrait hy Vandijch. 149 cated by tlie incense offered to lier vanity, tlie painter must be allowed to have " qualified " the expression of it " very craftily." I pass on to another female face and figure, that of the Virgin in the beautiful picture of the " Presentation in the Temple," by Guido. The expression here is ideal and has a reference to visionary objects and feelings. It is marked by an abstraction from outward impressions, a downcast look, an elevated brow, an absorption of pur- pose, a stillness and resignation that become the person and the scene in which she is engaged. The colour is pale or gone ; so that purified from every grossness, dead to worldly passions, she almost seems like a statue kneel- ing. With knees bent and hands ujjlifted, her motion- less figure appears supported by a soul within, all whose thoughts, from the low ground of humility, tend heaven- ward. We find none of the triumpharit buoj-ancy of health and spirit as in Titian's " Mistress," nor tbe luxurious softness of the portrait of the j\Iarchioness of Guasto, nor the flexible, tremulous sensibility, nor the anxious attention to passing circumstances, nor the familiar look, of the lady by Vandyck; on the contrary, there is a complete unity and concentration of expression ; the whole is wrought u[) and moulded into one intense feeling, but that feeling fixed on objects remote, refined, and ethereal as the form of the fair suppliant. A .still greater contrast to this internal, or, as it were, introverted expression, is to be found in tlie gnMip of female heads by the same artist (Guido,) in lii.s j.icturo of tlie " Flight of I'aris and Helen." They are the three last heads on the left-hand side of the picture. They are thrown into every variety of attitude, as if to take the heart ])y surprise at every avenue. A tender warmth is suffused over the faces; their head- dresses arc airy and fanciful, their complexion sparidiiig and glossy ; their features seem tct catch pleasure from every surrounding object, and to reflect it back again. Vanity, 150 On a Portrait hij Vandyck. beauty, gaiety glance from their conscious looks and Avreathed smiles, like the changing colours from the ring- dove's neck. To sharpen the effect and point the moral, they are accompanied by a little negro-boy, who holds up the train nf elegance, fashion, and voluptuous grace ! Guido was the " genteelest " of painters ; he was a poetical Vandyck. The latter could give, with inimitable and perfect skill, the airs and graces of people of fashion under their daily and habitual aspects, or as he might see them in a looking-glass. The former saw them in his "mind's eye," and could transform them into supposed characters and imaginary situations. Still the elements were the same. Vandyck gave them with the mannerism of habit and the individual details; Guido, as they were rounded into grace and smoothness by the breath of fancy, and borne along by the tide of sentiment, Guido did not want the ideal faculty, though he wanted strength and variety. There is an effeminacy about his pictures, for he gave oidy the different modifications of beauty. It was the goddess that inspired him, the Siren that seduced him, and, whether as saint or sinner, was equally welcome to him. liis creations are as frail as they are fair. They all turn on a passion for beauty, and without this support are nothing. He could paint beauty combined with plea- sure, or sweetness, or grief, or devotion ; but unless it were the groundwork and the primary condition of his performance, he became insipid, ridiculous, -and extrava- gant. There is one thing to be said in his favour ; he knew his own powers or followed his own inclinations ; a-nd the delicacy of his tact in general prevented him from attempting sul)jects uncongenial with it. He " trod the primrose path of dalliance " with ccpal prudence and modesty. That he is a little monotonous and tame is all that can be said against him ; and he seldom went out of his way to expose his deficiencies in a glaring point of view. He came round to subjects of beauty at last, or On a Portrait hij Vandyck. 151 gave them that turn. A story is told of his having painted a very lovely head of a girl, and being asked from whom he had taken it, he replied, " From his old man ! " This is not unlikely. He is the only great painter (except Correggio) who appears constantly to have subjected what he saw to an imaginary standard. His Magdalens are more beautiful than sorrowful ; in his Madonnas there is more of sweetness and modesty than of elevation. He luiikes but little dillerence between his heroes and his heroines ; his angels are women, and his women angels ! If it be said that he repeated himself too often, and has painted too many Magdalens and Madonnas, I can only say in answer, " ^^'ould he had painted t\Yice as many ! " If Guido wanted compass and variety in his art, it signifies little, since what he wanted is abundantly supplied by others. He had softness, delicacy, and ideal grace in a sui>reme degree, and his fame rests on these as the cloud on the rock. It is to the highest point of excellence in any art or department that we look back with gratitude and admiration, as it is the highest mountain-peak that we catch in the distance, and lose sight of only when it turns to air. I know of no other difference between Huflaelle and Guido than that the one was twice the man the other was. llafFaelle was a bolder genius, and invented accord- ing to nature; Guido only made draughts after his own disposition and character. There is a common cant of criticism which makes Titian merely a colourist. What he really wanted was invention ; he had exjjression in the highest degree. I declare 1 have seen heads of his with more meaning in them tiian any of Hairaelle's. But ho fell short of Iladaelle in this, that (except in one or two instances) he could not heigliten and adapt the expression that he saw to difTerent and more striking circumstances. He gave more of what he saw than any other painter tliat ever lived, and in the imitative part of liis art had a more 152 On a Portrait hj Vandych. universal genius tlian Raffaclle had in composition and invention. Beyond the actual and habitual look of nature, however, "tlie demon that he served" deserted him, or became a very tame one. Vandyck gave more of the general air and manners of fashionable life than of indi- vidual character ; and the subjects that he treated are neither remarkable for intellect nor passion. They are people of polished manners and placid constitutions ; and many of the very best of them are " stupidly good." Titian's portraits, on the other hand, frequently present a much more formidable than inviting appearance. You •would hardly trust yourself in a room with them. You do not bestow a cold, leisurely approbation on them, but look to see what they may be thinking of you, not without some apprehension for the result. They have not the clear, smooth skins or the even pulse that Vandyck's seem to possess. They are, for the most part, fierce, wary, voluptuous, subtle, haughty. llaffaelle painted Italian faces as well as Titian. But he threw into them a charac- ter of intellect rather than of temperament. In Titian the irritability takes the lead, sharpens and gives direction to the understanding. There seems to be a personal con- troversy between the spectator and the individual whose portrait he contemplates, which shall be master of the other. I may refer to two portraits in the Louvre, the one by Raffaelle, the other by Titian (Nos. 1153 and 1210), in illustration of these remarks. I do not know two finer or more characteristic specimens of these masters, each in its way. The one is of a student dressed in black, absorbed in thought, intent on some problem, with the hands crossed and leaning on a table for support, as it were to give freer scope to the labour of the brain, and though the eyes are directed towards you, it is witli evi- dent absence of mind. Not so the other jiortrait, No. 1210. All its faculties are collected to see what it can make of you; as if you had intruded upon it with some On a Portrait hy Vandyclc. 153 hostile design, it takes a defensive attitude, and sliows as much vigilance as dignity. It draws itself up, as if to say, " Well, what do you think of me 1 " and exercises a discretionary power over you. It has " an eye to threaten and command," not to be lost in idle thought, or in ruminating over some abstruse, speculative proposition. It is this intense personal character which, I think, gives the superiority to Titian's portraits over all others, and stamps them with a living and permanent interest. Of other pictures you tire, if you have them constantly before you ; with these there seems to be some question i)endhig between you, as though an intimate friend or inveterate foe were in the room Avith you ; they exert a kind of fascinating power ; and tliere is tliat exact resemblance of individual nature which is always new and always interotiting, because you cannot carrj'- away a mental abstraction of it, and you must recur to tlie object to revive it in its full force and integrity. I would as soon have RafFaelle's or most other pictures hanging up in a collection, that I might pay an occasional visit to them : Titian's are the only ones that I should wish to have banging in the same room with me for company ! Titian in his portraits appears to have understood the princiiile of historical design better than anybody. Every part tells, and has a bearing on the whole. There is no one who has such .simplicity and repose — no violence, no affectation, no attempt at forcing an effect : insomuch that by the uninitiated he is often condemned as unmeaning and insipid. A turn of the eye, a compression of the lip, decides the point. lie just draws the face out of its most ordinary .state, and gives it tlie direction he would have it take ; but then every part takes the same direction, and the effect of this united impression (whicli is absolutely momentary and all but habitual) is wonderful. It is tllat which makes his portraits the most natural and the most 154 On a Portrait hy Vandyck. striking in the world. It may be compared to the effect of a number of small loadstones, that by acting together lift the greatest weights. Titian seized upon the lines of character in the most original and connected point of view. Thus in his celebrated portrait of Hippolito de Medici, there is a keen, sharpened expression that strikes you, like a blow from the spear that he holds in his hand. The look goes through you ; yet it has no frown, no startling gesticulation, no affected penetration. It is quiet, simj)le, but it almost withers you. The whole face and each separate feature is cast in the same acute or wedge- like form. The forehead is high and narrow, the eye- brows raised and coming to a point in the middle, the nose straight and peaked, the mouth contracted and drawn up at the corners, the chin acute, and the two sides of the face slanting to a point. The number of acute angles which the lines of the face form are, in fact, a net en- tangling the attention and subduing the will. The effect is felt at once, though it asks time and consideration to understand the cause. It is a face which you would be- ware of rousing into anger or hostility, as you would beware of setting in motion some complicated and danger- ous machinery. The possessor of it, you may be sure, is no trifler. Such, indeed, was the character of the man. This is to paint true portrait and true history. So if our artist painted a mild and thoughtful expression, all the lines of the countenance were softened and relaxed. If the mouth was going to speak, the whole face was going to speak. It was the same in colour. The gradations are infinite, and yet so blended as to be imperceptible. No two tints are the same, though they produce the greatest harmony and simplicity of tone, like flesh itself. " If," said a person, pointing to the shaded side of a portrait by Titian, "you could turn this round to the light, you would find it would be of the same colour as the other side!" On a Portrait hij Vamhjcl\ 155 In short, there is manifest in his portraits a greater tenaciousness and identity of impression than in those of any other painter. Form, colour, feeling, character, seemed to adhere to his eye and to become part of himself ; and his pictures, on this account, "leave stings" in the minds of the spectators ! There is, I grant, the same personal appeal, the same point-blank look in some of Raffaelle's portraits (see those of a Princess of Arragon and of Count Castiglione, Xos. 1150 and 1151) as in Titian's; but they want the texture of the skin and the minute individual de- tails to stamp them with the same reality. And again, as to the uniformity of outline in the features, this ju'inciple has been acted upon and carried to excess by Kneller and other artists. The eyes, the eye-brows, the nose, the mouth, the chin, are rounded off as if they were turned in a lathe, or as a peruke maker arranges the curls of a wig. In them it is vile and mechanical, without any reference to truth of character or nature ; and instead of being pregnant with meaning and originality of expres- sion, produces only insipidity and monotony. Perhaps what is offered above as a key to the peculiar expression of Titian's heads may also serve to explain the difference between painting and cojiying a portrait. As the jterfection of his faces consi.sts in the entire unity and coincidence of all the parts, so the dilliculty of ordinary portrait-painting is to bring them to bear at all, or to piece one feature, or one day's labour, on to anotlicr. In copying this difficulty does not occur at all. The human face is not one thing, as the vulgar suppose, nor does it remain always the same. It has infinite varieties, which the artist is obliged to notice and to reconcile, or he will make strange work. Nut only the light and shade upon it do not continue for two minutes the .same ; the position of tlie head constantly varies (or if you arc strict .with a sitter, he grows sullen and stupid), each feature is in motion every moment, even while the artist is working at 156 On a Fortrait hj Vandych. it, and in tlie course of a day the whole expression of the countenance undergoes a change, so that the expression which j^ougave to the forehead or eyes yesterday is totally incomi^atible with that which you have to give to the mouth to-day. You can only bring it back again to the same point or give it a consistent construction by an effort of imagination, or a strong feeling of character ; and you must connect the features together less by the eye than by the mind. The mere setting down what you see in this medley of successive, teazing, contradictory impressions would never do ; either you must continually efface what you have done the instant before, or, if you retain it, you will produce a piece of patchwork worse than any cari- cature. There must be a comprehension of the whole, and in truth a moral sense (as well as a literal one) to un- ravel the confusion, and guide you through the laby- rinth of shifting muscles and features. You must feel what this means, and dive into the hidden soul, in order to know whether that is as it ougbt to be; for you cannot be sure that it remains as it was. Portrait-painting is, then, painting from recollection and from a conception of character, with the object before us to assist the memory and understanding. In copying, on the contrary, one part docs not run away and leave you in the lurch while you are intent upon another. You have only to attend to what is before you, and finish it carefully a bit at a time, and you are sure that the whole will come right. One might parcel it out into squares, as in engraving, and copy one at a time, without seeing or thinking of the rest. I do not say tliat a conception of the whole and a feeling of the art will not abridge the labour of copying, or pro- duce a truer likeness ; but it is the changeableness or identity of tbe object that chiefly constitutes the difficulty or facility of imitating it, and in the latter case reduces it nearly to a mechanical operation. It is the same in the imitation of still-life, where real objects have not a On a Portrait hy Vandyck. 157 principle of motion in them. It is as easy to produce a fac-simile of a table or a chair as to cop}' a picture, because these things do not stir from their places any more than the features of a portrait stir from theirs. You may therefore bestow any given degree of minute and con- tinued attention on finishing any given part without being afraid that when finished it will not correspond with the rest. Nay, it requires more talent to copy a fine portrait than to paint an original picture of a table or a chair, for the picture has a soul in it, and the table has not. It has been made an objection (and I think a just one) against the extreme high finishing of the drapery and back- grounds in portraits (to which some schools, particularly the French, are addicted), that it gives an unfinished look to the face, the most important part of the picture. A lady or a gentleman cannot sit quiet so long or so still as a lay-figure, and if you finish up each part according to the length of time it will remain in one position, the face will seem to have been painted for the sake of the drapery, not the drapery to set off the face. There is an obvious limit to everything if we attend to common sense and feeling. If a carpet or a curtain will admit of being finished more than the living face, we finish them less because they excite less interest, and we are less willing to throw away our time and pains upon them. This is the unavoidable result in a natural and well-regulated style of art ; but wliat is to be said of a school where no interest is felt in anytliing, where nothing is known of any object but that it is there, and where superficial and petty de- tails wiiich the eye can explore, and the hand execute, with persevering and systematic indifference, constitute the soul (if art. The exi>re.s.sif)n is the great difTiculty in history or portrait-itiiinting, and yet it i.s the great clue to both. It renders forms doubly impressive from the interest and sig- nification attached to them, and at the same time renders 158 On a For trait hy Vandyck. the imitation of tbem critically nice, by making any de- parture from the line of truth doubly sensible. Mr Coleridge used to say, that what gave the romantic and mysterious interest to Salvator's landscapes was their con- taining some implicit analogy to hnman or other living forms. His rocks had a latent resemblance to the outline of a human face ; his trees had the distorted, jagged shape of a satyr's horns and grotesque features. I do not think this is the case ; but it may serve to supply us with an illustration of the present question. Suppose a given out- line to represent a human face, but to be so disguised by circumstances and little interruptions as to be mistaken for a projecting fragment of rock in natural scenery. As long as we conceive of this outline merely as a re- presentation of a rock or other inanimate substance, any copy of it, however rude, will seem the same and as good as the original. Now let the disguise be removed and the general resemblance to a human face pointed out, and what before seemed perfect will be found to be deficient in the most essential features. Let it be further understood to be a profile of a particular face that we know, and all likeness will vanish from the want of the individual ex- pression, which can only be given by being felt. That is, the imitation of external and visible form is only correct or nearly perfect, when the information of the eye and the direction of the hand are aided and confirmed by the previous knowledge and actual feeling of character in the object represented. The more there is of character and feel- ing in any object, and the greater sympathy there is with it in the mind of the artist, the closer will be the affinity between the imitation and the thing imitated; as the more there is of character and expression in the object without a proportional sympathy with it in the imitator, the more obvious will this defect and the imperfection of the copy become. That is, expression is the great test and measure of a genius for painting and the fine arts. The mere On a Portrait by Vand/jclc. 159 imitation of still-life, liowever perfect, can never famish proofs of the highest skill or talent ; for there is an inner sense, a deeper intuition into nature that is never unfolded by merely mechanical objects, and which, if it were called out by a new soul being suddenly infused into an inanimate substance, would make the former unconscious repre- sentation appear crude and vapid. The eye is sharpened and the hand made more delicate in its tact, "While by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, AVe see into the life of things." We not only see but feel expression by the help of the finest of all our senses, the sense of pleasure and pain. He then is the greatest painter who can put the greatest quantity of exi)re33ion into his works, for this is the nicest and most subtle object of imitation ; it is that in which any defect is soonest visible, which must be able to stand the severest scrutiny, and where the power of avoiding errors, extravagance, or tameness can only be supplied by the fund of moral feeling, the strength or delicacy of the artist's sympathy with the ideal object of his imagination. To see or imitate any given sensible object is one thing, the eflFect of attention and practice ; but to give expression to a face is to collect its meaning from a thousand other sources, is to bring into play the observation and feeling of one's whole life, or an infinity of knowledge bearing upon a .single object in difTercnt degrees and maimers, and im- plying a loftiness and refinement ot character proportioned to the loftiness and refinement of expression delineated. Expre.s.sion is of all things the least to be mistaken, and the mo.st evanescent in its manifestation. Pope's lines on the character of women may be addres.sod to tlie painter who undertakes to embody it: — "Come then, the colours and thn ground prepare, Dip in tlin rainbow, trick it ofT in air ; Cli'M)He a firtn clrmd, before it fall.'*, ;iiid in it Catch, ere it change, the Cynthia of the minute." 160 On a Porlraii h// Vandych. It is a maxim among painters that no one can paint more than his own character, or more than he himself understands or can enter into. Nay, even in copying a head, we have some diflicnlty in making the features un- like our own. A person with a low forehead or a short chin puts a constraint on himself in painting a high forehead or a long chin. So much has sympathy to do with what is supposed to be a mere act of servile imitation ! To pursue this argument one step further. People sometimes wonder what difficulty there can be in painting, and ask what you have to do but to set down what you see. This is true, but the difficulty is to see what is before you. This is at least as difficult as to learn any trade or language. We imagine that we see the whole of nature, because we are aware of no more than we see of it. We also suppose that any given object, a head, a hand, is one thing because we see it at once, and call it by one name. But how little we see or know even of the most familiar face, beyond a vague abstraction, will be evident to every one who tries to recollect distinctly all its component parts, or to draw the most rude outline of it for the first time ; or who considers the variety of surface, the numberless lights and shades, the tints of the skin — every particle and pore of which varies — the forms and markings of the features, the combined expression ; and all these caught (as far as common use is concerned) by a random glance, and communicated by a passing word. A student when he first copies a head soon comes to a stand, or is at a loss to proceed from seeing nothing more in the face til an there is in his copy. After a year or two's practice he never knows when to have done, and the longer he has been occupied in copying a face or any other j^ar- ticular feature, sees more and more in it that he has left undone and can never hope to do. There have been only four or five painters who could ever produce a copy of the human countenance really fit to be seen ; and even of these few none was ever perfect, except in giving some single On a Portrait by Vandycl'. IGl quality or partial aspect of nature, which happened to fall in with his own particular studies .and the bias of his genius, as Puaffaelle the drawing, Rembrandt the light and shade, Vandyck ease and delicacy of appearance, &c. Titian gave more than any one else, and yet he had his defects. After this, shall we say that any, the commonest and most uninstructed, spectator sees the whole of nature at a single glance, and would be able to stamp a perfect representation of it on the canvas, if he could embody the image in his mind's e3'e ? I have in this essay mentioned one or two of the portraits in the Louvre that I like best. The two land- scapes which I should most covet, are the one with a Ilain- bow by liubens, and the " Adam and Eve in Paradise" by Poussin. In the first, shepherds are reposing with their flocks under the shelter of a breezy grove, the distances are of air, and the whole landscape seems just washed with the shower that has i^asscd off. The " Adam and Eve " by Poussin is the full growth and luxuriant expansion of the principle of vegetation. It is the first lovely dawn of creation, when nature played her virgin fancies wild ; when all was sweetness and freshness, and the heavens dropped fatness. It is the very ideal of landscape- painting, and of the scene it is intended to represent. It throws U8 back to the first ages of the world, and to the only period of perfect human bliss, which is, however, on the point of being soon disturbed.* I should be contented • I may be ftllowcd to mention liere (not for tlie sake of invidions comp.ariHon, but to explain toy meaning), Mr Martin's picture of " Adam and Eve a.slc<;p in TarailiHC." It has this capital defect, tliafc there is no repoHC in it. You hco two iiiHigniiicant nal|i(».scd to iclisli tin; daHliiuK ex- ecution and liit-or-miHH niannor of the Venetian artiHt. Oh, KafTaelle! ■well it is that it was one who did not undcrBtaiid tLco that blundcroil upon the destruction of humanity ! IGi On a Portrait by Vandych. they are cut off from all sympathy with the " bosoms and businesses of men." Instead of requiring to be wound up beyond their liabitual feeling of stately dignity, they wish to have the springs of over-strained pretension let down to be relaxed with " trifles light as air," to be amused with the familiar and frivolous, and to have the world appear a scene of still life, except as they disturb it ! The little in thouirht and internal sentiment is a natural relief and set-off to the oppressive sense of external magnificeace. Hence kings babble and repeat they know not what. A childish dotage often accompanies the consciousness of absolute power. Repose is somewhere necessary, and the soul sleeps Avhile the senses gloat around ! Besides, the mechanical and high-finished style of art may be considered as something done to order. It is a task to be executed more or less perfectly, according to the price given and the industry of the artist. We stand by, as it were, to see the W'ork done, insist upon a greater degree of neatness and accuracy, and exercise a sort of petty, jealous jurisdiction over each particular. We are judges of the minuteness of the details, and though ever so nicely executed, as they give us no ideas beyond what we had before, we do not feel humbled in the comparison. The artizan scarcely rises into the artist ; and the name of genius is degraded rather than exalted in his person. The performance is so far ours that we have paid for it, and the highest price is all that is necessary to produce the highest finishing. But it is not so in works of genius and imagination. Their price is above rubies. The inspiration of the Muse comes not with the fiat of a monarch, with the donation of a patron ; and, therefore, the Great turn with disgust or effeminate in- difference from the mighty masters of the Italian school, because such works baffle and confound there self-love, and make them feel that there is something in the mind of man which they can neither give nor take away : " Quam nihil ad tuum, Papiniane, ingenium !" ( 105 ) ON LADY MORGAN'S LIFE OF SALVATOR ROSA.* There are few works more engaging than those which reveal to us the private history of eminent individuals ; the lives of painters seem to be even more interesting than those of almost any other class of men ; and, among painter.5, there are few names of greater note, or that have a more powerful attraction, than that of Salvator Rosa. "We are not sure, however, that Lady Morgan's work is not, upon the whole, more calculated to dissolve than to rivet the spell which these circumstances might, at first, throw over the reader's mind. The great charm of biography consists in the individuality of the details, the familiar tone of the incidents, the bringing us acquainted with the persons of men whom we have formerly known only by their works or names, the absence of all exag- geration or pretension, and the immediate appeal to facts instead of theories. We are afraid that, if tried by these rules, Lady Morgan will Ix; found not to Iiave written biography. A great part of the work is, accordingly, very fabulous and apocryplial. We are su))plicd with a few anecdotes or striking traits, and liave few ddUi, to go upon, during the early and most anxious period of Salvator's life ; but a fine opportunity is in this way afforded to conjecture how he did or did not pass his time ; in what manner, and at what jirecisc era, his peculiar talents finst dcveloperl thcniiclves ; and how lie must have felt iu certain situations, suppo.sing him ever to have been placed in them, in one place, for example, she employs several pages in describing From tlic Edinhurgh Review for July 1824. 1G6 On Lady Blorgans Salvator's being taken by his father from his viUage-home to the College of Somasco, with a detailed account of the garments in which he and his father may be presumed to have been dressed ; the adieus of his mother and sisters, the streets, the churches by which they passed ; in short; with an admirable panoramic view of the city of Naples and its environs, as it would appear to any modern traveller ; and an assurance at the end, that " such was the scenery of the Vomiro in the beginning of the seventeenth century ; such is it now ! " Added to all which, we have, at every turn, pertinent allusions to celebrated persons who visited Rome and Italy in the same century, and perhaps wandered in the same solitudes, or were hid in the recesses of the same ruins ; and learned dissertations on the state of the arts, sciences, morals, and politics, from the earliest records u[) to the present day. On the meagre thread of biography, in short, Lady Morgan has been ambitious to string the flowers of literature and the pearls of philosophy, and to strew over the obscure and half-forgotten origin of poor Salvator the colours of a sanguine enthusiasm and florid imagination ! So fascinated, indeed, is she with the splendour of her own style, that whenever she has a simple fact or well-authenticated anecdote to relate, she is com- pelled to apologise for the homeliness of the circumstance, as if the flat realities of her stoiy were unworthy accom- paniments to the fine imaginations with which she has laboured to exalt it. We could have wished, certainly, that she had shown less pretension in this respect. Women write well only when they write naturally ; and, therefore, we could dispense with their inditing prize-essays or solving academic questions ; and should be far better pleased with Lady Morgan if she would condescend to a more ordinary style, and not insist continually on playing the diplomatist in petticoats, and strutting the little Gibbon of her age ! Another circumstance that takes from the interest of the Life of Salvator Rosa. 1G7 present work is, that the subject of it was both an author and an artist, or, as Lady Morgan somewhat affectedly ex- presses it, a painter-poet. It is chiefly in the latter part of this compound character, or as a satirist, comic writer, and actor, that he comes upon the stage in these volumes ; and the enchantment of the scene is hurt by it. The great secret of our curiosity respecting the lives of painters is, that they seem to be a different race of beings, and to S2)eak a different language from ourselves. We want to see what is the connecting link between pictures and books, and how colours will translate into words. There is something mystical and anomalous to our conceptions in the existence of persons who talk by natural signs, and ex- press their thoughts by pointing to the objects they wish to represent. When they put pen to paper, it is as if a dumb person should stammer out his meaning for the first time, or as if the bark of a tree (repeating the miracle in Virgil) should open its lips and discourse. We have no notion how Titian could be witty, or Ivaffaelle learned ; and we wait for the solution of the problem, as for the result of some curious experiment in natural history. Titian's acquitting himself of a comi)liincnt to Charles V. or liaffaelle's writing a letter to a friend, describing his idea of the Galatea, ex- cites our wonder, and holds us in a state of breathless sus- pense, more than the first having painted all the master- pieces of the K.scurial, or than the latter having realised the divine idea in his imagination. Because they have a language which we want, we fancy they must want, or can- not be at home in ours ; we start and blush to find that, though few are painters, all men are, and naturally nnust be, orators and poets. We have a stronger desire to see the autographs of artists than of autliors or cni])erors ; for wc somehow cannot imagine in what manner tlicy would f^rm their tottering letters, or sign their untaught names. Wc, in fact, exercise a sort of mental superiority and imaginary patronage over them (delightful in proportion as it is mixed 1G8 On Lady Morgans up with a sense of awe and homage in other respects); watch their progress like that of grown children; are charmed with the imperfect glimmerings of wit or sense ; and secretly expect to find them — or express all the im- pertinence of an affected surprise if we do not — what Claude Lorraine is here represented to have been out of his painting- room, little better than natural changelings and drivellers. It pleases us, therefore, to be told that Caspar Poussin, when he was not painting, rode a-hunting ; that Nicolas was (it is pretended) a miser and a pedant — that Dome- nichino was retired and modest, and Guido and Annibal Caracci unfortunate ! This is as it should be, and flatters our self-love. Their works stand out to ages bold and pal- pable, and dazzle or inspire by their beauty and their bril- liancy. That is enough ; the rest sinks into the ground of obscurity, or it is only brought out as something odd and unaccountable by the patient efforts of good-natured curiosity. But all this fine theory and flutter of contra- dictory expectations are balked and knocked on the head at once, when, instead of a dim and shadowy figure in the background, a mere name, of which nothing is remembered but its immortal works, a poor creature performing miracles of art, and not knowing how it lias performed them, a per- son steps forward, bold, gay, gaiilard, with all his faculties about him, master of a number of accomplishments which he is not backward to display, mingling with the throng, looking defiance around, able to answer for himself, ac- quainted with his own merits, and boasting of them ; not merely having the gift of speech, but a celebrated improvisatore musician, comic actor and buffoon, patriot and cynic, reciting and talking equally well, taking up his pen to write satires, and laying it down to paint them. Tli^re is a vulgarity in all this practical bustle and restless stage- effect, that takes away from that abstracted and simple idea of Art which at once attracts and baffles curiosity like a distinct element in nature. " Painting," said Michael Life of Salvaior liosa. 1G9 Angelo, " is jealous, and requires the whole man to herself." And there is something sacred and privileged in the character of those heirs of fame and their noiseless re- putation, which ought not, we think, to be gossiped to the air, babbled to the echo, or proclaimed by beat of drum at the corners of streets, like a procession or a puppet-show. We may peep and pry into the ordinary life of painters, but it will not do to strip them stark naked. A speaking portrait of them, an anecdote or two, an expressive saying dropped by chance, an incident marking the bent of their genius, or its ftite, are delicious ; but here we should draw the curtain, or we shall profane this sort of image-worship. Least of all do we wish to be entertained with private brawls, or professional squabbles, or multifarious pretensions. " The essence of genius," as Lady Morgan observes, " is concentration." So is that of enthusiasm. We lay down the " Life and Times of Salvator Rosa," therefore, witli less interest in the subject than when we took it up. We had rather not read it. Instead of the old and floating traditions on the subject — instead of the romantic name and romantic pursuits of the daring copyist of Nature, conversing with lier rudest forms, or lost in lonely musing — eyeing the clouds that roll over his head, or listening to the waterfall, or seeing the fresh breeze waving the mountain-pines, or leaning against the side of an impending rock, or marking the bandit who issues from its clefts, "housing with wild men, with wild usages," liimsolf unharmed and free — and bc- ([ucatliing the fruit of his uninterrui)ted rctirument and out- of-doors studies as the best legacy to posterity — we have the Covicllo of the Carnival, the canseur of the saloons, the political malcontent, the satirist, sophist, caricaturist, the trafficker with Jews, the wrangler witli Courts and Academics, and, last of all, tlie jiaintcr of history, despising his own best works, and angry with all who admired or purchased them. The worst fault that Lady >rorgan has committed is in 170 On Lady Morgans siding with tliis infirmity of poor Salvator, and pampering him into a second Michael Angelo. The truth is, that the judgment passed upon him by his contemporaries was right in this respect. lie was a great hmdscapc-painter ; but his histories were comparatively forced and abortive. If this had been merely the opinion of his enemies, it might have been attributed to envy and faction ; but it was no less the deliberate sentiment of his friends and most enthusiastic partisans ; and if we reflect on the nature of our Artist's genius or his temper, we shall find that he could not well have been otherwise. This, from a child, was wayward, indocile, wild and irregular, unshackled, im- patient of restraint, and urged on equally by success or opposition into a state of jealous and morbid irritability. Those, who are at war with others, are not at peace with themselves. It is the uneasiness, the turbulence, the acrimony within, that recoils upon external objects. Barry abused the Academy, because he could not himself paint. If he could have painted up to his own idea of perfection, he would have thought this better than exposing the ill- directed efforts or groundless pretensions of others. Salvator was rejected by the Academy of St Luke, and ex- cluded, in consequence of his hostility to reigning authorities and his unlicensed freedom of speech, from the great works and public buildings in Eome ; and though he scorned and ridiculed those by whose influence this was effected, yet neither the smiles of friends and fortune, nor the flatteries of fame, which in his lifetime had spread his name over Europe, and might be confidently expected to extend it to a future age, could console him for the loss, which he affected to despise, and would make no sacrifice to obtain. He was, indeed, hard to please. He denounced liis rivals and maligners with bitterness; and with difficulty tolerated the enthusiasm of his disciples or the services of his patrons. He was at all times full of indignation, with or without cause. He was easily exasperated, and not Life of Salvator Bosa. 171 willing soon to be appeased, or to subside into a repose and good humour again. He slighted -what he did best ; and seemed anxious to go out of himself. In a word, irritability, rather than sensibility, was the category of his mind; he was more distinguished by violence and restlessness of will than by dignity or power of thought. The truly great, on the contrary, are sufficient to themselves, and so far satisfied with the world. " Their mind to them a kingdom is," from which they look out, as from a high watch-tower or noble fortress, on the passions, the cabals, the meannesses and follies of mankind. They shut themselves up " in measure- less content;" or soar to the great, discarding the little ; and appeal from envious detraction or '• unjust tribunals under change of times" to posterity. They are not satirists, cynics, nor the prey of these ; but painters, poets, and philosophers. Salvator was the victim of a too morbid sensibility, or of early difficulty and disappointment. lie was always quarrelling with the world, and lay at the mercy of his own piques and resentments. But antipathy, the spirit of con- tradiction, cai)tious discontent, fretful impatience, produce nothing fine in character ; neither dwell on beauty, nor pursue truth, nor rise into sublimity. The splenetic liumourist is not the painter of humanity. Landscape- painting is the obvious resource of misanthropy. Our artist, escaping from the herd of knaves and fuols, sought out some rude solitude, and fti.' •, Lcadu on tlm eternal Bpring," or repose in Gasitar Poussin's cool grottoes, or on liis breezy summits, or by hi.s sparkling waterfalls ! I'.ut wo nnist not indulge too long in those deliglitfid dreams. Time presses, and wc must on. It is mentioned in this part of the narrative 194 On Lady Morgans which treats of Salvator's contemporaries and great rivals in landscape, that Claude Lorraine, besides his natural stu- pidity in all other tilings, was six-and-thirty before he began to paint (almost the age at which Haffaelle died), and in ten years after was — what no other human being ever was or will be. The lateness of the period at which he commenced his studies, readers those unrivalled masterpieces which he has left behind him to all posterity a greater miracle than they would otherwise be. One Avould think that perfection required at least a whole life to attain it. Lady Morgan has described this divine artist very prettily and poetically ; but her description of Gaspar Poiissin is as fine, and might in some places be mistaken for that of his rival. This is not as it should be, since the distance is mmeasurable between the productions of Claude Lorraine and all other landscapes whatever, with the single exception of Titian's backgrounds.* Sir Joshua Eeynolds used to say (such was his opinion of the faultless beauty of his style) that " there would be another luaffaelle before there was another Claude.'' The first volume of the present work closes with a spirited account of the short-lived revolution at Naples, brought about by the celebrated Massaniello. Salvator contrived to be present at one of the meetings of the pa- triotic conspirators by torchlight, and has left a fine sketch of the unfortunate leader. An account of this memorable transaction will be found in Eobertson, and a still more striking and genuine one in the " Memoirs of Cardinal Eetz." We must hasten through the second volume with more rapid strides. Salvator, after the failure and death of Massa- niello, returned to Kome, disappointed, disheartened, and * "We might refer to the hackground of the St Peter Martyr. Claude, Gaspar, and Salvator could not have painted this one background among them ! But we have already remarked that comi^arisons are odious. Life of Salvcdor liosa. 195 gave vent to his feelings on this occasion by his two poems, "La Babilonia" and "La Guerra," which are full of the spirit of love and hatred, of enthusiasm and bitterness.* About the same time he painted his two allegorical pictures of " Human Frailty" and "Fortune." These were exhibited in the Pantheon, and from the sensation they excited and the sinister comments that were made on them, had nearly conducted Salvator to the Inquisition. Li the picture of " Fortune " more particularly, " the nose of one powerful ecclesiastic and the eye of another were detected in the brutish physiognomy of the swine who were treading pearls and flowers under their feet ; a Cardinal was re- cognised in an ass scattering with his hoof the laurel and myrtle which lay in his path, and in an old goat reposing on roses some there were who even fancied the infallible lover of Donna Olymina, the Sultana Queen of the Qiurinal ! The cry of atheism and sedition, of contempt of established authorities, was thus raised under the influence of private pique and long-cherished envy. It soon found an echo in the painted walls where the conclave sat ' in close divan,' and it was bandied about from mouth to mouth till it reached the ears of the Inquisitor, within the dark recesses of his house of terrors." Tlio consequence was that our artist was obliged to lly from Rome, after waiting a little to see if the storm would blow over, and to seek an a.sylum in the Court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany at Florence. Here he passed some of the liappii'st years of his life, fluttered by jirinces, feasting nobles, conversing with poets, receiving the sug- gestions of critics, painting landscapes or history as he liked best, composing and reciting his own verses, and making a fortune, which lie flung away again as .soon as he had made • The Cardinnl .Sforzft Palliivic'ui, having been picBcnt by hiH own requPHt at the recitation of one of thcHc jiicces, and bcins ankcd liin ojiinion, declared tliat " Salvator's poetry was full of Hiilendid iiassagcn, but that, as a whole, it was unequal." 196 On Lady Morgans it with the characteristic improvidence of genius. Of tlie gay, careless, and friendly intercourse in which he passed his time the following passages give a very lively inti- mation : — " It happened that Rosa, in one of those fits of idleness to which even his strenuous spirit was occasionally liable, flung down his pencil, and sallied forth to communi- cate the infection of his far niente to his friend liippi. On entering his studio, however, he found him labouring with great impetuosity on the background of his picture of the ' Flight into Egypt,' but in such sullen vehemence or in such evident ill-humour, that Salvator demanded ' Che fui, amico?' 'What am I about?' said Lippi, 'lam going mad with vexation. Here is one of my best pictures ruined : I am under a spell, and cannot even draw the branch of a tree, nor a tuft of herbage.' ' Signore Dio !' exclaimed Rosa, twisting the palette off his friend's thumb, 'what colours are here?' and scraping them off, and gently pushing away Lippi, he took his place, murmuring, 'Let me see, who knows but I may help you out of the scrape V Half in jest and half in earnest, he began to touch and retouch and change, till nightfall found him at the easel, finishing one of the best background landscapes he ever painted. All Florence came next day to look at this chef-d'oeuvre, and the first artists of the age took it as a study. "A few days afterwards Salvator called upon Lippi, found him preparing a canvas, while Malatesta read aloud to him and Ludovico Seranai the astronomer the MS, of Ms poem of the ' Sphynx.' Salvator, with a noiseless step, took his scat in an old Gothic window, and placing himself in a listening attitude, with a bright light falling through stained glass upon his fine head, produced a splendid study, of which Lippi, without a word of his intention, availed himself, and executed with incredible rapidity the finest picture of Salvator that was ever painted. Several copies Life of Salvator Hosa. 197 of it were takeu with Lippi's permission, and Ludovico Seranai purchased the original at a considerable price. In this picture Salvator is dressed in a cloth habit, with lichly-slashed sleeves, turnovers, and a collar. It is only a head and bust, and the eyes are looking towards the spectator. "At one time his impatience at being separated from Carlo Rossi and other friends was so great that he narrowly risked his safety to obtain an interview with them. About three years after he had been at Florence, he took post horses, and set oflf for Home at midnight. Having arrived at an inn in the suburbs, he despatched messages to eighteen of his friends, who all came, thinking he had got into some new scrape, breakfasted with them, and returned to Florence, before his Koman persecutors or his Tuscan friends were aware of his adventure." Salvator, however, was discontented even with this splendid lot, and sought to embower himself in entire se- clusion and in deeper bliss in the palace of the Counts Maffei at Volterra, and in the solitudes in its neighbourhood. Here he wandered night and morn, drinking in that slow lioison of reflection which his soul loved best — plaiuiing his " Catiline Consiiiracy " — preparing his Satires for the press — and weeding out their Neai)olitanisms, in wliicli he was assisted by tlie fine taste and quick tact of his friend Hcdi. Tliis appears to have been the only part of his life to which lie looked back with i)leasure or regret. He, however, left this enviable retreat .soon after, to return to Home, partly for family rca.sons, and partly, no doubt, because the deepest love of solitude and privacy does not wean the mind, that has once felt tlic fcveri.sh ajipetite, from the desire of jtopularity and distinction. Here, tlien, lie planted him- fcelf on the Monte I'incio, in a house situated between those of Claude Lorraine and Nicolas I'oussin, and used to walk out of an evening on the fine promenade near it, at the head of a group of gay cavaliers, musicians, and aspiring 1 98 On Lady Morgan's artists; while Nicolas Poussin, the very genius of antiquity personified, and now bent down with age himself, led another band of reverential disciples, side by side with some learned virtuoso or pious churchman ! Meantime, com- missions poured in upon Salvator, and he painted suc- cessively his " Jonas " for the King of Denmark, his '• Battle-piece" for Louis XIV., still in the ^Museum at Paris, and lastly, to his infinite delight, an "Altar-piece" for one of the churches in Rome. Salvator, about this time, seems to have imbibed (even before he was lectured on his want of economy by the Fool at the house of his friend Miuucci) some idea of making the best use of his time and talents. '' The Constable Colonna (it is reported) sent a purse of gold to Salvator Rosa on receiving one of his beautiful landscapes. The painter, not to be outdone in generosity, sent the prince another picture as a present — which the prince insisted on remunerating with another purse ; another present and another purse followed ; and this struggle be- tween generosity and liberality continued, to the tune of many other pictures and presents, until the prince, finding himself a loser by the contest, sent Salvator two purses, with an assurance that he gave \n,et lid cede le champ de hatcdlle." Salvator was tenacious in demanding the highest prices for his pictures, and brooking no question as to any abatement ; but when he had promised his friend Ricciardi a picture, he proposed to restrict himself to a .subject of one or two figures ; and they had nearly a quarrel about it. "In April 1GG2," says his biographer, " and not long after his return to Rome, his love of wild and mountainous scenery, and, perhaps, his wandering tendencies, revived by his recent journey, induced him to visit Loretto, or at least to make that holy city the shrine of a pilgrimage, which it appears was one rather of taste than of devotion. His feelings on this journey are well described in one of his letters. ' I could not/ says Salvator, ' give you any Life of Salvator Rosa. 199 account of my return from Loretto, till I arrived here on the 6th of May. I was for fifteen days in perpetual motion. The journey was beyond all description curious and picturesque ; much more so than the route from hence to Florence. There is a strano;e mixture of savage wildness and domestic scenery, of plain and precipice, such as the eye delights to wander over. I can safely swear to you that the tints of these mountains by far exceed all I have ever observed under your Tuscan skies ; and as for your Verucola, which I once thought a dreary desert, I shall henceforth deem it a fair garden, in comparison with the scenes I have now explored in these Alpine solitudes. God ! how often have I siglied to possess, how often since called to mind, those solitary hermitages which I passed on my way ! how often wished that fortune had reserved for me such a destiny ! I went by Ancona and Torolo, and on my return visited Assisa — all sites of extraordinary in- terest to the genius of painting. I saw at Terni (four miles out of the high road) the famous waterfall of Velino ; an object to satisfy the boldest imagination by its terrific beauty — a river dashing down a mountainous precipice of near a mile in height, and then flinging up its foam to nearly an equal altitude ! Bulieve, tliat while in tliis spot 1 moved not, saw not, without bearing you full in my mind and memory.' " Ho begin.s another letter, of a later date, on liis being employed to paint the altar of San Giovanni de' Fiorentini, thu.s gaily : — " Honnte U campane — Ring out the chimes ! At lust, after thirty years' existence in Home, of hoytcn blasted and coujplaints reiterated against men and gods, the occiisiou in accorded me for giving one altar-j)ieno to the public." U'm aiixioty to finiHii 1111.1 picture in time for a certain festival kept him, he add.s, "secluded from all c(tmmcrcc of the pen, and from every other in the world ; and I can truly say that I have forgotten niysclf, even to neglecting 200 On Lady Morgans to eat ; and so arduous is my apiJication that, wlieu I had nearly finished, I was obliged to keep my bed for two days ; and had not my recovery been assisted by emetics, certain it is it would have been all over with mo in consequence of some obstruction in the stomach. Pity me, then, dear friend, if for the glory of my pencil I have neglected to devote my pen to the service of friendship." — Ltltcr to the Abate Ricciardi. Passeri has left the following particulars, recorded of him on the day when this picture (the "Martyrdom of Saint Damian and Saint Cosmus") was first exhibited. "He (Salvator) had at last exposed his picture in the San Giovanni de' Fiorentini ; and I, to recreate myself, ascended on that evening to the heights of Monte della Trinita, where I found Salvator walking arm-in-arm with Signor Giovanni Carlo dei liossi, so celebrated for his performance on the harp of three strings, and brother to that Luigi Rossi, who is so eminent all over the world for liis perfection in musical composition. And when Salvator (who was my intimate friend) perceived me, he came forward laughingly, and said to me these precise words : — 'Well, what say the malignants now 1 iVre they at last convinced that I can paint on the great scale ? Why, if net, then e'en let Michael Angelo come down and do something Vjctter. Now at least I have stopped their mouths, and shown the world what I am worth.' I shrugged my shoulders. I and the Signor Rossi changed the subject to one which lasted us till nightfall ; and from this (contiimes Passeri in his rambling way *) it may be gathered how (jarjliardo he (Salvator) was in his own opinion. Yet it may not be denied but that he had all the endowments of a marvellous great painter ; one of great resources and high perfection ; and had he no other merit, he had at least that of being the originator of his own style. He spoke * Lady Morg.an is alwaj's quarrelling with Passeri's style, because it is not that of a modem Blue-stocking. Life of Sidvator liosa. 201 this evening of Paul Veronese more than of any other painter, and praised the Venetian School greatly. To Raffaelle he had no great leaning, for it was the fashion of the Neapolitan School to call him hard, di j^ietra, dry," etc. Our artist's constitution now be£;an to break, worn out perhaps by the efforts of his art, and still more by the irritation of his mind. In a letter dated 1GG6, he com- plains, — " I have suflfered two montlis of agony, even with the abstemious regimen of chicken broth ! My feet are two lumps of ice, in spite of the woollen hose I have imported from Venice. I never permit the fire to be quenched in my own room, and am more solicitous than even the Cavalier Cigoli (who died of a cold caught in painting a fresco in the Vatican). There is not a fissure in the house that I am not daily employed in diligently stopping up, and yet with all this I cannot get warm ; nor do I think the torch of love, or the caresses of Phryne herself, would kindle me into a glow. For the rest, I can talk of any- thing but my pencil ; my canvas lies turned to the wall; my colours are dried up now and for ever ; nor can I give my thoughts to any subject whatever but chimney-corners, brasiers, warming-pans, woollen gloves, woollen caps, and such sort of gear. In short, dear friend, I am perfectly aware that I have lost much of my original ardour, and am absolutely reduced to pass entire days without speaking a word. Those fires, once mine and so brilliant, are now all spent, or evaporating in smoke. Woe unto nic, should I ever be reduci d to exercise my j)cncil for bread ! " Vet after this, be at intervals jiroduced some of his best pictures. The scene, however, was now hastening to a close ; and the account licrc given of liis last days, though containing nothing pcrliaps very memorable, will yet, we think, be perused with a melancholy interest. "A change in liis complexion was tliought to indicate some derangement of the liver, and he continued in a state 202 On Lady 3Iorgans of great languor and depression during the autumn of 1672 ; but in the winter of 1G73 the total loss of appetite, and of all power of digestion, reduced him almost to the last extremity ; and he consented, at the earnest request of Lucrezia and his numerous friends, to take more medical advice. He now passed through the hands of various physicians, whose ignorance and technical pedantry come out with characteristic effect in tlie simple and matter-of- fact details which the good Padre Baldovini has left of the last days of his eminent friend. Various cures w^ere suggested by the lioman faculty for a disease which none had yet ventured to name. ^Meantime the malady increased, and showed itself in all the life-wearing symptoms of sleep- lessness, loss of appetite, intermitting fever, and burning thirst. A French quack was called in to the sufferer ; and his prescription was that he should drink water abundantly, and nothing but water. While, however, under the care of this Gallic Sangrado, a confirmed dropsy unequivocally declared itself; and Salvator, now acquainted with the nature of his disease, once more submitted to the intreaties of his friends ; and, at the special persuasion of the Padre Francesco Baldovini, placed himself under the care of a celebrated Italian empiric, then in great repute in Rome, called Dr Penna. " Salvator had but little confidence in medicine. He had already, during this melancholy winter, discarded all his physicians, and literally thrown physic to the dogs. But hope and spring, and love of life, revived together ; and towards the latter end of February, he consented to receive the visits of Penna, who had cured Baldovini (on the good father's own word) of a confirmed dropsy the year before. When the doctor was introduced, Salvator, with his wonted manliness, called on him to answer the question he was about to propose with honesty and frank- ness, viz., Was his disorder curable? Penna, after going through certain professional forms, answered, ' That his Life of Salvator Rosa. 203 disorder was a simple, and not a complicated dropsy, and that therefore it was curable.' " Salvator instantly and cheerfully placed himself in the doctor's hands, and consented to submit to whatever ho should subscribe. 'The remedy of Penna,' says Baldovhii, ' lay in seven little vials, of which the contents were to be swallowed every day.' But it was obvious to all that, as the seven vials were emptied, the disorder of Rosa increased ; and on the seventh day of his attendance, the doctor declared to his friend Baldovini that the malady of his patient was beyond his reach and skill. " The friends of Salvator now suggested to him their belief tbat his disease was brought on and kept up by his rigid confinement to the house, so opposed to his former active habits of Ufe ; but when they urged him to take air and exercise, he replied significantly to their importunities, ' I take exercise ! I go out ! if this is your counsel, how are you deceived ! ' At tlie earnest request, however, of Penna, he consented to see him once more ; but the moment he entered his room, he demanded of him, * if he now thought that he was curable ? ' Penna, in some emotion, prefaced his verdict by declaring solemnly ' that he should conceive it no less glory to restore .so illustrious a genius to health and to the .society he was so calculated to adorn than to .save the life of the Sovereign Pontiff himself ; but that, as far as his science went, theca.se was now beyond the reach of human remedy.' "While Penna spoke Salvator, who was surrounded by Ills family and many friends, fixed his penetrating eyes on tlie phy.sician'3 face with the intense louk of one who sought to read his .sentence in the countenance of his judge, ere it was verVjrilly pronounced ; l»ut that sentence was now pa.sscd ; and Salvator, whc; seemed more struck by surprise than by ap[)rehcnsi()n, remained silent and in a fixed attitude. His friends, shocked and grieved, or awed by the expression of his countenance, which was marked by a stern ami hopeless melancholy, arose and departed 201 On Lady Morgans silently one by one. After a long and deep reverie, Rosa suddenly left the room, and shut himself up alone in his study. There in silence and in unbroken solitude ho remained for two days, holding no communication with his wife, his son, or his most intimate friends ; and when at last their tears and lamentations drew him forth, he was no longer recognisable. Shrunk, feeble, attenuated, almost speechless, he sank on his couch, to rise no more ! " Life was now wearing away with such obvious rapidity, that his friends, both clerical and laical, urged him in the most strenuous manner to submit to the ceremonies and forms prescribed by the Eoman Catholic Church in such awful moments. How much the solemn sadness of those moments may be increased, even to terror and despair, by such pompous and lugubrious pageants, all who have visited Ital)'-, all who still visit it, can testify. Salvator demanded what they required of him. They replied, 'in the first instance to receive the sacrament, as it is administered in Rome to the dying.' ' To receiving the sacrament,' says his confessor, Baldovini, ' he showed no repugnance (non se moslrd repugnanie) ; but he vehemently and positively refused to allow the host, wdth all the solemn pomp of its procession, to be brought to his house, which he deemed unworthy of the divine presence.' " The rejection of a ceremony which was deemed in Rome indispensably necessary to salvation, and by one who was already stamped v/ith the Church's reprobation, soon took air ; report exaggerated the circumstance into a positive expression of infidelity ; and the gossipry of the Roman ante-rooms was supplied fur the time with a subject of discussion, in perfect harmony with their slander, bigotry, and idleness. ' As I went furtli from Salvator's door,' relates the worthy Baldovini, ' I met the Canonico Scornio, a man who has taken out a licence to speak of all men as he pleases. " And how goes it with Salvator 1 " demands of me this Canonico. " Bad enough, I fear." J-'if^ of Salvator Eosa. 205 "Well, a few nights back, happening to be in the ante-room of a certain great prelate, I found mj'^self in the centre of a circle of disputants, who were busily discussing whether the aforesaid Salvator would die a schismatic, a Huguenot, a Calvinist, or a Lutheran ? " " He will die, Signor Canonico," I replied, ' ' when it pleases God, a better Catholic than any of those who now speak so slightingly of him." And so I pursued my way.' " On the 15th of March Baldoviui entered the jmtient's chamber. But, to all appearance, Salvator was suffering great agony. ' How goes it with thee, Rosa 1 ' asked Baldovini kindly, as he approached him, ' Bad, bad ! ' was the emphatic reply. While writhing with pain, the sufferer, after a moment, added, ' To judge by what I now endure, the hand of death grasps me sharply.' " In the restlessness of pain, he now threw himself on the edge of the bed, and placed his head on the bosom of Lucrezia, who sat supporting and weeping over him. His afflicted son and friend took their station at the other side of his couch, and stood watching the issue of these sudden and frightful spasms in mournful silence. At that moment a celebrated Roman physician, the Doctor Catanni, entered the apartment. Ho felt the pulse of Salvator, and perceived that he was fast .sinking. Ho communicated his approach- ing dis.solution to those most interested in the melancholy intelligence, and it struck all present with unutterable grief. Baldovini, however, true to his sacred calling, even in the depth of hi.s human affliction, instantly despatched the young Agosto to the neighbouring Convent dclla Trinitli for the holy Viaticum. Wliilc life was still fluttering at tlic heart of Salvator, the officiating priest of the day arrived, bearing with him the lioly apparatus of tlic last mysterious ceremony of tJie CInuch. The shoulders of Salvator were laid bare, and anointed with the consecrated oil ; some prayed fervently, others wept, and all even still hoped ; but the taper which the Doctor Catanni liekl to 2U6 On Lady Morgans the lips of Salvator, while the Viaticum was administered, burned brightly and steadily ! Life's last sign had trans- pired, as religion performed her last rite." Salvator left a wife and son (a boy of about thirteen), who inherited a considerable property in books, prints, and bills of exchange, which his father had left in his banker's hands for pictures painted in the last few years of his life. We confess we close these volumes with something of a melancholy feeling. We have, in this great artist, another instance added to the list of those who, being born to give delight to others, appear to have lived only to torment themselves, and with all the ingredients of happiness placed within their reach, to have derived no benefit either from talents or success. Is it that the outset of such persons in life (who are raised by their own efforts from want and obscurity) jars their feelings and sours their tempers 1 or that painters, being often men without education or general knowledge, over- rate their own pretensions, and meet with continual mortifications in the rebuflfs they receive from the world, who do not judge by the same individual standard 1 Or is a morbid irritability the inseparable concomitant of genius'? None of these suppositions fairly solves the difficulty ; for many of the old painters (and those the greatest) were men of mild manners, of great modesty, and good temper. Painting, however, speaks a language known to few, and of which all pretend to judge ; and may thus, perhaps, afford more occasion to pamper sensibility into a disease, where the seeds of it are sown too deeply in the constitution and not checked by proportionable self-know- ledge and reflection. Where an artist of genius, however, is not made the victim of his own impatience, or of idle censures, or of the good fortunes of others, we cannot conceive of a more delightful or enviable life. There is none that implies a greater degree of thoughtful abstraction, or a more entire freedom from angry differences of opinion, Life of Salvator liosa. 207 or that leads the mind more out of itself and reposes more calmly on the grand and beautiful, or the most casual object in nature. Salvator died j'oung. He had done enough for fame ; and had he been happier, he ■would perhaps have lived longer. We do not, in one sense, feel the loss of painters so much as that of other eminent men. They may still be said to be present with us bodily in their works : we can revive their memory by every object we see ; and it seems as if they could never wholly die, while the ideas and thoughts, that occupied their minds while living, survive, and have a palpable and permanent existence in forms of external nature. ( 208 ) ON HOaAETH'S MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE. TriE superiority of the pictures of Hogarth, which we have seen in the late collection at the British Institution,* to the common prints, is confined chiefly to the Marriage d,- la-Mode. "We shall attempt to illustrate a few of their most striking excellences, more particularly witli reference to the expression of character. Their merits are indeed so prominent, and have been so often discussed, that it may be thought difficult to point out any new beauties ; but they contain so much truth of nature, they present the objects to the eye under so many aspects and bearings, admit of so many constructions, and are so pi'egnant with meaning, that the subject is in a manner inexhaustible. Boccaccio, the most refined and sentimental of all the novel-writers, has been stigmatised as a mere inventor of licentious tales, because readers in general have only seized on those things in his works which were suited to their own taste, and have reflected their own grossness back upon the writer. So it has happened that, the majority of critics having been most struck with the strong and decided expression in Hogarth, the extreme delicacy and subtle gradations of character in his pictures have almost entirely escaped them. In the first i^icture of the Marriage a-la- Mode, the three figures of the young Nobleman, his in- tended Bride, and her inamorato, the Lawyer, show how much Hogarth excelled in the power of giving soft and effeminate expression. They have, however, been less noticed than the other figures, which tell a plainer story and convey a more palpable moral. Nothing can be more * They are now in the National Gallery, Nos. 113-118.— .Fd. Marriage a-la-Mode. 209 finely managed than the differences of cliaracter in these delicate personages. The Beau sits smiling at the looking- glass, with a reflected simper of self- ad miration and a languishing inclination of the head, while the rest of his body is perked up on his high heels with a certain air of tip-toe elevation. He is the Narcissus of the reign of George II., whose powdered peruke, ruffles, gold lace, and patches, divide his self-love unequally with his ovm person — the true Sir Flume of his day — "Of amber-lidded snuff-box justly vain, And the nice conduct of a clouded cane.'' There is the same felicity in the figure and attitude of the Bride, courted by the Lawyer. There is the utmost flexi- bility and yielding softness in her whole person, a listless languor and tremulous suspense in the expression of her face. It is the i^recise look and air which Pope has given to his favourite Belinda, just at the moment of the Rape of the Lock. The heightened glow, the forward intelli- gence, and loosened soul of love in the same face, in the assignation scene before the masquerade, form a fine and instructive contra.st to the delicacy, timidity, and coy reluctance expressed in the first. Tlie Lawyer in both pictures is much the same — perhaps too much so — though even this unmoved, unaltered a]ipearance may be designed as characteristic. In both cases he has "a person and a smooth dispose, framed to make women false." He is full of that easy good humour and easy good opinion of himself with which the sex are delighted, Tliere is not a sharj) angle in his face to obstruct his success, or give a hint of doubt or difficulty. His whole aspect is round and rosy, lively and unmeaning, happy without the least expen.se of thought, careless and inviting, and conveys a i)crfect idea of the uninterrupted glide and plea.sing murmur of the soft jicriods that flow from Ids tongue. The cxjiression of the Bride in tlic Morning .scene is the 210 On Hogarth's most liiglily seasoned, and at the same time the most vulgar, in the series. The figure, face, and attitude of the husband are inimitable. Hogarth has with great skill contrasted the pale countenance of the husband with the 3'ellow whitish colour of the marble chimney-piece behind him, in such a manner as to preserve the fleshy tone of the former. The airy splendour of the view of the inner-room in this picture is probably not exceeded by any of the pro- ductions of the Flemish school. The Young Girl in the third picture, who is represented as the victim of fashionable profligacy, is unquestionably one of the Artist's chefs-d'oeuvre. The exquisite delicacy of the painting is only surpassed by the felicity and. subtlety of the conception. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the extreme softness of her person and the hardened indifference of her character. The vacant stillness, the docility to vice, the premature suppression of youthful sensibility, the doll-like mechanism of the whole figure which seems to have no other feeling but a sickly sense of pain, show the deepest insight into human nature, and into the efi"ects of those refinements in depravity, by which it has been good-naturedly asserted, that "vice loses half its evil in losing all its grossness." The .story of this picture is in some parts very obscure and enisrmatical. It is certain that the Nobleman is not look- ing straightforward to the Quack, whom he seems to have been threatening with his cane, but that his eyes are turned up with an ironical leer of triumph to the Procuress. The commanding attitude and size of this woman, the swelling circumference of her dress, spread out like a turkey cock's feathers, the fierce, ungovernable, inveterate malignity of her countenance, which hardly needs the comment of the clasp-knife to explain her purpose, are all admirable in themselves, and still more so as they are opposed to the mute in.sensibility, the elegant negligence of the dres.s, and the childish figure of the girl, who is supposed to be her Marriage d-la-Mode. 21 1 protegee. As for the Quack, there can be no douLt enter- tained about him. His face seems as if it were composed of salve, and his features exhibit all the chaos and confu- sion of the most gross, ignorant, and impudent empiricism. The gradations of ridiculous affectation in the Music scene are finely imagined and j^reserved. The prepos- terous, overstrained admiration of the Lady of Quality, the sentimental, insipid, patient delight of the Man, with his hair in paper, and sipping his tea — the pert, smirking, conceited, half-distorted approbation of the figure next to liim, the transition to the total insensibility of the round face in profile, and then to the wonder of the Negro boy at the rapture of his Mistress, form a perfect whole. The sanguine complexion and flame-coloured hair of the female Virtuoso throw an additional light on the character. This is lost in the print. The continuing the red colour of the hair into the back of the chair has been pointed out as one of those instances of alliteration in colouring of which these pictures are everywhere full. The gross, bloated appearance of the Italian Singer is well relieved by the hard features of the instrumental performer behind him, which niiglit be carved of wood. The Negro boy liolding the chocolate, both in expression, cohmr, and execution, is a ma.stcr-j)iece. The gay, lively dcri.sion of the other Neg:o boy, playing with the Actiuon, is an ingenious contrast to the profound amazement of the fir.st. Sume account has already been given of the two lovers in this ])icture. It is rurinu.s to oljserve the infinite activity of mind which the artist displays on every occasion. An instance occurs in the present picture, lie has so contrived the papers in the hair of the I'ridc as to make them look almost like a •wreath of half-blown flowers, while tho.sc which he has placed on the head of the musical Amateur very mudi resemble a chn'ruix-de-frise of horns, which adorn and fortify the lack-lustre cxprcssii)n and mild roignation of the face beneath. 212 On UogarWs The Ni'^ht Scene is inferior to the rest of the series. The attitude of the Husband, who is just killed, is one in which it would be impossible for him to stand or even to fall. It resembles the loose pasteboard figures they make for children. The characters in the last picture, in which the Wife dies, are all masterly. We would particularly refer to the captious, petulant self-sufficiency of the Apothecary, whose face and figure are constructed on exact physiognomical principles, and to the fine example of passive obedience and non-resistance in the Servant, whom he is taking to task, and whose coat of green and yellow livery is as long and melancholy as his face. The disconsolate look, the haggard eyes, the open mouth, the comb sticking in the hair, the broken, gapped teeth which, as it were, hitch in an answer — everything about him denotes the utmost perplexity and dismay. The harmony and gradations of colour in this picture are uniformly preserved with the greatest nicety, and are well worthy the attention of the artist. It has been observed that Hogarth's pictures are exceed- ingly unlike any other representations of the same kind of subjects — that they form a class and have a character peculiar to themselves. It may be worth while to consider in what this general distinction consists. In the first place, they are, in the strictest sense, His- toriccd pictures ; and if what Fielding says be true, that his novel of 2'o?n Jones ought to be regarded as an epic prose- poem, because it contained a regular development of fable, manners, character, and passion, the compositions of Hogarth will, in like manner, be found to have a higher claim to the title of Epic Pictures than many which have oi late arrogated that denomination to themselves. When we say that Hogarth treated his subjects historically, we mean that his works represent the manners and humours of mankind in action, and their characters by varied ex- pression. Everything in his pictures has life and motion Marriage d-la-Mode. 21 o in it. Not only does the business of tlie scene never stand still, but every feature and muscle is put into full jilay ; the exact feelins; of the moment is broucjht out, and carried to its utmost height, and then instantly seized and stamped on the canvas for ever. The expression is always taken en passani, in a state of progress or change, and, as it were, at the salient point. Besides the excellence of each indi- vidual face, the reflection of the expression from fuce to face, the contrast and struggle of particular motives and feelings in the different actors in the scene, as of anger, contempt, laughter, compassion, are conveyed in the happiest and most lively manner. His figures are not like the background on which they are i)ainted : even the pictures on the wall liave a peculiar look of their own. Again, with the rapidity, variety, and scope of history, Hogarth's heads have all the reality and correctness of portraits. He gives the extremes of character and expres- sion, but he gives them with perfect truth and accuracy. Tills is, in fact, what distinguishes his compositions from all others of the same kind, that they are equally remote from caricature and from mere still life. It of course happens in subjects from common life that the painter can procure real models, and he can get them to sit as long as ]ie pleases. Hence, in genera], those attitudes and expres- sions have been chosen which could be assumed the longest, and in imitating which the artist, ]>y taking pains and time, might produce almost as complete fac- similes as lie cfuild of a fhnver or a flower-pot, of a damask curtain or a china vase. The copy was as perfect and as uninteresting in the one case as in the other. On the contrary, subjects of drollery and ridicule affording frequent cxamj)]e3 of strange deformity and peculiarity of features, these have been eagerly seized by another class of artists who, without suijecting themselves to the laborious drudgery of the Dutch school and their imitators, have produced our popular caricatures, by rudely copying or 214 On Hogartlis exaggerating the casual irregularities of the human countenance. Hogarth lias equally avoided the faults of both these styles, the insipid tameness of the one and the gross vulgarity of the other, so as to give to the produc- tions of his pencil equal solidity and effect. For his faces go to the very A'crge of caricature, and yet never (we believe in any single instance) go beyond it : they take the very ■widest latitude, and yet we always see the links whiclx bind them to nature : they bear all the marks and carry all the conviction of reality with them, as if we had seen tlie actual faces for the first time, from the precision, con- sistencj', and good sense with which the whole and every part is made out. They exhibit the most uncommon features with the most uncommon expressions, but which are yet as familiar and intelligible as possible, because ■with all the boldness they have all the truth of nature. Hogarth has left behind him as many of these memorable faces in their memorable moments, as perhajDS most of us remember in the course of our lives, and has thus doubled the quantity of our observation. We have already attempted to point out the fund of observation, physical and moral, contained in one set of these pictures, the Marriage a-la-Mode. The rest would furnish as many topics to descant upon, were the patience of the reader as inexhaustible as the painter's invention. But, as this is not the case, Ave shall content ourselves with barely referring to some of those figures in the other pictures, which appear the most striking, and which we see not only while we are looking at them, but which we haA'e before us at all other times. For instance, who liaving seen can easily forget that exquisite frost-j)iece of religion and morality, the antiquated Prude in the Morning scene ; or that striking commentary on the good old times, the little wretched appendage of a Footboy, who crawls half-famished and half-frozen behind her? The French Man and Woman in the Noon are the perfection of flighty Marriage d-Ia-3Iode. 215 affectation and studied grimace ; the amiahle fraternisation of the two old "Women saluting each other is not enough to be admired ; and in the little Master, in the same national group, we see the early promise and personification of that eternal principle of wondrous self-complacency, proof against all circumstances, which makes the French the only people who are vain even of being cuckolded and being conquered ! Or shall we prefer to this the outrageous distress and unmitigated terrors of the Boy who has dropped his dish of meat, and who seems red all over with shame and vexation, and bursting with the noise he makes 1 Or what can be better than the good housewifery of the Girl underneath, who is devouring the lucky fragments, or than the plump, ripe, florid, luscious look of the Servant-wench embraced by a greas}"^ rascal of an Othello, with her pie- dish tottering like Ler virtue, and with the most precious part of its contents running over? Just — no, not quite — as good is the joke of the woman over head Avho, having quarrelled with her husband, is throwing their Sunday's dinner out of the window, to complete this chapter of accidents of baked-dishes. The husband in the Kveninir scene is certainly as meek as any recorded in history ; but we cannot say that we admire this iiicturc, or the Night scene after it. But then, in the Taste in High Life, tliore is that inimitable pair, differing only in sex, congratulating and delighting one another by "all the mutually-reflected charities" of folly and afTcctation, with the young Lady coloured like a rose, dandling her little, black, piig-faced, white-teethed, chuckling favourite, and with the portrait of Mons. Des Noyers in the background, dancing in a grand ballet, surrounded by butterflies. And again, in the Election-dinner [Suanc Museum r»;}] is the immortal Cobler, surrounded by his Peers who, " frequent and full " — " In loud recces and hrawtinfj conclave ait :" the Jew in the second picture [Soanc Museum 50], a very 216 On Hogarth's Marriage d-la-Mode. Jew in grain — innumerable fine sketches of heads in the Polling for Votes [Soane Museum 73], of which the Nobleman overlooking the caricaturist is the best — and then the irresistible tumultuous display of broad humour in the Chairing the Member [Soane Museum 78], which is, perhaps, of all Hogarth's pictures, the most full of laughable incidents and situations — the yellow, rusty-faced Thresher, with his swingnig flail, breaking the head of one of the Chairmen, and his redoubted antagonist, the Sailor, with his oak stick and stumping wooden leg, a supplemental cudgel — the persevering ecstasy of the hobbling, blind Fiddler who, in the fray, appears to have been trod upon by the artificial excrescence of the honest Tar — Monsieur, the Monkey, with piteous aspect, speculating the impend- ing disaster of the triumphant candidate, and his brother Bruin appropriating the paunch — the precipitous flight of the Pigs, souse overhead into the water, the fine Lady fainting, with vermilion lips, and the two Chimney- sweepers, satirical young rogues ! We had almost forgot the Politician who is burning a hole through his hat with a candle in reading the newspaper ; and the Chickens, in the March to Finchley, wandering in search of their lost dam, who is found in the pocket of the Serjeant. Of the pictures in the Rake's Progress, in this Collection [Soane Museum 1-8], we shall not here say anything, because we think them, on the whole, inferior to the prints, and because they have already been criticised by a writer, to whom we could add nothing, in a paper which ought to be read by every lover of Hogarth and of English genius.*' * An Essay on the Genius of Hogartli, by C. Lamb. ( 217 ) OX THE FINE ARTS. The term Fine Arts may be viewed as embracing all those arts in which the powers of imitation or invention are ex- erted, chiefly with a view to the production of pleasure by the immediate impression which they make on the mind. But the phrase has of late been restricted to a narrower and more technical signification, namely, to painting, sculpture, engraving, and architecture, which appeal to the eye as the medium of pleasure ; and, by way of eminence, to the two first of these arts. In the following observa- tions, I shall adopt this limited sense of the term ; and shall endeavour to develope the principles upon which the great masters have proceeded, and also to inquire in a more particular manner into the state and probable ad- vancement of these arts in this country. The great works of art at present extant, and which may be regarded as models of perfection in their several kinds, are tlie Greek statues, the pictures of the celebrated Italian masters, those of the Dutch and Flemish schools, to wliicli wc may add the comic productions of our own countryman Hogartli. These all .stand unrivalled in the history of art ; and they owe their pre-eminence and perfection to one and the same principle — the immediate imitation of nature. Tliis principle i)rcdominated equally in tlio cLassical forms of tlie antique and in the grotesipie figures of Ifog.irtli ; the pcrfcctiun of art in each arose from the truth and identity of tlie imitation with the reality ; the diU'orcnce was in the subjects — there was none in the mode of imi- tation. Yet the advocates for the ideal stjstem of ai-t would persuade their disciples that the difTcrence between Hogarth 218 On the Fine Arts. and the antique does not consist in tlie different forms of nature •\vliicli they imitated, but in this, that tlie one is like, and the other unlike, nature. This is an error, the most detrimental, perhaps, of all others, both to the theory and practice of art. As, however, the prejudice is very strong and general, and supported by the highest authority, it will be necessary to go somewhat elaborately into the question, in order to produce an impression on the other side. What has given rise to the common notion of the ideal, as something quite distinct from actual nature, is probably the perfection of the Greek statues. Not seeing among ourselves anything to correspond in beauty and grandeur, either with the feature or form of the limbs in these ex- quisite remains of antiquity, it was an obvious, but a superficial conclusion that they must have been created from the idea existing in the artist's mind, and could not have been copied from anything existing in nature. The contrary, however, is the fact. The general form both of the face and figure, which we observe in the old statues, is not an ideal abstraction, is not a fanciful invention of the sculptor, but is as completely local and national (though it happens to be more beautiful) as the figures on a Chinese screen, or a copper-plate engraving of a negro chieftain in a book of travels. It will not be denied that there is a difference of physiognomy as well as of com- plexion in different races of men. The Greek form appears to have been naturally beautiful, and they had, besides, every advantage of climate, of dress, of exercise, and of modes of life to improve it. The artist had also every facility afforded him in the study and knowledge of the human form ; and their religious and public institutions gave him every encouragement in the prosecution of his art. All these causes contributed to the perfection 'of these noble productions ; but I should be inclined principally to attribute the superior symmetry of form common to the On the Fine Arts. 219 Greek statues, in the first place, to the superior symmetry of the models in nature, and in the second, to the more constant oj)portunities for studying them. If we allow also for the superior genius of the people, we shall not be wrong; but this superiority consisted in their peculiar susceptibility to the impressions of what is beautiful and grand in nature. It may be thought an objection to what Las just been said, that the antique figures of animals, &c., are as fine, and proceed on the same principles, as their statues of gods or men. But all that follows from this seems to be that their art had been perfected in the study of the human form — the test and proof of power and skill — and was then transferred easily to the general imitation of all other objects, according to their true characters, pro- portions, and appearances. As a confirmation of these remarks, the antique portraits of individuals were often superior even to the personification of their gods. I think that no unprejudiced spectator of real taste can hesitate for a moment in preferring the head of the Antinous, for example, to that of the Apollo. And in general it may be laid down as a rale tliat the most perfect of the an- tiques are the most sinqjle — those which affect the least action or vi(jlence of passion — which repose the most on natural beauty of form and a certain expression of sweet- ness and dignity, tliat is, which remain most nearly ia that state in whicii they could be copied from nature with- out straining the limbs or features of the individual, or rack- ing the invention of the artist. This tendency of Greek art to repose has indeed been reproached with insipidity V)y those who had not a true feeling of beauty and senti- ment. I, however, prefer these models of habitual grace or internal grandeur to tlie violent distortions of sufTcring in the La^coon, or even to the supercilious air of the Apollo. The Niobe, more than any other anticpie head, combines truth and beauty with deep passion. Jlut here the passion is fixed, intense, habitual — it is not a sudden 220 071 the Fke Arts. or violent gesticulation, but a settled mould of features ; the grief it expresses is sucli as might almost turn the human countenance itself i7ito marble / In general, then, I would be understood to maintain that the beauty and grandeur so much admired in the Greek statues were not a voluntary fiction of the brain of the artist, but existed substantially in the forms from which they were copied, and by which the artist was surrounded. A striking authority in support of these observations, which has in some measure been lately discovered, is to be found in the Elgin Marbles, taken from the Acropolis at Athens, and supposed to be the works of the celebrated Phidias. The process of fastidious refinement and indefinite abstraction is certainly not visible there. The fifrures have all the ease, sim- plicity, and variety of individual nature. Even the de- tails of the subordinate parts, the loose hanging folds in the skin, the veins under the belly or on the sides of the horses, more or less swelled, as the animal is more or less in action, are given with scrupulous exactness. This is true nature and true art. In a word, these invaluable remains of antiquity are precisely like casts taken from life. The ideal is not the preference of that which exists only in the mind to that which exists in nature, but the preference of that which is fine in nature to that which is less so. There is nothing fine in art but what is taken almost immediately, and as it were, in the mass, from what is finer in nature. Where there have been the finest models in nature, there have been the finest works of art. As the Greek statues were copied from Greek forms, so rvaffaelle's expressions were taken from Italian faces, and I have heard it remarked that thewomen in the streets of Rome seem to have Avalked out of his pictures in the Vatican. Sir Joshua Reynolds constantly refers to Raffiielle as the highest example in modern times (at least with one exception) of the grand or ideal style ; and yet he makes On the Fine Arts. 221 the essence of that style to consist in the embodying of an abstract or general idea, formed in the mind of the ar- tist by rejecting the peculiarities of individuals, and re- taining only what is common to the species. Nothing can be more inconsistent than the style of liafFaelle with this definition. In his Cartoons and in his groups in the Vatican there is hardly a face or figure which is anything more than fine individual nature finely disposed and copied. The late Mr Barry, who could not be suspected of prejudice on this side of the question, speaks thus of them : " In Rafiaelle's pictures (at the Vatican) of the Dispute of the Sacrament and the School of Athens, one sees all the heads to be entirely copied from particular characters in nature, nearly proper for the persons and situations which he adapts them to ; and he seems to me only to add and take away what may answer his purpose in little parts, features, tkc; conceiving, while he had the head before him, ideal cha- racters and expressions, which he adapts their features and ])eculiarities of face to. Tliis attention to the particulars which distinguish all the different faces, persons and cha- racters, the one from the other, gives his pictures quite the verity and unaffected dignity of nature which stamp the distinguishing differences betwixt one man's face and body and another's." If anything is wanting to the conclusiveness of this testimony, it is oidy to look at the pictures themselves; particularly the Miracle of the Conversion and the Assem- hbj of Saints, which are little else than a collection of divine portraits, in natural and expressive attitudes, full of the loftiest thought and feeling, and as varied as they are fine. It is this reliance on the power of nature which has produced these mastcr[)ieccs by the Prince of I'ainterH, in which cxiircssion is all in all ; where one spirit — that (if truth — pervades every part, brings down heaven to earth, mingles Cardinals and Popes with angels and apostles, .and yet blends and harmonises the whole by the true toucLca 222 On the Fine Arts. and intense feeling of -what is beautiful and grand in nature. It is no wonder that Sir Joshua, when he first saw Piaffaelle's pictures in the Vatican, was at a loss to discover any great excellence in them, if he was looking out for his theory of the ideal — of neutral character and middle forms. There is more an appearance of abstract grandeur of form in Michael Angelo. He has followed up, has en- forced and expanded, as it were, a preconceived idea, till he sometimes seems to tread on the verge of caricature. His forms, however, are not middle but extreme forms, massy, gigantic, supernatural. They convey the idea of the greatest size in the figure, and in all the parts of the figure. Every muscle is swollen and turgid. This ten- dency to exaggeration would have been avoided, if Michael Angelo had recurred more constantly to nature, and had pro- ceeded less on a scientific knowledge of the structure of the human body ; for science gives only the positive form of the different parts, which the imagination may afterwards mag- nify as it pleases, but it is nature alone which combines them with perfect truth and delicacy, in all the vaiieties of motion and expression. It is fortunate that I can refer, in illustration of my doctrine, to the admirable frag- ment of the Theseus at Lord Elgin's, which shows the possibility of uniting the grand and natural style in the highest degree. The form of the limbs as affected by pressure or action, and the general sway of the body, are preserved with the most consummate mastery. I should prefer this statue, as a model for forming the style of the student, to the Apollo, which strikes me as having some- thing of a theatrical appearance ; or to the Hercules, in which there is an ostentatious and over-laden display of anatomy. This last figure, indeed, is so overloaded with sinews, that it has been suggested as a doubt whether, if life could be put into it, it would be able to move. Gran- deur of conception, truth of nature, and purity of taste On the Fine Arts. 223 seem to have been at their height when the masterpieces which adorned the Temple of Minerva at Athens, of "which we have only these imperfect fragments, were produced. Compared with these, the hvter Greek statues display a more elaborate workmanship, more of the artifices of style. The several parts are more uniformly balanced, made more to tally like modern periods ; each muscle is more equally brought out, and more highly finished as a part, but not with the same subordination of each part to the whole. If some of these wonderful productions have a f:iult, it is the want of that entire and naked simplicity which pervades the v/hole of the Elgin Marbles. Having spoken here of the Greek statues, and of the ■works of riaffaelle and Michael Angelo, as far as relates to the imitation of nature, I shall attempt to point out, to the best of my ability and as concisely as possible, what I conceive to be their general and characteristic excellences. The ancients excelled in beauty of form, Michael Angelo in grandeur of conception, Iladaelle in expression. In Raffaelle's faces, particularly his women, the expression is very superior to the form ; in the ancient statues the form is the principal thing. The interest which the latter excite is in a manner external ; it depends on a certain grace and lightness of appearance, joined with exquisite symmetry and refined susceptibility to voluptuous emotions; but there is in general a want of pathos. In tlieir looks we do not read the wishings of tlie heart; by their beauty they arc deified. The i>athf)S which they exhibit is rather that of present and phy.sical distress than of deep internal sen- timent. What has been remarked of Leonardo da A'inci is also true of Ivaffaellc, that there is an angelic sweetness and tenderness in liis faces, in which human frailty and pa-ssion are purified by the sanctity of religion. Tiio ancient statues are. finer objects for the eye to contemplate ; they represent a more perfect race of physical beings ; but we have little sympatliy with them. In ilafTaclle all our 224 On the Fine Arts. natural sensibilities are heightened and refined by the sentiments of faith and hope, pointing mysteriously to the interests of another world. The same intensity of passion appears also to distinguish RafTaelle from INIichael Angelo, Michael Augelo's forms are grander, but they are not so informed with expression. Raffaelle's, however ordinary in themselves, are full of expression, "even to o'erflow- ing • " every nerve and muscle is impregnated with feeling — bursting with meaning. In Michael Angelo, on the contrary, the powers of body and mind appear superior to any events that can hajipen to them ; the capacity of thought and feeling is never full, never strained, or tasked to the full extremity of what it will bear. All is in a lofty repose or solitary grandeur, which no human interest can shake or disturb. It has been said that ]\Iichael Angelo painted ma7i, and HafFaelle me7i ; that the one was an epic, the other a dramatic painter. But the distinction I have stated is, perhaps, truer and more intelligible, viz., that the one gave greater dignity of form, and the other greater force and refinement of expression. Michael Angelo, in fact, borrowed his style from sculpture. He represented in general only single figures (with subordinate accompaniments), and had not to express the conflicting actions and passions of a multitude of persons. It is, therefore, a mere truism to say that his compositions are not dramatic. He is much more picturesque than HafFaelle. His drawing of the human form has the characteristic freedom and boldness of Titian's landscapes. After Michael Angelo and Kaflfaelle, there is no doubt that Leonardo da Vinci and Correggio are the two painters in modern times, who have carried historical expression to the highest ideal perfection ; and yet it is equally cer- tain that their heads are carefully copied from faces and expressions in nature. Leonardo excelled principally in his women and children. There is, in his female heads, a peculiar charm of expression, a character of natural sweet- On the Fine Avis. 225 ness and tender playfulness, mixed up with, tlie pride of conscious intellect and the graceful reserve of personal dignity. He blends purity with voluptuousness ; and the expression of his women is equally characteristic of " the mistress or the saint." His pictures are worked up to the height of the idea he had conceived, with an elaborate felicity ; but this idea was evidently first suggested by, and afterwards religiously compared with, nature. This was his excellence. His fault is that his style of execution is too mathematical ; that is, his pencil does not follow the graceful variety of the details of objects, but substitutes certain refined gradations, both of form and colour, pro- ducing equal changes in equal distances, with a mechani- cal uniformity. Leonardo was a man of profound learning as well as genius, and perhaps transferred too much of the formality of science to his favouiite art. The master])ieces of Correggio have the same identity with nature, the same stamp of truth. He has, indeed, given to his pictures the utmost softness and refinement of outline and expression ; but this idea, at which he con- stantly aimed, is filled up with all the details and varieties Avhich such heads would have in nature. So fai from anything like a naked, abstract idea, or middle form, the individuality of his faces has something peculiar in it, even approaching the grotesque. He has endeavoured to impress habitually on the countenance those undulating outlines whii:h rapture or tenderness leave there, and has chosen for this purpose those forms and proportions which most obviously assisted his design. As to the colouring of Correggio, it is nature itself. Not only is the general tone perfectly true, but every speck and particle is varied in colour, in relief, in texture, with a care, a felicity, and an cfTcct whicii arc almost magical. His light and shade arc equally admirable. No ono else perhaps, ever gave the same harmony and roundness to his compositions. So true are his shadows, equally free P 226 071 the Fine Avis. from coldness, opacity, or false glare — so clear, so broken, so airy, and yet so deep, that if you hold your hand so as to cast a shadow on any part of the flesh which is in the light, this part, so shaded, will present exactly the same appearance which the painter has given to the shadowed part of the jDicture. Correggio, indeed, possessed a greater variety of excellences in the diflfereut departments of his art than any other painter ; and yet it is remarkable that the impression which his pictures leave upon the mind of the common spectator is monotonous and comparatively feeble. His style is in some degree mannered and confined. For instance, he is without the force, passion, and grandeur of RafFaelle, who, however, possessed his softness of ex- pression, but of expression only ; and in colour, in light and shade, and other qualities, was quite inferior to Correggio. We may, perhaps, solve this apparent contra- diction by saying that he applied the power of his mind to a greater variety of objects than others ; but that this power was still of the same character, consisting in a certain exquisite sense of the harmonious, the soft and graceful in form, colour and sentiment, but with a deficiency of strength and a tendency to effeminacy in all these. After the names of Raffaelle and Corresgio I shall mention that of Guido, whose female faces are exceedingly beautiful and ideal, but altogether commonplace and vapid compared with those of Raffaelle or Correggio; and they are so for no other reason but that the general idea they convey is not enriched and strengthened by an intense contemplation of nature. For the same reason I can conceive nothing more unlike the antique than the figures of Poussin, except as to the preservation of the costume ; and it is perhaps chiefly owing to the habit of studying his art at second-hand, or by means of scientific rules, that the great merits of that able painter, whose understanding and genius are unquestionable, are confined to his choice of On the Fine Arts. 227 subjects for his pictures, and bis manner of telling the story. His landscapes, ■which he probably took from nature, are superior as paintings to his historical pieces. The faces of Poussin want natural expression, as his figures want grace ; but the backgrounds of his historical com- positions can scarcely be surpassed. In his Plague of Athens, the very buildings seem stiff with horror. His giants, seated on the top of their fabled mountains, and playing on their panpipes, are as familiar and natural as if they were the ordinary inhabitants of the scene. The finest of his landscapes is his picture of the Deluge. The sun is just seen, wan and drooping in his course. The sky is bowed down with a weight of waters, and heaven and earth seem mint(ling together. Titian is at the head of the Venetian school ; he is the first of all colourists. In delicacy and purity Correggio is equal to him, but his colouring has not the same warmth and gusto in it. Titian's flesh-colour partakes of the glowing nature of the climate, and of the luxuriousncss of the manners of his country. He represents objects not through a merely lucid medium, but as if tinged with a golden light. Yet it is wonderful in how low a tone of local colouring his pictures are i>aiiitcd — how rigidly Lis means are husbanded. His most gorgeous cfTocts are pro- duced not less by keeping down than by heightening his colours; the fineness of his gradations adds to their variety and force; and with him truth is the same thing as splendour. Everything is done by the severity of his eye, by the patience of his toucli. He is enabled to keep pace with nature by never hurrying on before her ; and as he forms the broadest masses out of innumerable varying parts and minute touches of the pencil, so he unites and har- monises the strongest contrasts by the most iuiperccptiblo transitions. Every distinction is relieved and In'oken Vjy some other intermediate distinction, like half-notes in music ; and yet all this accumulation of endless variety is 228 On the Fine Avis. so inauagecl as only to produce the majestic simplicity of nature, so that- to a common eye there is nothing extra- ordinary in his i^ictures, any more than in nature itself. It is, I believe, owing to what has been here stated^ that Titian is, of all painters, at once the easiest and the most difficult to copy, lie i« the most diflicult to coj)y perfectly, for the artifice of his colouring and execution is hid in its apparent simplicity ; and yet the knowledge of nature and the arrangement of the forms and masses in his pictures are so masterly that any copy made from them, even the rudest outline or sketch, can hardly fail to have a look of hi^h art. Because he was the greatest colourist in the world, this, which was his most prominent, has, for short- ness, been considered as his only, excellence ; and he has been said to have been ignorant of drawing. What he was, generally speaking, deficient in, was invention or composi- tion, though even this appears to have been more from habit than want of power; but his drawing of actual forms, where they were not to be put into momentary action, or adapted to a particular expression, was as fine as jjossible. His drawing of the forms of inanimate objects is unrivalled. His trees have a marked character and physiognomy of their own, and exhibit an appearance of strength or flexibility, solidity or lightness, as if they were endued with conscious power and purposes. Character was an- other excellence which Titian possessed in the highest degree. It is scarcely speaking too highly of his portraits to say that they have as much expression, that is, convey as fine an idea of intellect and feeling, as the historical heads of Raffaelle. The chief difference appears to be that the expression in Raffaelle is more imaginary and contem- plative, and in Titian more personal and constitutional. The heads of the one seem thinking more of some event or suV^ject, those of the other to be thinking more of them- selves. In the portraits of Titian, as might be expected, the Italian character always predominates : there is a look On the Fine AHs. 229 of piercing sagacity, of commanding intellect, of acute sensibility, wliicli it would be in vain to seek for in any other portraits. The daring spirit and irritable passions of the age and country are distinctly stamped upon their countenances, and can be as little mistaken as the costume ^vhich they wear. The portraits of E-afFaelle, though full of profound thought and feeling, have more of common humanity about them. Titian's portraits are the most historical that ever were painted ; and they are so for this reason, that they have most consistency of form and expression. His portraits of HippoUta de Medici and jof a Young Neapolitan Nobleman, lately in the gallery of the Louvre, are a striking contrast in this respect. All the lines of the face in the one, the eye-brows, the nose, the corners of the mouth, the contour of the face, present the same sharp angles, the same acute, edgy, contracted, violent expression. Tlie other portrait has the finest expansion of feature and outline, and conveys the most exquisite idea of mild, thoughtful sentiment. The con- sistency of the expression constitutes as great a charm in Titian's portraits as the harmony of the colouring. The similarity sometimes olijected to in his heads is ])art]y national, and i)artly arises from the class of persons whom he painted. He painted only Italians; and in his time it rarely happened that any but persons of the highest rank, senators or cardinals, sat for their pictures. The similarity of costume, of the dress, the beard, kc, also adds to the similarity of tlioir appearance. Jt adds, at the same time, to their picturcsriuc effect ; and the alteration in this respect is one circumstance among others, that has been injurious, not to 8al of Wilson's English landscapes. 240 On the Fine Arts. In general this artist's views of liomo scenery want almost everything that ought to recommend them. The subjects he has chosen are not well fitted for the landscape painter, and there is nothing in the execution to redeem them. Ill-shaped mountains, or great heaps of earth — trees that grow against them without character or elegance — motionless waterfalls — a want of relief, of transparency and distance, without the imposing grandeur of real magni- tude (which it is scarcely within the province of art to give) — are the chief features and defects of this class of his pictures. The same general objections apply to Solitude and to one or two other pictures near it, which are masses of commonplace confusion. In more confined scenes the effect must depend almost entirely in the differences in the exe- cution and the details ; for the difference of colour alone is not sufficient to give relief to objects placed at a small distance from the eye. But in Wilson there are commonly no details — all is loose and general ; and this very circum- stance, which might assist him in giving the mighty con- trasts of light and shade, deprived his pencil of all force and precision within a limited space. In general, air is neces- sary to the landscape painter ; and for this reason the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland afford few subjects for landscape painting. However stupendous the scenery of that part of the country is, and however powerful and lasting the impression which it must always make on the imagination, yet the effect is not produced merely through the medium of the eye, but arises chiefly from collateral and associated feelings. There is the knowledge of the physical magnitude of the objects in the midst of which we are placed — the slow, improgressive motion which we make in traversing them — there is the abrupt precipice, the torrent's roar, the boundless expanse of the prospect from the highest mountains — the difhculty of their ascent, their loneliness and silence ; in short, there is a constant On the Fine Arls. 2U sense aud superstitious awe of the collective power of matter, on which, from the beginning of time, the hand of man has made no impression, and which, by the lofty re- flections they excite in us, give a sort of intellectual sublimity even to our sense of physical weakness. But there is little in all these circumstances that can be translated into the picturesque, which makes its appeal immediately to the eye. In a picture, a mountain shrinks to a mole-hill, and the lake that expands its broad bosom to the sky seems hardly big enough to launch a fleet of cockle-shells. Wilson's historical landscapes, the two NioJjes, Celadon and Amelia, Meleager and Atalanta, do not, in our opinion, deserve the name ; that is, they do not excite feelings corresponding with the scene aud story represented. They neither display true taste nor fine imagination, but are affected and violent exaggerations of clumsy common nature. They are made up mechanically of the same stock of materials, an overhanging rock, bare shattered trees, black rolling clouds, aud forked lightning. The scene of Celadon and Amelia, though it may be proper for a thunder- storm, is not a place for lovers to walk in. The Meleager and Atalanta is remarkable for nothing but a castle at a distance, very much " resembling a goose-pie.'' The figures in the most celebrated of these arc not like the childron of Niobe punished by the gods, but like a group of rustics crouching from a liail storm. I agree with Sir Joshua Ileynolds that Wilson's mind was not, like N. Poussin's, sufTicicntly imbued with the knowledge of antiquity to transport the imagination three thousand years back, to give natural objects a sympathy with preternatural events, and to inform rocks and trees aud mountains with the presence of a Clod ; but nevcrthclo.ss Ills landscapes will ever afford a high treat to tlic lover of the art. In all that relates to the gradation of tint, to the graceful conduct and j)roportions of light and shade, and to the fine, deep, and harmonious tones of nature, they are models for the student. Q 242 On the Fine Arts. In his Italian landscapes Ms eye seems almost to have drunk in the light. To sum up this general character I may observe that, besides his excellence in aerial perspective, Wilson had great truth, harmony, and depth of local colouring. He had a fine feeling of the proportions and conduct of light and shade, and also an eye for graceful form, as far as regards the bold and varying outlines of indefinite objects, as may be seen in his foi"egrounds, hills, (fee, where the mind is left to muse according to an abstract principle, as it is filled or affected agreeably b)'' certain combinations, and is not tied down to an imitation of characteristic and articulate forms. In his figures, trees, cattle, and in every- thing having a determinate and regular form, his pencil ■was not only deficient in accuracy of outline but even in perspective and actual relief. His trees, in particular, seem pasted on the canvas, like botanical specimens. In fine, I cannot subscribe the opinion of those who assert that Wilson was superior to Claude as a man of genius ; nor can I discern any other grounds for this opinion than what would lead to the general conclusion, that the more slovenly the work the finer the picture, and that that which is im- perfect is superior to that which is perfect. It might be said, on the same principle, that the coarsest sign-painting is better than the reflection of a landscape in a mirror. The objection that is sometimes made to the mere imitation of nature cannot be made to the landscapes of Claude, for in them the graces themselves have with their own hands assisted in selecting and disposing every object. Is the truth inconsistent with the beauty of the imitation 1 Does the perpetual profusion of objects and scenery, all perfect in themselves, interfere with tbe simple grandeur and com- prehensive magnificence of the whole 1 Does the precision with which a plant is marked in the foreground take away from the air-drawn distinctions of the blue glimmering horizon ] Is there any want of that endless airy space. On the Fine Alts. 243 •where the eve wanders at liberty under the open sky, ex- plores distant objects, and returns back as from a delightful journey ? There is in fact no comparison between Claude and Wilson. Sir Joshua Reynolds used to say that there ■would be another Raffaelle before there would be another Claude. His landscapes have all that is exquisite and re- fined in art and nature. Everything is moulded into grace and harmony ; and, at the touch of his pencil, shep- herds with their flocks, temples and groves, and winding glades and scattered hamlets, rise up in never-ending suc- cession under the azure sky and the resplendent sun, while "Universal Pan, Knit with the graces and the hours iu dance, Leads on the eternal spring." Michael Angelo has left in one of his sonnets a fine apostrophe to the earliest poet of Italy : " Fain would I, to be what our Dante was, Forego the hai)piest fortunes of mankind." "WTiat landscape-painter does not feel this of Claude ?* I have heard an anecdote, connected with the reputation of Gainsborough's pictures, which rests on pretty good authority. Sir Joshua Reynolds, at one of the A^'adeniy dinners, speaking of Gainsborough, .said to a friend, " He is undoubtedly the best English landscape-painter." " No," said Wilson, who overheard the conversation, "he is not the best land.scape-paintcr, but he is the best jwrtrait- painter in England." They were both wrong; but the fitory is creditable to the versatility of Gainsborough's talents. These of hi.s portraits which we have seen are not in tlic first rank. They arc, in a good measure, imi- tations of Vandyck, and have more an air rov(!!) tlic truth of tlie goncial opiiiiun that his landscapes are mere arti6cial conii)o8itions, for tlio fiuishcd pictures are nearly fac-similcs of tbo original sketches. 244 On the Fine Arts. nature.* His landscapes are of two classes or periods, liis early and his later pictures. The former are minute imi- tations of nature, or of painters who imitated nature, such as Ruysdael, etc., some of which have great truth and clearness. His later pictures are flimsy caricatures of Rubens, who himself carried inattention to the details to the iitmost limit that it would bear. Many of Gains- borough's later landscapes may be compared to bad water- colour drawings, washed in by mqphanical movements of the hand, without any communication with the eye. The truth seems to be that Gainsborough found there was something wanting in his early manner, that is, something beyond the literal imitations of the details of natural objects ; and he appears to have concluded rather hastily, that the way to arrive at that something more was to dis- card truth and nature altogether .t His fame rests princi- * Gainsborough's Portrait of a Youth, that used to be in Lord Gros- venor's collection, has been sometimes mistaken for a Vandyck. There is a spirited glow of youth about the face, and the attitude is striking and elegant. The drapery of blue satin is admirably painted. His Portrait of Garrick is interesting as a piece of biography. He looks much more like a gentleman than in lleynolds's tragi-comic re- presentation of him. There is a considerable lightness and intelli- gence in the expression of the face, and a piercing vivacity about the eyes, to which the attention is immediately directed. Gainsborough's own ijortrait, which has, however, much truth and character, and makes a fine print, seems to have been painted with the handle of his brush. There is a jiortrait of The Prince Regent leading a Horse, in which it must be confessed the man has the advantage of the animal. — Morning Chronicle, 18115. t He, accordingly, ran from one extreme into the other. "We can- not conceive anything carried to a greater excess of slender execution and paltry glazing than A Fox hunted with Greyhounds, A Romantic Landscape ivith Sheep at a Fountain, and many others. We were, however, much pleased with an upright landscape with figures, wliich has a fine, fresh appearance of the open sky, with a dash of the wildness of Salvator Rosa ; and also with A Bank of a River, which is remarkable for the elegance of the forms and the real delicacy of the execution. A Group of Cattle in a Warm Landscape, is an evident imitation of Rubens, but no more like to Rubens than we to Hercules. A Landscape with a Waterfall shovild be noticed for the sparkling clear- On the Fine Arts. 245 pally, at present, on his fiincy pieces, cottage cliildren, shepherd boys, kc. These have often great truth, great sweetness ; and the subjects are generally chosen with great felicity. We too often find, however, in his happiest efforts a consciousness in the turn of the limbs and a pensive languor in the expression which are not taken from nature. I think the gloss of art is never so ill-bestowed as on such subjects, the essence of which is simplicity. It is, perhaps, the general fault of Gainsborough that he presents us with an ideal common life, of which we have had a surfeit in poetry and romance. His subjects are softened and sentimentalised too much ; it is not simple unaffected nature that we see but nature sitting for her picture. Our artist, we suspect, led the way to that mas- querade style which piques itself on giving the air of an Adonis to the driver of a hay-cart, and models the features of a milk-maid on the principles of the antique. His Woodman's Head is admirable. Nor can too much praise be given to his Shepherd Boy in a Storm, in whicli the unconscious simplicity of the boy's expression, looking up with his hands folded and with timid wonder, the nes8 of the di.stancc. Sportsmen in a Landscape is copied from Teniers with much tiistc and feeling, though very iuferior to the original picture in Lord Itiidnor's collection. Of the fiincy jtictures, on which Gainsborough's fame chiefly rests, wc aro diapoBcd to give the i)rcfercncc to hia Cottui/c Children. There is, wc apprehend, greater truth, variety, force, and character in this group than in any other. The colouring of the light-haired child is particularly true to nature, and formn a sort of natural and innocent contni.st t« the t successful imitators of nature. Fartliur, their most finislied works are their best. The preilomiiiance, in- deed, of either excellence in the best masters lias varied according to their opinion of the relative value of these q^ualitics, the labour they had the time or the patience to 256 On the Fine Arts. bestow on their works, the skill of the artist, or the nature and extent of his subject. But if the rule here ob- jected to, that the careful imitation of the parts injures the effect of the whole, be once admitted, slovenliness would become another name for genius, and the most unfinished performances would be the best. That such has been the confused impression left on the mind by the perusal of Sir Joshua Reynolds's " Discourses," is evident from the practice as well as conversation of many (even eminent) artists. The late ]\Ir Opie proceeded entirely on this principle. He left many admirable studies of portraits, particularly in what relates to the disposition and eifect of light and shade ; but he never finished any of the parts, thinking them beneath the attention of a great artist. He went over the whole head the second day as he had done the first, and therefore made no progress. The pictures, at last, having neither the lightness of a sketch nor the accuracy of a finished work, looked coarse, laboured, and heavy. Titian is the most perfect example of high finishing. In him the details are engrafted on the most profound knowledge of eflfect and attention to the character of what he represented. His pictures have the exact look of nature, the very tone and texture of flesh. The variety of his tints is blended into the greatest simplicity. There is a proper degree both of soli- dity and transparency. All the parts hang together; every stroke tells, and adds to the eflfect of the rest. Sir Joshua seems to deny that Titian finished much, and says that he produced by two or three strokes of his pencil effects which the most laborious copyist would in vain attempt to equal. It is true, he availed himself in some degree of what is called execution, to facilitate his imitation of the details and peculiarities of nature ; but it was to facilitate, not super- sede. There can be nothing more distinct than execution and daubing. Titian, however, made a very moderate, though a very admirable use of this power ; and those who copy his pictures wiU find that the simplicity is in the On the Fine Arts. 257 results, not in the details. To conclude my observations on this head, I will only add that, while the artist thinks there is anything to be done either to the whole or the parts of his picture, which can give it still more the look of nature, if he is willing to proceed, I would not advise him to desist. This rule is the more necessary to the young student, for he will relax in his attention as he grows older. And again, with respect to the subordinate parts of a pic- ture, there is no danger that he wiU bestow a dispropor- tionate degree of labour upon them, because he will not feel the same interest in copying them, and because a much less degree of accuracy will serve every purpose of decep- tion. Secondly, — With regard to the imitation of expression, I can hardly agree with Sir Joshua, that " the perfection of portrait-painting consists in giving the general idea or character without the individual peculiarities." No doubt, if we had to choose between the general character and the peculiarities of feature, we ought to prefer the former. But they are so far from being incompatible with, that they are not without some difficulty distinguishable from, each other. There is a general look of the face, a predominant expression arising from the correspondence and connection of the different part.s, which it is of the first and last im- portance to give, and without wliich no elaboration of detached parts, or marking of the peculiarities of single features, is worth anything ; but which at the same time is not destroyed, but a.s.si.sted, by the careful fini.shing, and Btill more by giving the exact outline, of each part. It is on thi.s point that the modern French and English schools differ, and, in my opinion, are both wrong. The English seem generally to suppose that if they only leave out the subordinate parts, they arc sure of the general result. The French, on the contrary, as crroiioou.sly imagine that, by attending successively to each .separate jiart, tliey mu.st infallibly arrive at a correct whole : not considering R 258 Oil the Fine Arts. that, besides the parts, there is their relation to each other, and the general impression stamped iipon them by the character of the individual, which, to be seen, must be felt ; for it is demonstrable that all character and expression, to be adequately represented, must be perceived by the mind, and not by the eye only. The French painters give only lines and precise differences ; the English, only general masses and strong effects. Hence the two nations reproach one another with the difference of their styles of art — the one as dry, hard, and minute — the other as gross, gothic, and unfinished ; and they will probably remain for ever satisfied with each other's defects, as they aflford a very tolerable fund of consolation on either side. Much has been said of histo7'ical portraits, and I have no objection to this phrase, if properly understood. The giving of historical truth to a portrait means, then, the representing of the individual under one consistent, probable, and striking \iew ; or showing the different features, muscles, &c., in one action, and modified by one principle. A portrait thus l)ainted may be said to be historical ; that is, it carries in- ternal evidence of truth and propriety with it ; and the number of individual peculiarities, as long as they are true to nature, cannot lessen, but must add to, the strength of the general impression. It might be shown, if there were room in this place, that Sir Joshua has constructed his theory of the ideal in art upon the same mistaken principle of the negation or ab- straction of a paj'ticidar nature. The ideal is not a nega- tive but a positive thing. The leaving out the details or peculiarities of an individual face does not make it one jot more ideal. To paint history is to j)aint nature as answer- inc to a general, predominant, or pre-conceived idea in the mind, of strength, beauty, action, passion, thought, (fee; but the way to do this is not to leave out the details, but to incorporate the general idea with the details : that is, to show the same expression actuating and modifying every On the Fine Arts. 250 movement of the muscles, and the same character preserved consistently through every part of the body. Grandeur does not consist in omitting the parts, but in connecting all the parts into a whole, and in giving their combined and varied action ; abstract truth or ideal perfection does not consist in rejecting the peculiarities of form, but in reject- ing all those which are not consistent with the character intended to be given, and in following uj) the same general idea of softness, voluptuousness, strength, activity, or any combination of these, through every ramification of the frame. But these modifications of form or expression can only be learnt from nature, and therefore the perfection of art must always be sought in nature. The ideal properly ap- plies as much to the idea of ugliness, weakness, folly, mean- ness, vice, as of beauty, strength, wisdom, magnanimity, or virtue. The antique heads of fauns and satyrs, of Pan or Silenus, are quite as ideal as those of Apollo or Bacchus ; and Hogarth adhered to an idea of humour in his faces as llafTaelle did to an idea of sentiment. But Raffaelle found the character of sentiment in nature as much as Hogarth did that of humour, otherwise neither of tliem would have given one or tlie other with such perfect truth, purity, force, and keeping. Sir Joshua Reynolds's ideal, as consisting in a mere negation of individuality, bears just the same rela- tion to real beauty or grandeur as caricature does to true comic character. It is owing either to a mistaken theory of elevated art, or to the want of models in nature, that the English arc hitherto without any painter of serious liistorical subjects, who can be placed in tlie first rank of genius. Many of the pictures of nioilern arti.sts liave evidenced a capacity for correct and happy delineations of actual objects and domestic incidents only inferior to the ma-stcrpieces of tlie Dutch school. I might here mention the names of Wilkie, Collins, Ilcaphy, and others. We have portrait-painters who have attained 2G0 Oil the Fi7ie Arts. to a very liigli degree of excellence in all the branches of their art. In landscape, Turner has shown a knowledge of tlie effects of air, and of powerful relief in objects, which Avas never surpassed. But in the highest walk of art — in giving the movements of the finer and loftier passions of the mind, this country has not produced a single painter who has made even a faint approach to the excellence of the great Italian painters. We have, indeed, a good number of specimens of the clay figure, the anatomical mechanism, the regular proportions measured by a two-foot rule — large canvases, covered with stiff figures, arranged in deliberate order, with the characters and story correctly expressed by iiplifted eyes or hands, according to old receipt-books for the passions; with all the hardness and inflexibility of figures carved in wood, and painted over in good strong body colours, that look " as if some of nature's journeymen had made them, and not made them well." But we still want a Prometheus to give life to the cumbrous mass — to throw an intellectual light over the opaque image — to embody the inmost refinements of thought to the outward eye — to lay bare the very soul of passion. That picture is of little comparative value which can be completely translated into another language — of which the description in a common catalogue conveys all that is expressed by the picture itself ; for it is the excellence of every art to give what can be given by no other in the same degree. Much less is that picture to be esteemed which only injures and defaces the idea already existing in the mind's eye ; which does not come up to the conception which the imagination forms of the subject, and substitutes a dull reality for high sentiments ; for the art is in this case an incumbrance, not an assistance, and interferes with, instead of adding to, the stock of our pleasurable sensations. But I should be at a loss to point out, I will not say any English picture, but certainly any English painter, that, in heroical and classical composition, has risen to the height of the subject, and On the Fine Arts. 261 answered the expectations of the well-informed spectator, or excited the same impression by visible means as had been excited by words or by reflection.* That this inferiority in English art is not owing to a deficiency of English genius, imagination, or passion, is proved sufficiently by the works of our poets and dramatic writers, which in loftiness and force are not surpassed by those of any other nation. But whatever may be the depth of internal thought and feeling in the English character, it seems to be more internal; and, whether this is owing to habit or physical constitution, to have comparatively a less immediate and powerful com- munication with the organic expression of passion — which exhibits the tlioughts and feelings in the countenance, and furni.shes matter for the historic muse of painting. The English artist is instantly sensible that the flutter, grimace, and extravagance of the Erench physiognomy are incom- patible with liigh history ; and we are at no loss to explain, in this way, that is from the defect of living models, that the productions of the French school on the one hand are marked with all the afi'ectation of national caricature, or on the other sink into tame and lifeless imitations of the antique. May we not account satisfactorily for the general defects of our own historic productions in a similar way — from a certain inertness and constitutional plilegm, which doe3 not liabitually iini)res3 the workings of the mind in correspondent traces on the countenance, and which may also render us less scnsiijle of these outward and visible signs of passion, even when they arc so impressed tliere ? The irregularity of projjortion and want of .symmetry in the structure of the natinnal features, though it certainly cnliances the difficulty nf infusing natural grace ami grandeur into the works of art, rather accounts for our not liaving been able to attain the exquisite refinements * If I were to mnko nny qualification of IIiIh ccriHuro, it woulil be in favour of »onie of Northcote'H couipoMitioiiH from early EngliHli history. 262 On the Fine Avis. of Grecian sculpture, than for our not having rivalled the Italian painters in expression. Mr West formed no exception to, but a confirmation of, these general observations. His pictures have all that can be required in what relates to the composition of the sub- ject, to the regular arrangement of the groups, the anatomical proportions of the human body, and the technical knowledge of expression — as far as expression is reducible to abstract rules, and is merely a vehicle for the telling of a story, so that anger, wonder, sorrow, pity, &c., have each their appropriate and well-known designations. These, however, are but the instrumental parts of the art, the means not the end ; but beyond these ]\Ir West's pic- tures do not go. They never " snatch a grace beyond the reach of art." They exhibit the mash, not the soul, of ex- pression. I doubt whether, in the entire range of Mr West's productions, meritorious and admirable as the design and composition often are, there is to be found one truly fine head. They display a total want of gusto. In Raffaelle, the same divine spirit breathes through every part; it either agitates the inmost frame, or plays in gentle un- dulations on the trembling surface. Whether we see his figures bending with all the blandishments of maternal love, or standing in the motionless silence of thought, or hurried into the tumult of action, the whole is under the impulse of deep passion. But Mr West saw hardly anything in the human face but bones and cartilages ; or if he availed himself of the more flexible machinery of nerves and muscles it was only by rule and method. The effect is not that which the soul of passion impresses on the countenance, and which the soul of genius alone can seize, but such as might, in a good measure, be given to wooden puppets or pasteboard figures, pulled by Avires, and taught to open the mouth, or knit the forehead, or raise the eyes in a very scientific manner. In fact, there is no want of art or limning in his pictures, but of nature and feeling. On the Fine Arts. 263 It is not long since an opinion was very general that all, that was wanting to the highest splendour and perfection of the arts in this country might be supplied by academies and pnblic institutions. There are three ways in which academies and public institutions may be supposed to pro- mote the fine arts ; either by furnishing the best models to the student, or by holding out immediate emolument and patronage, or by improving the public taste. I shall be- stow a short consideration on the influence of each. First, a constant reference to the best models of art necessarily tends to enervate the mind, to intercept our view of nature, and to distract the attention by a variety of unattainable excellences. An intimate acquaintance with the works of the celebrated masters may indeed add to the in- dolent refinements of taste, but will never produce one work of original genius, one great artist. In proof of the general truth of this observation, I miglit cite the history of the pro- gress and decay of art in all countries where it has flourished. The directors of the British Institution conclude the pre- face to their catalogue of the works of Hogarth, Wilson, &c., in the following words : " The present exhibition, while it gratifies the taste and feeling of the lover of art, may tend to excite animating reflections in the mind of the artist : if at a time wlt^n the art received little comparative sitpjyort such icorki were produced, a reasoiuthle hope may he enter- tained that we shall see productions 0/ stdl hiylicr attain- ment under more encourafjing circumstances." It should seem that a contrary conclusion might more naturally have suggested itself from a contemplation of the collection with which the directors of the institution have so liiglily gratified the public taste and feeling. Wlicn the real lover of art looks round and sees the works of Hogarth and Wilson — works which were produced in obscurity and poverty — and recollects the pomp and pride of patronage under which these works are at present recommended to public notice, the obvious inference which strikes him is, 264 On (he Fine Arts. how little the production of such works depends on ''the most encouraging circumstances." The visits of the gods of old did not always add to the felicity of those whose guests they were ; nor do we know that the countenance and favours of the great will lift the arts to that height of excellence, or will confer all those advantages which are expected from the proffered boon. The arts are of humble growth and station ; they are the product of labour and self-denial ; they have their seat in the heart of man and his imagination ; it is there they labour, have their triumphs there, and, unseen and unthought-of, perform their ceaseless task. Indeed, patronage and works of art deserving patronage rarely exist together; for it is only when the arts have attracted public esteem, and reflect credit on the patron, that they receive this flattering support, and then it generally proves fatal to them. We do not see how the man of genius should be improved by being transplanted from his closet to the ante-chambers of the great, or to a fashionable rout. He has no business there — but to bow, to flatter, to smile, to submit to the caprice of taste, to adjust his dress, to think of nothing but his own person and his own interest, to talk of the antique, and furnish designs for the lids of snutf-boxes and ladies' fans. The passage above alluded to evidently proceeds on the common mistaken notion that the progress of the arts de- pends entirely on the cultivation and encouragement bestowed on them ; as if taste and genius were perfectly mechanical, arbitrary things — as if they could be bought and sold, and regularly contracted for at a given price. It confounds the fine arts with the mechanic arts — arts with science. It supposes that feeling, imagination, invention, are the creatures of positive institutions ; that the tem2:)les of the Muses may be raised and supported by voluntary contributions ; that we can enshrine the soul of art in a stately pile of royal patronage, inspire corporate bodies •with taste, and carve out the direction to fume in letters of On the Fine Arts. 265 stone on tlie front of public buildings. That the arts in any country may be at so low an ebb as to be capable of great improvement by positive means, so as to reach the common level to which such means can carry them, there is no doubt or question ; but after they have in any par- ticular instance, by native genius and industry, reached their highest eminence, to say that they will, by mere arti- ficial props and officious encouragement, arrive at a point of " still higher attainment," is assuming a great deal too much. Are we to imderstand that the laudable efforts of the British Institution are likely, by mere operation of natural causes, to produce a greater comic painter, a more profound describer of manners, than Hogarth 1 or even that the lights and expectations held out in the preface to the British Catalogue will enable some one speedily to surpass the general excellence of Wilson's landscapes 1 Is there any theory in the history of art to warrant such a conclusion, — to support this theory of progressive perfectibility under the auspices of patrons and vice-patrons, presidents, and select committees 1 On the contrary, as far as the general theory is concerned, the traces of youth, manhood, and old age, are almost as distinctly marked in the history of the art as of the individual. The arts have in general risen rapidly from their first obscure dawn to their meridian lieight and greatest lustre, and have no sooner reached thi.s proud eminence than they have as rapidly hastened to decay and dissolution. It is a little extraordinary tliat, if the real sources of perfection are to be sought in schools, in models, and public institutions, there the art should regularly disajjpear; that tlie effect should never follow from the cause. The Creek statues remain to this day unrivalled, the undisputed standard of the most perfect symmetry of form. What, then, lias the genius of pro- gressive improvement been doing all this time ] Has ho been reposing after his labours? How is it that the moderns are still so far behind, notwithstanding all that 266 On iJie Fine Arts. was done ready to their hands by the ancients, when they possess a double advantage over them, and have not nature only to form themselves upon, but nature and the antique ? In Italy the art of painting has had the same fate. After its long and painful struggles in the time of the earliest artists, Cimabue, Ghirlandajo, Massaccio, &c., it bursts out into a light too dazzling to behold, in the works of Titian, Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, and Correggio : which was reflected with diminished lustre in the productions of their immediate disciples ; lingered for a while with the school of Doraenichino and the Caracci, and expired with Guide Eeni ; for with him disajipears " the last of those bright rlaj's That on the unsteady breeze of honour sailed In long procession, calm and beautiful." From that period painting sunk to so low a state in Italy as to excite only pity or contempt. There is not a single name to redeem its faded glory from utter oblivion. Yet this has not been owing to any want of Dilettanti and Delia Cruscan Societies, of Academies of Florence, of Bologna, of Parma, and Pisa, of honorary members, and foreign correspondents, of pupils and teachers, professors and patrons, and the whole busy tribe of critics and con- noisseurs. Art will not be constrained by mastery, but at sight of the formidable array prepared to receive it, "Spreads it light wings, and in a moment flies." The genius of painting lies buried under the Vatican, or skulks behind some old portrait of Titian, from which it stole out to paint a miniature of Lady Montague. What is become of the successors of Rubens, Rembrandt, and Vandyck? What have the French academicians done for the art ? or what will they ever do, but add intolerable affectation and grimace to centos of heads from the antique, On iJie Fine Arts. 207 and caricature Greek forms by putting tliera into opera attitudes ? Nicholas Poussin is the only example on record in favour of the contrary theory, and I have already suf- ficiently noticed his defects. What extraordinary advances have we made in our own country in consequence of the establishment of the Royal Academy 1 What greater names has the English school to boast than those of Hogarth, Reynolds, and Wilson, who created it 1 * Again, I might cite, in support of my assertion, the works of Carlo Maretti, of Raphael Mengs, or of any of the effeminate school of critics and copyists who have attempted to blend the borrowed beauties of others in a perfect whole. What do they contain but a negation of every excellence which they pretend to combine ? Inoffensive insipidity is the utmost that can ever be expected, because it is the utmost that ever was attained, from the desire to produce a balance of good qualities, and to animate lifeless com- positions by the transfusion of a spirit of originality. The assiduous, but thoughtless, imitator, in his attempts to grasp all, loses his hold of that which was placed within his reach ; and, from aspiring at universal excellence, sinks into uni- form mediocrity. There is a certain pedantry, a given division of labour, an almost exclusive attention to some one object which is necessary in art, as in all the works of man. Witliout this, the unavoidable consequence is a gradual dissipation and prostitution of intellect, which leave the mind without energy to devote to any pursuit the pains necessary to excel in it, and suspend every purpose in irri- table imbecility. But the modern painter is bound not only to run the circle of his own art but of all others, lie mu.'jt be "statesman, chemi.st, fiddler, and bulfdon." He must have too many accomplishments to excel in his profession. * Were Claudo Lorraine or Nicliolns Poussin formed by the nilcs of Dr riles or Dii I'rusnoy? Tlicre nre no general tickets uf acnditig the exercise of personal taste ami feeling in the sj)cctator8, vrc have a striking instance in our own country, where this cause must, from collateral circumstances, oiiemte less forcibly. Mr West's pic- tures would not bo tolerated, but from tlio respect inspired by tlio subjects of which ho treats. When a young lady and ln-r mothi-r, tlio wife and daugliter of a clergyman, are told lliat a gawky ill-favoured youth is the beloved disciidc of Christ, ami that a tall, starched figure of a woman visible near him is the Virgin M.iry, wliatover they might have thought before, they can no more refrain from shedding tears than if they had seen the very persons reeorded in sacred liistory. It is not the ]>icturo, but tho aitsuciatiuuji connected with it, that pro- duce the effect. 272 On the Fine Arts. arises either from the general institutions and manners of a people, or from the real, unaffected taste of individuals, must, I conceive, be illegitimate, corrupted in its source, and cither ineffectual or injurious to its professed object. Positive encouragements and rewards will not make an honest man or a great artist. The assumed familiarity and condescending goodness of patrons and vice-patrons will serve to intoxicate rather than to sober the mind, and a card to dinner in Cleveland Row or Portland Place will have a tendency to divert the student's thoughts from his morning's work, rather than to rivet them upon it. The device by which a celebrated painter has represented the Virgin teaching the infant Christ to read by pointing with a butterfly to the letters of the alphabet has not been thought a very wise one. Correggio is the most melan- choly instance on record of the want of a proper encourage- ment of the arts : but a golden shower of patronage, tempt- ing as that which fell into the lap of his own Danae, and dropping prize medals and epic mottoes, would not produce another Correggio ! Lastly, Academicians and institutions may be supposed to assist the progress of the fine arts by promoting a wider taste for them. In general, it must happen in the first stages of the arts that, as none but those who had a natural genius for them would attempt to practise them, so none but those who had a natural taste for them would pretend to judge of or criticise them. This must be an incalculable advantage to the man of true genius ; for it is no other than the privi- lege of being tried by his peers. In an age when connois- seurship had not become a fashion — when religion, war and intrigue occupied the time and thoughts of the great — only those minds of superior refinement would be led to notice the works of art, who had a real sense of their ex- cellence ; and in giving way to the powerful bent of his own genius, the painter was most likely to consult the law Oil the Fine A rts. 273 of bis judges. He had not to deal with pretenders to taste through vanity, affectation, and idleness. He had to appeal to the higher faculties of the soul — to that deep and in- nate sensibility to truth and beauty, which required only fit objects to have its enthusiasm excited, and to that in- dependent strength of mind which, in the midst of igno- rance and barbarism, hailed and fostered genius wherever it met with it. Titian was patronised by Charles the Fifth. Count Castiglione was the friend of Raffaelle. These were true patrons and true critics ; and, as there were no others (for the world, in general, merely looked on and wondered), there can be little doubt that such a period of dearth of factitious patronage would be most favourable to the full development of the greatest talents and to the attainment of the highest excellence. The diffusion of taste is not, then, tbe same thing as the improvement of taste ; but it is only the former of these objects that is promoted by public institutions and other artificial means. The number of candidates for fame, and of pretenders to criticism, is thus increased beyond all pro- portion, but the quantity of genius and feeling remains the same, with this difference, that the man of genius is lost iu the crowd of competitors, who would never liavc become such but from encouragement and example ; and that tho opinion of those few persons whom nature intended for judges is drowned in the noi.sy decisions of shallow smat- terers in taste. The principle of universal suffrage, however applicable to matters of government, whicli concern the common feelings and common interests of society, is by no means so to matters of taste, which can only be decided upon by tho most refined understandings. It is throwing down tho barriers which .separate knowledge and feeling frum ignorance and vulgarity, and proclaiming a Bartholomew- fair show of Fine Arts — " And foola ru«h iu whcro angola fear to tread." S 274 On the Fine Arts. The public taste is, therefore, necessarily vitiated, in proportion as it is public ; it is lowered with every infusion it receives of common opinion. The greater the number of judges, the less capable must they be of judging, for the addition to the number of good ones will' always be small, while the multitude of bad ones is endless, and thus the decay of art m;iy be said to be the necessary consequence of its progress. Can there be a greater confirmation of these remarks than to look at the texture of that assemblage of select critics, who every year visit the exhibition at Somerset House from all parts of the metropolis of this United Kingdom 1 Is it at all wonderful that, for such a succession of con- noisseurs, such a collection of Avorks of art should be provided ; where the eye in vain seeks relief from the glitter of the frames in the glare of the pictures ; where vermilion cheeks make vermilion lips look pale ; where the merciless splendour of the painter's jjallet puts nature out of countenance ; and where the unmeaning grimace of fashion and folly is almost the only variety in the wide dazzling waste of colour. Indeed, the great error of British art has hitherto been a desire to produce a popular effect by the cheapest and most obvious means, at the expense of everything else — to lose all the delicacy and variety of nature in one undistinguished bloom of florid health, and all precision, truth and refinement of character in the same harmless mould of smiling, self-complacent insipidity : " Plearsed with itself, that all the world can please." It is probable that in all that stream of idleness and curiosity which flows in, hour after hour, and day after day, to the richly-hung apartments of Somerset House, thei-e are not fifty persons to be found who can really distinguish " a Guido from a daub," or who would recognise a work of the most refined genius from the most common and every-day On the Fine A rts. 275 performance. Come tlien, ye banks of Wapping, and classic haunts of Ratcliflfe Highway, and join thy fields, blithe Totbill — let the post-chaises, gay with oaken boughs, be put in requisition for schoolboys from Eton and Harrow, and school-girls from Hackney and Mile-end — and let a jury be empanelled to decide on the merits of Raffaelle and . The verdict will be infallible. We remember having been formerly a good deal amused with seeing a smart, handsome-looking Quaker lad, standing before a picture of Christ as the Saviour of the World, with a circle of young female friends around him, and a newspaper in his hand, out of which he read to his admiring auditors a criticism on the picture, ascribing to it every perfection, human and divine. Now, in truth, the colouring was any- thing but solenni, the drawing anything but grand, the expression anything but sublime. The friendly critic had, however, bedaubed it so with praise that it was not easy to gainsay its wondrous excellence. In fact, one of the worst consequences of the establishment of academics, ttc, is that the rank and station of the painter throw a lustre round his pictures, which imposes completely on the herd of spectators, and makes it a kind of treason against the art for any one else to speak his mind freely or detect the imposture. If, indeed, the election to title and academic honours went by merit, this might form a kind of clue or standard for the public to decide justly upon ; but we have heard that genius and taste determine precedence there almost as little as at CJourt ; and that modesty and talent stand very little chance indeed with interest, cabal, impudence, and cunning. The purity or liberality of pro- fessional decisions cannot, therefore, in such cases be expected to counteract the tendency which an appeal to the public has to lower the standard of taste. Tlie artist, to succeed, must let himself down to the level of his judges, for ho cannot rai.so them up to his own. The highest efforts of genius, in every walk of art, can never be properly 276 On the Fine Arts. understood by mankind in general ; there are numberless beauties and truths which lie far beyond their compre- hension. It is only as refinement or sublimity is blended ■with other qualities of a more obvious and common nature, that they pass current with the world. Common sense, which has been sometimes appealed to as the criterion of taste, is nothing but the common capacity, applied to common facts and feelings ; but it neither is, nor pretends to be, the judge of anything else. To suppose that it can really appreciate the excellence of works of high art is as absurd as to suppose that it could produce them. Taste is the highest degree of sensibility, or the impression of the most cultivated and sensible minds, as genius is the result of the highest powers of feeling and invention. It may be objected that the public taste is capable of gradual improve- ment, because in the end the public do justice to works of the greatest merit. This is a mistake. The reputation ultimately and slowly affixed to works of genius is stamped upon them by authority, not by popular consent or the common sense of tlie world. We imagine that the admir- ation of the works of celebrated men has become common because the admiration of their names has become so. But does not every ignorant connoisseur pretend the same veneration, and talk with the same vapid assurance of !M. Angelo, though he has never seen even a copy of any of his pictures, as if he had studied them accurately — merely because Sir J. Reynolds has praised hiiu 1 Is Milton more popular now than when the Paradise Lost was first pub- lished? Or does he not rather owe his reputation to the judgment of a few persons in every successive period accumulating in his favour, and overpowering by its weight the public indifference? Why is Shakespeare popular? Not from his refinement of character or sentiment, so much as from his power of telling a story — tlie variety and invention — the tragic catastrophe and broad farce of his plays ! On the Fine Arts. 277 His characters of Imogen or Desdemona, Hamlet or Kent, are little understood or relished by the generality of readers. Does not Boccaccio pass to this day for a writer of ribaldry, because his jests and lascivious tales were all that caught the vulgar ear, while the story of _the Falcon is forgotten ? ( 278 ) ON THE ELGIN MARBLES. "Who to the life an exact piece would make Must not from others' work a copy take ; No, not from Rubens or Vandyck : Much less content himself to make it like Th' ideas and the images which lie In his own Fancy or his Memory. No ; he before his sight must place The natural and living face ; The real object must command Each judgment of his eye and motion of his hand." The true lesson to be learnt by our students and professors from the Elgin !Marbles is the one which the ingenious and honest Cowley has expressed in the above spirited lines. The great secret is to recur at every step to nature — "to learn Her manner, and with rapture taste her style. " It is evident to any one who views these admirable remains of Antiquity (nay, it is acknowledged by our artists themselves, in despite of all the melancholy sophistry Avhich they have been taught or have been teaching others for half a century), that the chief excellence of the figures depends on their having been copied from nature and not from imagination. The communication of art with nature is here everywhere immediate, entire, palpable. The artist gives himself no fastidious airs of superiority over what he sees. He has not arrived at that stage of his progress described at much length in Sir Joshua Eeynolds's Dis- courses, in which, having served out his apprenticeship to nature, he can set up for himself in opposition to her. According to the old Greek form of drawing up the On the Elgin 3Iarh!es. 279 indentures in this case, we apprehend they were to last for life. At least, we can compare these ^Marbles to nothing but human figures petrified : they have every appearance of absolute facsimiles or casts taken from nature. The details are those of nature ; the masses are those of nature ; the forms are from nature ; the action is from nature ; the whole is from nature. Let any one, for instance, look at the leg of the Ilissus or Eiver-God, which is bent under him — let him observe the swell and undulation of the calf, the inter-texture of the muscles, the distinction and union of all the parts, and the effect of action everywhere impressed on the external form, as if the very marble were a flexible substance, and contained the various springs of life and motion within itself, and he will own that art and nature are here the same thing. It is the same in the back of the Theseus, in the thighs and knees, and in all that remains unimpaired of these two noble figures. It is not the same in the cast (which was shown at Lord Elgin's) of the famous Torso by Michael Angelo, the style of which that artist appears to have imitated too well. There, every muscle has obviously the greatest prominence and force given to it of which it is capable in itself, not of which it is capable in connection with others. This fragment is an accumulation of mighty parts, without that play and re-action of each part upon the rest, without that " alternate action and repose" which Sir Thomas Lawrence speaks of as character- istic of the Theseus and tJic Ilissus, and which arc as inseparable from nature as waves from the sea. The learned, however, here make a distinction, and suppose that the trutli of nature is, in the KIgin Marbles, combined with ideal forms. If by uleal forms tliey mean fine natuwil forms, we have nothing to object ; but if tliey mean that the sculjitors of the Theseus and Ilissus got tlic forms out of their own heads, and then tacked the trutli of nature to them, wc can only say, " Let tlicm look again, let them look again." Wc consider the Elgin Marbles a.s a demonstration 280 On the Ehjin Marhlcs. of the impossibility of separating .art from nature witli- out a proportionable loss at every remove. The utter absence of all setncss of a]>pearance proves that they were done as studies from actual models. The separate parts of the human body may be given from scientific knowledge : their modifications or inflections can only be learnt by seeing them in action ; and the truth of nature is incom- patible with ideal form, if the latter is meant to exclude actually existing form. The mutual action of the parts cannot be determined where the object itself is not seen. That the forms of these statues are not common nature, such as we see it every day, we readily allow ; that they were not select Greek nature we see no convincing reason to suppose. The truth of nature and ideal or fine form are not always or generally united, we know ; but how they can ever be united in art, without being first united in nature, is to us a mystery, and one that we as little believe as understand ! Suppose, for illustration's sake, that these Marbles were originally done as casts from actual nature^ and then let us inquire whether they would not have possessed all the same qualities that they now display, granting only that the forms were in the first instance selected with the eye of taste, and disposed with knowledge of the art and of the subject. First, the larger masses and proportions of entire limbs and divisions of the body would have been found in the casts, for they would have been found in nature. The back and trunk, and arms, and legs, and thighs would have been there, for these are parts of the natural man or actual living body, and not inventions of the artist, or ideal creations borrowed from the skies. There would have been the same sweep in the back of the Theseus ; the same swell in the muscles of the arm on which he leans; the same division of the leg into calf and small, i.f.,the same general results, or aggregation of parts in the princi- On the Elgin 3IarUes. 281 pal and most striking divisions of tlie body. The upper part of the arm would have been thicker than the lower, the thighs larger than the legs, the body larger than the thighs, in a cast taken from common nature ; and in casts taken from the finest nature they would have been so in the same proportion, form, and manner as in the statue of the Theseus, if the Theseus answers to the idea of the finest nature; for the idea and the reality must be the same ; only, we contend that the idea is taken from the reality, instead of existing by itself or being the creature of fancy. That is, there would be the same grandeur of proportions and parts in a cast taken from finely-developed nature, such as the Greek sculptors had constantly before them, naked and in action, that we find in the limbs and masses of bone, flesh, and muscle in these much and justly admired remains. Again, and incontestibly, there would have been, besides the grandeur of form, all the minutioe and individual details in the cast that subsist in nature, and that find no place in the theory of ideal art — in the omission of which, indeed, its very grandeur is made to consist. The Elgin Marbles give a flat contradiction to this gratuitous separa- tion of grandeur of design and exactness of detail, as incompatible in works of art, and wc conceive that, with their whole ponderous weight to crush it, it will be diffi- cult to set this theory on its legs again. In these majestic, colossal figures, nothing is omitted, nothing is made out by ncgatitm. The veins, tlie wrinkles in llie skin, the indications of the muscles under the skin (which appear as plainly to the anatomist as the expert angler knows from an undulation on the surface of the water what fish is playing with his bait bei.cath it), the finger-joints, the nails, every the smallest part cogninablc to the naked eye, is given here with the same ease and exactness, with the same prominence and the same subordination, that it would be in a cast from nature, i.e., in nature itself. 282 On the Ehjln 3Iarhles. Therefore, so far these things, viz., nature, a cast from it, and the Elgin Marbles, are the same ; and all three are opposed to the fashionable and fastidious theory of the ideal. Look at Sir Joshua's picture of Pack, one of his finest-coloured and most spirited performances. The fingers are mere sinids, and we doubt whether any one can make out whether there are four toes or five allowed to each of the feet. If there had been a young Silenus among the Elgin Marbles, we don't know that in some particulars it would have surpassed Sir Joshua's masterly sketch, but we are sure that the extremities, the nails, etc., would have been studies of natural history. The life, the spirit, the character of the grotesque and imaginary little being would not have made an abortion of any part of his natural growth or form. Farther, in a cast from nature there would be, as a matter of course, the same play and flexibility of limb and muscle, or, as Sir Thomas Lawrence exj^iresses it, the same "alternate action and repose," that we find so admirably displayed in the Elgin Marbles. It seems here as if stone could move : where one muscle is strained, another is relaxed ; where one part is raised, another sinks in, just as in the ocean, where the waves are lifted up in one place, they sink proportionally low in the next : and all this modulation and affection of the different parts of the form by others arise from an attentive and co-instantan- eous observation of the parts of a flexible body, where the muscles and bones act upon, and communicate with, one another, like the ropes and pulleys in a machine, and where the action or position given to a particular limb or membrane naturally extends to the whole body. This harmony, this combination of motion, this unity of spirit diffused through the wondrous mass and every part of it, is the glory of the Elgin Marbles. Put a well-formed human body in the same position and it will display the same character throughout; make a cast from it while On the Elgin Marbles. 283 in that position and action, and we shall still see the same bold, free, and comprehensive truth of design. There is no alliteration or antithesis in the style of the Elgin Marbles, no setness, squareness, affectation, or formality of appearance. The different muscles do not present a succession of tumuli, each heaving with big throes to rival the other. If one is raised, the other falls quietly into its place. Neither do the different parts of the body answer to one another, like shoulder-knots on a lacquey's coat or the different ornaments of a building. The sculp- tor does not proceed on architectural principles. His work has the freedom, the variety, and stamp of nature. The form of corresponding parts is indeed the same, but it is subject to inflection, from different circumstances. There is no primness or petit 7natlre-shij), as in some of the later antiques, where the artist seemed to think that flesh was glass or some other brittle substance ; and that if it were put out of its exact shape, it would break in pieces. Here, on the contrary, if the foot of one leg is bent under the body, the leg itself undergoes an entire alteration. If one side of the body is raised above the other, the original, or abstract, or ideal form of the two sides is not preserved strict and inviolable, but varies, as it necessarily must do, in conformity to the law of gravitation, to which all bodies arc subject. In this respect, a cast from nature would be the same. Chantrey once made a cast from Wilson the Black. He put him into an attitude at first, and made the cast, but not liking the effect when done, got him to sit ngain, and made use of the plaster of Paris once more. He was .satisfied with the result ; but Wilson, who was tired with going through the oj)cration, as soon as it was over, went and leaned upon a block of marble with his hand.H covering liis face. The sagacious sculptor was so struck with tlu: su[)criority of tjiis natural attitude over those into which he had been arbitrarily put that he begged him (if possible) to contuiue in it for another quarter of 284 On the Fig 171 Ilarlles, an hour, and anotlier impression was taken off. All three casts remain, and tlie last is a proof of the superiority of nature over art. The cfTect of lassitude is visible in every part of the frame, and the strong feeling of this affection, impressed on every limb and muscle, and venting itself naturally in an involuntary attitude which gave immediate relief, is that which strikes every one who has seen this fine study from the life. The casts from this man's figure have been much admired — it is from no superiority of form : it is merely that, being taken from nature, they bear her '■' image and superscription." As to expression, the Elgin Marbles (at least the Ilissus and Theseus) afford no examples, the heads being gone. Lastly, as to the ulcal form, we contend it is nothing but a selection of fine nature, such as it was seen by the ancient Greek sculptors ; and we say that a sufficient approximation to this form may be found in our own country, and still more in other countries, at this day, to warrant the clear conclusion that, under more favour- able circumstances of climate, manners, &c., no vain im- agination of the human mind could come up to entire natural forms ; and that actual casts from Greek models would rival the common Greek statues, or surpass them in the same proportion and manner as the Elgin Marbles do. Or if this conclusion should be doubted, we are ready at any time to produce at least one cast from living nature which, if it does not furnish practical proof of all that we have here advanced, we are willing to forfeit the last thing we can afford to part with — a theory ! If then the Elgin Marbles are to be considered as authority in subjects of art, we conceive the following principles, which have not hitherto been generally received or acted upon in Great Britain, will be found to result from them : — 1. That art is, first and last, the imitation of nature. That the highest art is the imitation of the finest o On (lie Elgin Marbles. 285 nature, that is to say, of tliat which conveys the strongest sense of pleasure or power, of the sublime or beautiful. 3. That the ideal is only the selecting a particular form which expresses most completely the idea of a given character or quality, as of beauty, strength, activity, voluptuousness, &c., and which preserves that character with the greatest consistency throughout. 4. That the historical is nature in action. With regard to the face, it is expression. 5. That grandeur consists in connecting a number of parts into a whole, and not in leaving out the parts, 6. That, as grandeur is the principle of connection between different parts, beauty is the principle of affinity between different forms, or rather gradual conversion into each other. The one harmonises, the other aggran- dises our impressions of things. 7. That grace is the beautiful or harmonious in what relates to position or motion. 8. That grandeur of motion is unity of motion. 9. That strength is the giving the extremes softness, the uniting them. 10. Tliat truth is to a certain degree beauty and grandeur, since all tilings are connected, and all things modify one another in nature. Simplicity is also grand and beautiful for the same reason. Elegance is ease and lightness, with precision. Wc .shall now proceed to elucidate these general princi- ples in such manner as we are able. 1. Tlic first is, that art is, first and last, the imitation of nature. By nature, wc mean actually existing nature or some ono object to be found in rerum natnrd, not an idea of nature existing solely in the mind, got from an infinite number of difTorent o})jccts, but which was never yet cmlxxlicd in an individual instance. Sir Jo.sbua Reynolds may be ranked at the bead of those who have maintained the 28 G On the Elgin MarUes. supposition that nature (or the universe of things) was in- deed the ground-work or foundation on which art rested ; but that the superstructure rose above it, that it towered by- degrees above the world of realities, and was suspended in the regions of thought alone — that a middle form, a more refined idea, borrowed from the observation of a number of particulars, but unlike any of them, was the standard of truth and beauty, and the glittering phantom that hovered round the head of the genuine artist : " So from the ground Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves More airy, last the bright consummate flower! " We have no notion of this vague, equivocal theory of art, and contend, on the other hand, that each image in art should have a talhj or corresponding prototype in some object in nature. Otherwise, we do not see the use of art at all : it is a mere superfluity, an incumbrance to the mind, a piece of " laborious foolery " — for the word, the mere name of any object or class of objects will convey the general idea, more free from particular details or defects than any the most neutral and indefinite representation that can be produced by forms and colours. The word man, for instance, conveys a more filmy, impalpable, ab- stracted, and (according to this hypothesis) sublime idea of the species, than Michael Angelo's Adam, or any real image can possibly do. If this then is the true object of art, the language of painting, sculpture, &c., becomes quite supererogatory. Sir Joshua and the rest contend that nature (properly speaking) does not express any single in- dividual, nor the whole mass of things as they exist, but a general principle, a something common to all these, re- taining the perfections, that is, all in which they are alike, and abstracting the defects, namely, all in which they differ : so that out of actual nature we compound an artificial nature, never answering to the former in any one part of its mock-existence, and which last is the true object o f On the Elgin MarUcs. 287 imitation to the aspiring artist. Let us adopt this principle of abstraction as the rule of perfection, and see what havoc it ■will make in all our notions and feelings in such matters. If the "perfect is the intermediate, why not confound all objects, all forms, all colours at once ? Instead of painting a landscape with blue sky, or white clouds, or green earth, or grey rocks and towers; what should we say if the artist (so named) were to treat all these "fair varieties " as so many imperfections and mistakes in the creation, and mass them altogether, by mixing up the colours on his palette in the same dull, leaden tone, and call this the true prin- ciple of epic landscape- painting ? Would not the thing be abominable, an abortion, and worse than the worst Dutch picture ? Variety then is one principle, one beauty in external nature, and not an everlasting source of petti- ness and deformity, which must be got rid of at all events, before taste can set its seal upon the work, or fancy own it. But, it may be said, it is different in things of the same species, and particularly in man, who is cast in a regular mould, which mould is one. ^^'hat then, are we, on this pretext, to confound the difference of sex in a sort of her- maphrodite .softness, as Mr Westall, Angelica Kauffman, and others have done in their effeminate performances ? Are we to leave out of the scale of legitimate art the ex- tremes of infancy and old age, as not middle terms in man's life ? Are we to .strike off from the list of available topics and sources of interest the varieties of character, of passion, of Btrength, activity, oiver, of the suUime or beautiful. Tlie artist does not pretend to invent an absolutely new class of objects, without any foundation in nature. He does not spread his palette on the canvas, for the mere finery of the thing, and tell us that it makes a brighter show than the rainbow, or even than a bed of tulips. He does not draw airy forms, moving above the earth, " gay creatures of the element, that play i' th' plighted clouds," and scorn the mere material existences, the concrete descend- ants of those that came out of Noah's Ark, and that walk, run, or creep upon it. No, he does not paint only what he has seen in his mind's eye, but the common objects that both he and others daily meet — rocks, clouds, trees, men, women, beasts, fishes, birds, or what he calls such. He is then an imitator by profession. He gives the ap- pearances of things that exist outwardly by themselves, * I believe this rule will apply to all except grotesques, wliicli are evidently taken from opposite natures. On the Elgin Marbles. 291 and have a distinct and independent nature of their own. But these know their own nature best ; and it is by con- sulting them tliat he can alone trace it truly, either in the immediate details or characteristic essences. Nature is consistent, unaflfected, powerful, subtle : art is forgetful, apish, feeble, coarse. Nature is the original, and therefore right : art is the copy, and can but tread lamely in the same steps. Nature penetrates into the parts, and moves the whole mass : it acts with diversity, and in necessary connection ; for real causes never forget to operate, and to contribute their portion. Where therefore these causes are called into play to the utmost extent that they ever reach, there we shall have a strength and a refinement that art may imitate, but cannot suri)ass. But it is said that art can surpass this most perfect image in nature by combining others with it. What ! by joining to the most perfect in its kind something less perfect ? Go to — this argument will not pass. Suppose you have a goblet of the finest wine that ever was tasted ; you will not mend it by pouring into it all sorts of samples of an inferior quality. So the best in nature is the stint and limit of what is best in art: for art can only borrow from nature still : and more- over must borrow entire objects ; for bits oidy make patches. We defy any landscape-painter to invent out of his own head, and by jumbling together all the different forms of hills he ever saw, by adding a bit to one, and taking a bit from another, anything equal to Arthur's Seat, with the ap- pendage of Sali.sliury Crags, tliat overl()t)k.s Edinburgh. Why so ? Because there are no levers in the mind of man equal to those with which nature works at her utmost need. No imagination c.in tcss and tumble about huge heaps of earth as the ocean in its fury can. A volcano is more potent to rend rocks asunder than the mo.st si)]ashing pcuril. Tlio convulsions of nature can make a i)rcciiiice more frightfully, or heave the backs of mountains more proudly, or throw their sides into waving lines more gracefully, than all the 292 On the Elgin MarUes. beau ideal of art. For there is in nature not only greater power and scope but (so to speak) greater knowledge and unity of purpose. Art is comparatively weak and incon- gruous, being at once a miniature and caricature of nature. AVe grant that a tolerable sketch of Arthur's Seat, and the adjoining view, is better than Primrose Hill (our favourite Primrose Hill!), but no pencil can transform or dandle Primrose Hill into a thing of equal character and sublimity with Arthur's Seat— a concession which gives us some pain to make. We do not recollect a more striking illustration of the difference between art and nature in this respect than Mr Martin's very singular and, in some things, very meritorious pictures. But he strives to outdo nature. He wants to give more than she does, or than his subject requires or admits. He sub-divides his groups into infinite littleness, and exaggerates his scenery into absolute immensity. His figures are like rows of shiny pins ; his mountains are piled up one upon the back of the other, like the stories of houses. He has no notion of the moral principle in all art, that a part may be greater than the whole. He reckons that if one range of lofty square hills is good, another range above that with clouds between must be better. He thus wearies the imagination instead of exciting it. We see no end of the journey, and turn back in disgust. We are tired of the effort, we are tired of the monotony of this sort of reduplication of the same object. We were satisfied before ; but it seems the painter was not, and we naturally sympathise with him. This craving after quantity is a morbid affection. A landscape is not an architectural elevation. You may build a house as high as you can lift up stones with pulleys and levers, but you cannot raise mountains into the sky merely with the pencil. They lose probability and effect by striving at too much ; and with their ceaseless throes oppress the imagination of the 8pectator,[_and bury the artist's fame under them. The On the Elgin Marbles. 293 only error of these pictures is that art here puts on her seven-league boots, and thinks it possible to steal a niarch upon nature. Mr Llartin might make Arthur's Seat sublime, if he chose to take the thing as it is ; but he would be for squaring it according to the mould in his own imagination, and for clapping another Arthur's Seat on the top of it, to make the Calton Hill stare ! Again, with respect to the human figure. This has an internal structure — muscles, bones, blood-vessels, &c. — by- means of which the external surface is operated upon according to certain laws. Does the artist, with all his generalisations, understand these as well as nature does 1 Can he predict with all his learning that, if a certain muscle is drawn up in a particular manner, it will present a particular appearance in a different part of tlic arm or leg, or bring out other muscles, which were before hid, with certain modifications 1 But in nature all this is brought about by necessary laws, and the effect is visible to those, and those only, who look for it in actual objects. This is the great and master excellence of the Elgin Maubles, that tliey do not seem to be the outer surface of a hard and immovable block of marble, but to be actuated by an internal machinery, and composed of the same soft and flexible materials as the human body. The .skin (or the outside) seems to be protruded or tightened by the natural action of a muscle beneath it. This result is miraculous in art ; in nature it is easy and unavoidable. That is to say, art has to imitate or produce certain clfects or appearances without the natural causes ; but the human understanding can hardly be so true to those causes as the causes to tlicniselvcs ; and honcc the necessity (in tliissort of simulitt-d creation) of recurring at every stop to the actual objects and appearances of nature. Having .shown so far how indispen.sablc it is for art to identify itself with nature, in order to preserve tlic truth of imitation, witliout which it is destitute of value or meaning, 294 0)1 the Elgin Marbles. it may be said to follow as a necessary consequence, tliat the only Avay in ■which art can rise to greater dignity or excellence is by faiding out models of greater dignity and excellence in nature. Will any one, looking at the Theseus for example, say that it could spring merely from the artist's brain, or that it could be done from a common, ill-made, or stunted body 1 The fact is that its superiority consists in this, that it is a perfect combination of art and nature, or an identical, and as it were spontaneous, copy of an indivi- dual picked out of a finer race of men than generally tread this ball of earth. Could it be made of a Dutchman's trunk-hose 1 No. Could it be made out of one of Sir Joshua's Discourses on the middle form ? No. How then 1 Out of an eye, a head, and a hand, with sense, spirit, and energy to follow the finest nature, as it appeared exemplified in sweeping masses and in subtle details, with- out pedantry, conceit, cowardice, or afTectation ! Some one was asking at Mr Haydon's one day, as a few persons were looking at the cast from this figure, why the original might not have been done as a cast from nature. Such a supposition would account at least for what seems otherwise unaccountable — the incredible labour and finish- ing bestowed on the back and other parts of this figure, placed at a prodigious neight against the walls of a temple, where they could never be seen after they were once put up there. If they were done by means of a cast in the first instance, the thing appears intelligible, otherwise not. Our host stoutly resisted this imputation, which tended to deprive art of one of its greatest triumphs, and to make it as mechanical as a shaded profile. So far, so good. But the reason he gave was bad, viz., that the limbs could not remain in those actions long enough to be cast. Yet surely this would take a shorter time than if the model sat to the sculptor ; and we all agreed that nothing but actual, continued, and intense observation of living nature could give the solidity, complexity, and refinement of imita- On the Elgin MarUes. 295 tion which, we saw in the half-animated, almost-moving figure before us.* Be this as it may, the principle here stated does not reduce art to the imitation of what is under- stood by common or low life. It rises to any point of beauty or sublimity you please, but it rises only as nature rises exalted with it too. To hear these critics talk one would suppose there was nothing in the world really worth looking at. The Dutch pictures were the best that they could paint ; they had no other landscapes or faces before them. Iloni soil qui 7nal 2/ pcnse. Yet who is not alarmed at a Venus by Rembrandt 1 The Greek statues were (cum grano salis) Grecian youths and nymphs ; and the women in the streets of Rome (it has been remarked t) look to this hour as if they had walked out of Raffaelle's pictures. Nature is always truth ; at its best, it is beauty and sublimity as well ; though Sir Joshua tells us in one of the papers in the Idler, that in itself, or with reference to individuals, it is a mere tissue of meanness and deformity. Luckily, the Elgin Marbles say No to that conclusion ; for they are decidedly jxirt and 2')arcel thereof. What con- stitutes One nature we .shall inquire under another head. But we would remark here, that it can hardly be the middle form, since this principle, however it miglit deter- mine certain general proportions .and outlines, could never be intelligible in tlie details of nature, or applicable to those of art. Who will say that tlie form of a finger nail is just midway between a thousand others that he has not re- marked ; wc arc only struck with it when it is more tlian ordinarily beautiful, from symmetry, an oblong .shape, etc. The staunch partisans of this theory, however, get over tlio difficulty liere spoken of in practice, by omitting the detaihs altogether, and making their work.s sketches, or rather what the French call ehauches and the ICnglish daubs. * Some one finely ft|>plic. t <^uery, Landor.— Ed. 810 The Vatican. field of battle or clianiel house, strewed witli carcases and naked bodies : or it is a shambles of art. You have huge limbs apparently torn from their bodies and stuck against the wall : anatomical dissections, backs, and dia- phragms, tumbling " with hideous ruin and combustion down," neither intelligible groups nor perspective nor colour ; you distinguish the principal figure, that of Christ, only from its standing in the centre of the picture, on a sort of island of earth, separated from the rest of the subject by an iidet of sky. The whole is a scene of enormous, ghastly confusion, in which you can only make out quantity and numbci-, and vast uncouth masses of bones and muscles. It has the incoherence and distortion of a troubled dream without the shadowiness ; everything is here corporeal and of solid dimensions. L. But surely there must be something fine in the '* Sibyls and Prophets" from the copies we have of them ; justifying the high encomiums of Sir Joshua Reynolds and of so many others 1 II. It appears to me that nothing can be finer as to form, attitude, and outline. The whole conception is so far inimitably noble and just; and all that is felt as want- ing is a proportionable degree of expression in the coun- tenances, though of this I am not sure, for the height (as I said before) baffles a nice scrutiny. They look to me unfinished, vague, and general. Like some fabulous figure from the antique the heads were brutal, the bodies divine. Or at most, the faces were only continuations of and on a par with the physical form, large and bold, and with great breadth of drawing, but no more the seat of a vivifying spirit, or with a more powerful and marked intelligence emanating from them, than from the rest of the limbs, the hands, or even drapery. The filling up of the mind is, I suspect, wanting — the d'lvince particula auroe ; there is prodigious and mighty prominence, and grandeur, and simplicity in the features, but they are not surcharged TJie Vatican, 311 with meaning, witli thought or passion, like Ilaffaelle's, " the rapt soul sitting in the eyes." On the contrary, they seem only to be half-informed, and might be almost thought asleep. They are fine moulds, and contain a capacity of expression, but are not bursting, teeming with it. The outward material shrine, or tabernacle, is unex- ceptionable ; but there is not superadded to it a revela- tion of the workings of the mind within. The forms in Michael Angelo are objects to admire in themselves : those of Ptaffaelle are merely a language pointing to something beyond, and full of this ultimate import. L. Bit does not the difference arise from the nature of the subjects ? //. I should think not. Surely, a Sibyl in the height of her phrensy, or an inspired Prophet — " seer blest" — in the act of receiving or of announcing the will of the Almighty, is not a less fit subject for the most exalted and impassioned expression than an Apostle, a Pope, a Saint, or a common man. If you say that these persons are not represented in the act of insi)ircd communication but in their ordinary quiescent state — granted; but such pre- ternatural workings, as well as the character and frame of mind proper for them, must leave their shadowings and lofty traces behind tlicm. The face that ha-s once held communion with the Most High, or been wrought to mad- ness by deep thougiit and passion, or that inly broods over its .sacred or its magic lore, must be "as a Ixmk where one may read strange matters," tiiat cannot be opened without a corrcspojidcnt awe and reverence. I'.ut here ia " neither the cloud by day nor the jiillar of fire by night:" neitlier the blaze of immediate inspiration nor the hallowed radiance, the mystic gloomy light that follows it, 80 far a.s I wa.s able to perceive. I think it idle to say that Michael Angelo painted man in the al)etrart, and so left expression indeterminate, when he painted i>rophet3 and other given characters in particular, lie has painted 312 The Vatican. them on a larger scale and cast their limbs in a gigantic mould to give a dignity and command answering to their situations and high calling, but I do not sec the same high character and intensity of thought or purpose im- pressed upon their countenances. Thus nothing can be nobler or more characteristic than the figure of the propliet Jeremiah. It is not abstracted, but symbolical of the history and functions of the individual. The whole figure bends and droops under a weight of woe, like a large willow tree surcharged with showers. Yet there is no peculiar expression of grief in one part more than another ; the head hangs down despondingly indeed, but so do the hands, the clothes ; every part seems to labour under and be involved in a comi)lication of distress. Again, the prephet Ezra is represented reading in a striking attitude of attention, and with the book held close to him as if to lose no part of its contents in empty space — all this is finely imagined and designed, but then the book reflects back none of its pregnant, hieroglyphic meaning on the face which, though large and stately, is an ordinary, unimpassioned, and even unideal one. Daniel, again, is meant for a face of inward thought and musing, but it might seem as if the compression of the features were produced by external force as much as by involuntary perplexity. I might extend these remarks to this artist's other works ; for instance, to the Moses, of which the form and attitude express the utmost dignity and energy of purpose, but the face wants a something of the intelli- gence and expansive views of tlie Hebrew legislator. It is cut from the same block and by the same bold sweep- ing hand as the sandals or the drapery, L. Do you think there is any truth or value in the distinction which assigns to Eaffaelle the dramatic and to Michael Angelo the epic department of the art 1 II. Very little, I confess. It is so far true, that Michael Angelo painted single figures and Eaffaelle chiefly groups ; The Vatican. 313 but Michael Angelo gave life and action to Ms figures, though not the same expression to the face. I think this arose from two circumstances. First, from his habits as a sculptor, in •which form predominates, and in which the fixed linea- ments are more attended to than the passing inflections, ■which are neither so easily caught nor so well given in sculpture as in painting. Secondly, it strikes me that Michael Angelo, who was a strong, iron-built man, sympa- thised more with the organic structure, with bones and muscles, than with the more subtle and sensitive Avork- ings of that fine medullary substance called the brain. He compounded man admirably of brass or clay, but did not succeed equally in breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, of thought or feeling. He has less humanity than RafTaelle, and I think that he is also less divine, unless it be asserted that the body is less allied to earth than the mind. Expression is, after all, the principal thing. If Michael Angelo's forms have, as I allow, an intellectual character about them and a greatness of gusto, so that you would almost say " his bodies thought," his faces on the other hand have a drossy and material one, For example, in the figure of Adam coming from the hand of his Creator, the composition, which goes on the idea of a being starting into life at tlie tduch of Omnipotence, is sublime — the figure of Adam, reclined at ease with manly freedom and independence, is worthy of the original foun- der of our race; and the expression of the face, implying pa.ssive resignation and the first consciousness of existence, is in tliorough keeping — but I sec nothing in the coun- tenance of the Deity denoting supreme might and m.ijcsty. The Eve, too, lying extended at the foot of the Forbidden Tree, has an elasticity and buoyancy about it that seems as if it could bound up from the earth of its own accord, like a bow that has l)C('n bent. It is all life and grace. The action of tlic head thrown back and the upward look correspond to the rest. The artist was here at home. li» 314 The Vatican. like manner, in the allegorical figures of Night and Morn at Florence, the faces are ugly or distorted, but the contour and actions of the limbs express dignity and power in the very highest degree. The legs of the figure of Night, in particular, are twisted into the involutions of a serpent's folds ; the neck is curved like the horse's, and is clothed ^Yith thunder. L. What, then, is the precise difference between him and Raffaelle, according to your conception 1 II. As far as I can explain the matter, it seems to me that Michael Angelo's forms are finer, but that Raffaelle's are more fraught with meaning ; that the rigid outline and disposable masses in the first are more grand and imposing, but that Piaffaelle puts a greater proportion of sentiment into his, and calls into play every faculty of mind and body of which his characters are susceptible, with greater subtilty and intensity of feeling. Dryden's lines — " A fiery soul that, working out its way. Fretted the pigmy body to decay, And o'er-inform'd tlie tenement of clay" — do not exactly answer to Raflfaelle's character, which is mild and thoughtful rather than fiery ; nor is there any want either of grace or grandeur in his figures : but the passage describes the '* o'er-informing " spirit that breathes through them, and the unequal struggle of the expression to vent itself by more than ordinary physical means. Eaflfaelle lived a much shorter time than Michael Angelo, who also lived long after him ; and there is no compari- son between the number, the variety, or the finished elegance of their w^orks.* Michael Angelo possibly lost himself in the material and instrumental part of art, in embodying a technical theory, or in acquiring the grammar of different branches of study, excelling in knowledge and * The oil-pictures attributed to Michael Angelo are meagre and pitiful; such as that of tlie "Fates at Floi-ence." Another of " Witches," at Cardinal Fcsch's at Rome, is lilce what the late Mr Barry would have admired and imitated — dingy, coarse, and vacant. The Vatican. 315 in gravity of pretension ; wliereas Raffaelle gave himself up to the diviner or lovelier impulse that breathes its soul over the face of things, being governed by a sense of reality and of general truth. There is nothing exclusive or repulsive in Raffaelle ; he is open to all impressions alike, and seems to identify himself with whatever he saw, that arrested his attention or could interest others. Michael Angelo studied for himself, and raised objects to the stand- ard of his conception by a fonmila or system ; RafTaelle invented for others, and was guided only by sympathy with them. Michael Angelo was painter, sculptor, archi- tect, but he might be said to make of each art a shrine in which to build up the stately and gigantic stature of his mind ; Raffaelle was only a painter, but in that one art he seemed to pour out all the treasures and various excel- lence of nature, grandeur and scope of design, exquisite finishing, force, grace, delicacy, the strength of man, the softness of woman, the playfulness of infancy, thought, feeling, invention, imitation, labour, ease, and every quality that can distinguish a picture, except colour. Michael Angelo, in a word, stamped his own character on his works, or recast Nature in a mould of his own, leaving out much that was excellent ; Raffaelle received his in- spiration from without, and his genius caught the lambent flame of grace, of truth, and grandeur, which arc reflected in his works with a light clear, transparent, and inifading. L. Will you mention one or two things that particularly struck you ? //. Tiicro is a figure of a man leading a horse in the " Attila," which I think peculiarly characteristic. It is an ordinary face and figure, in a somewhat awkward dress : but he soems as if ho had literally walked into the picture at that instant; he is looking forward with a mixturo of earnestness and curiosity, a.s if the scene were jtassing before him, and every part of his figure and dress is flexible and in motion, pluint to the painter's plastic touch. This 316 The Vatican. figure, so unconstrained and free, animated, salient, put me in mind, compared with the usual stiffness and shackles of the art, of chain-armour used by the knights of old in- stead of coat-of-mail. riaffaelle's fresco figures seem the least of all others taken from plaster-casts ; this is more than can be said of i\Iichacl Angelo's, which might be taken from, or would serve for, very noble ones. The horses in the same picture also delight me. Though dumb they appear as though they could speak, and were privy to the import of the scene. Their inflated nostrils and speckled skins are like a kind of proud flesh ; or they are animals spiritualised. In the " ]\Iiracle of Bolsano" is that group of children, round-faced, smiling, with large-orbed eyes, like infancy nestling in the arms of affection ; the studied ele- gance of the choir of tender novices, with all their sense of the godliness of their function and the beauty of holi- ness ; and the hard, liny, individual portraits of priests and cardinals on the right hand, which have the same life, spirit, boldness, and marked character as if you could have looked in upon the assembled conclave. Neither painting nor popery ever produced anything finer. There is the utmost hardness and materiality of outline, with a spirit of fire. The school of Athens is full of striking parts and ingenious contrasts ; but I prefer to it the "Con- vocation of Saints," with that noble circle of Prophets and Apostles in the sky, on Avhose bent foreheads and down- cast eyes you see written the City of the Blest, the beatific presence of the Most High, and the Glory hereafter to be revealed, a solemn brightness and a fearful dream, and that scarce less-inspired circle of sages canonised here on earth, poets, heroes, and philosophers, with the painter himself entering on one side like the recording angel, smiling in youthful beauty, and scarce conscious of the scene he has embodied. If there is a failure in any of these frescoes, it is I think, in the " Parnassus," in which there is something quaint and affected. In the " St Peter The Vatican. 317 delivered from Prison" lie has burst ^vitl^ Eembrandt into the dark chambers of night, and thrown a glory round them. In the story of " Cupid and Psyche," at the Little Farnese, he has, I think, even surpassed himself in a certain swelling and voluptuous grace, as if beauty grew and ripened under his touch, and the very genius of ancient fable hovered over his enamoured pencil. L. I believe you when you praise, not always when you condemn. Was there anything else that you saw to give you a higher idea of him than the specimens we have in this country ? H. Nothing superior to the Cartoons for boldness of design and execution ; but I think his best oil pictures are abroad, though I had seen most of them before in the Louvre, I had not, however, seen the "Crowning of the Virgin," which is in the picture-gallery of the Vatican, and appears to me one of his very highest-wrought pictures. The Virgin in the clouds is of an admirable scdatencss and dignity, and over the throng of breathing faces below there is poured a stream of joy and fervid devotion that can be compared to nothing but the golden light that evening skies pour on the edges of the surging waves. "Hope elevates, and joy biiglitcns their every feature." The Foligno Virgin was at Paris, in which I cannot say I am quite satisfied with the Madonna ; it has rather a prccituse expression ; but I know not enough how to admire the innumerable heads of cherubs surrounding her, touched in with such care and delicacy, yet so as scarcely to be per- ceptible except on dose inspection, nor that figure of the winged cherub below, ofrcriiig the casket, and with liis round, cliubby face and limbs as full of rosy hcaltli and joy as the cup is full of the juice of the purple vine. Tliero is another picture of his I will mention, the Leo X. in the Palace Pitti, "on his front engraven thought and public care ;" and again, that little portrait in a cap in the Louvre, muffled in thought and buried in a kind of mental 318 The Vatican. chiaroscuro. WLen I think of these and so many other of his inimitable works, " scattered like stray-gifts o'er the earth," meeting our thoughts half-way, and yet carrying them further then we should have been able of ourselves, en- riching, refining, exalting all around, I am at a loss to find motives for equal admiration or gratitude in what Michael Angelo has left, though his Prophets and Sibyls on the walls of the Sistine Chapel are thumping make-weights thrown into the opposite scale. It is nearly impossible to weigh or measure their different merits. Perhaps Michael Angelo's works, in their vastness and unity, may give a greater blow to some imaginations and lift the mind more out of itself, though accompanied with less delight or food for reflection, resembling the rocky precipice, whose " stately height, though bare," overlooks the various ex- cellence and beauty of subjected art. L. I do not think your premises warrant your conclusion. If what you have said of each is true, I should give the undoubted preference to Piaffaelle, as at least the greater painter if not the greater man. I must prefer the finest face to the largest mask. II. I wish you could see and judge for yourself. L. I pry'thee do not mock me. Proceed with your account. Was there nothing else worth mentioning after Ilaffaelle and Michael Angelo ? //. So nmch that it has slipped from my memory. There are the finest statues in the world there, and they are scattered and put into niches or separate little rooms for effect, and not congregated together like a meeting of the marble gods of mythology, as was the case in the Louvre. There are some of Canova's, worked up to a high pitch of perfection, which might just as well have been left alone — and there are none, I think, equal to the Elgin Marbles. A bath of one of the Antonines, of solid porphyry, and as large as a good-sized room, struck me as the strongest proof of ancient magnificence. The busts are The Vatican. 319 innumerable, inimitable, have a breathing clearness and transparency, revive ancient history, and are very like actual English heads and characters. The inscriptions alone on fragments of antique marble would furnish years of study to the curious or learned in that "way. The vases are most elegant — of proportions and materials unrivalled in taste and value. There are some tapestry copies of the Cartoons very glaring and unpleasant to look at. The room containing the coloured maps of Italy, done about three hundred years ago, is one of the longest and most striking ; and the passing through it, Avith the green hillocks, rivers, and mountains on its spotty sides, is like going a delightful and various journey. You recall or anticipate the most interesting scenes and objects. Out of the windows of these long, straggling galleries, you look down into a labyrinth of inner and of outer courts, or catch the Dome of St Peter's adjoining (like a huge shadow), or gaze at the distant amphitheatre of hills surrounding the Sacred City, which excite a pleasing awe, Avhether con- sidered as the haunts of banditti or from a recollection of the wondrous scene, the hallowed spot, on which they have overlooked for ages Imperial or Papal Rome, or her com- monwealth more august than either. Here also, in one chamber of the Vatican, is a room stuffed full of artist.s, copying the Transfiguration, or the St Jerome of Donioni- chiiio, spitting, shrugging, and taking snufT, admiring their own performances and sneering at those of their neiglibours ; and on certain days of the week tlie whole range of the rooms is tiirown open without reserve to the entire population of Home and its environs, })ric3t3 and peasants, with heads not unlike tho.se tliat gleam from the wall.s, perfect in expression and in costume, and young peasant girls in clouted slioc.'*, with looks of pleasure, timidily, and wonder, such as those with which Jlaffaclle himself, from the portraits of him, might be supposed to have hailed tho dawn of heaven-born art. There is also (to mention small 320 The Vatican. works with great) a portrait of George the Fourth in his robes (a present to his Holiness), turned into an outer room ; and a tablet erected by him in St Peter's to the memory of James III. Would you believe it? Cosmo Comyne Bradwardine, when he saw the averted looks of the good people of England as they proclaimed his Majesty James III. in any of the towns through which they passed, would not have believed it. Fergus Maclvor, when in answer to the crier of the court, who repeated, " Long live King George ! " he retorted, " Long live King James ! " would not have believed it possible ! L. Hang your politics. //. Never mind, if they do not hang me. ( 321 ) ENGLISH STUDENTS AT TxCME. " Nowher so besy a man as he tlier n'as, And yit he semed besier than he was. " —Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Rome is of all places the worst to study in, for the same reason that it is the best to lounge in. There is no end of objects to divert and distract the mind. If a person has no other view than to pass away his time, to fill his portfolio or commonplace book, or to improve his general taste and knowledge, he may find employment and amusement here for ever : if ever he wishes to do anything, he should fly from it as he would from the plague. There is a species of malaria lianging over it which infects both the mind and the body. It has been the seat of too much activity and luxury formerly, not to have produced a correspondent torpor and stafiiatiou (both in the physical and moral world) as the natural con- sequence at present. If necessity is the mother of inven- tion, it must be stifled in the birth here, where cverythiiif is already done and provided to your hand that you could possibly wi.sh for, or think of. You have no stimulus to exertion, for you have but to open your eyes and see, in order to live in a continued round of delight and admira- tion. The door.s of a splendid l)anquct of all that is rare and rich in Art stand ready open to you, you arc invited to enter in and feast your senses and your imagination gratis ; and it i.s not likely tliat, under these circumstances, you will try to earn a scanty meal by liard labour, or even to gain an appetite by wholesome exercise. The same thing occurs here that is objected to by the inhabitants of great cities in general : they have too many objects always passing before X 322 English Students at Rome. tliein, that engage their attention and fill up their time, to allow them either much leisure or inclination for thouirht or study. Rome is the great metropolis of art ; and it is somewhat to be feared that those who take up their abode there will become, like other cockneys, ignorant, conceited and superficial. The queen and mistress of the ancient and the modern world claims such a transcendent superiority over the mind, that you look down as it were from this eminence on the rest of mankind; and from the contempt you feel for others, come to have a mighty good opinion of yourself. The being at Rome (both from the sound of the name and the monuments of genius and magnificence she has to show) is of itself a suflacient distinction without doing anything there. After viewing some splendid relic of antiquity, the efforts of contemporary art sink into insignificance and nothingness : but we are disjjosed to occupy the vacant space, the clear ground thus created, with our own puny pretensions and aspiring fancies. As this indulgence of al- ternate enthusiasm and reflected self-complacency is a never- failing source of gratification, and a much less laborious one than the embodying our vain imaginations in practice, we easily rest in the means as the end ; and without making any farther progress, are perfectly satisfied with what others have done, and what we are to do. We indeed wear the livery, and follow in the train of greatness, and, like other livery-servants, despise the rabble, growing more lazy, affected, luxurious, insolent, trifling, and incapable of gain- ing an honest livelihood every hour. We are the dupes of flattering appearances and of false comparisons between ourselves and others. We think that a familiarity with great names and great works is an approach to an equality with them ; or fondly proceed to establish our own preten- sions on the ruins of others, not considering that if it were not what we do, but what we see, that is the standard of proficiency, thousands of spectators might give themselves English Students at Rome. 233 the same airs of self-importance on the same idle score, and treat us as barbarians and poor creatures, if they had our impertinence and presumption. We stand before a picture of some great master, and fancy there is nothing between him and us : we walk under the dome of St Peter's, and it seems to grow larger with a consciousness of our presence and with the amplitude of our conceptions. All this is fine as well as easy work ; nor can it be supposed that we shall be in any haste to exchange this waking dream for the drudgery of mechanical exertion, or for the mortifying evidence of the disparity between our theory and our practice. All the great names and schools of art stand proxy for us till we choose to take the responsibility on our own shoulders ; and as it happens in other cases, we have no objectit)n to make our faith in the merits of others a convenient substi- tute for good works and zealous exertions in the cause. Yet a common stone-mason or sign-painter, who understands the use of his tools and sticks close to his business, has more resemblance to Piaffaelle or Michael Angelo, and stands a better chance of achieving something great, than those who visit the corridors of the Vatican or St Peter's once a day, return liome, spend the evening in extolling what thoy have witnessed, begin a sketch or a plan, and lay it aside, and saunter out agnin the next day in search of fresh objects to dissipate ennui and kill the time without being obliged to draw for one instant on their own resources or resolution. Numberless arc the instances of those who go on thus, while vanity and indolence togetlier are confirmed into an incurable disease, the .sleek, pampered tone of which they mistake for the marks of taste and genius. What other result can be cxi»ectcd ? If they do aiiytiiing, it is all over with them. They not only strip off the mask from their own self-love, but expose thcm.sclvcs to the pity and derision of their competitors, whom they before alTi.-ctcd to despise. Within "the vast, the unljoundcd " circle of pretension, of vapouring, and innuendo, they arc safe : the future would bo 324 Enjlisli Students at Rome. Raffiielles, Corrcggios, itc.,liave nothing to dread from criti- cism while they hatch their embi'yo conquests and prepare a distant triumph : no one can apply Ithuriel's spear to detect what is confessedly a shadow. But they must waive this privilege when they descend into the common lists ; and in proportion as they have committed themselves in conversation or in idle fancy, they are ashamed to commit themselves in reality, because anything they could do at first must unavoidably fall short of that high standard of excellence, which (if at all) can only be attained by the labour and experience of a whole life. Their real incapacity shrinks from the pomp of their professions. The magnifi- cence of the air-drawn edifice of their reputation prevents them from laying the first stone in downright earnest ; and they have no other mode of excusing the delay and the in- decision it betokens, than by assumhig still greater delicacy of taste and loftiness of ambition, and by thus aggrandising their unfounded schemes, rendering their execution more hopeless and impossible. Should they begin something, a new thought strikes them, and they throw aside a very promising sketch to enlarge their canvas, and proceed upon a scale more worthy of them. To this enlarged design some object is indispensably necessary, which is unluckily wanting: thus time is gained, a new lease of credit is granted, and instead of putting the last hand to the original sketch, they take merit to themselves for the enlargement of their views and the determined pursuit of the higher walk of art. Meantime, the smaller picture stands unfinished on the easel, and nominal commissions pour in for new and more extended projects. Then comes a new secret of colouring, a new principle of grouping, a new theory, a new book — always something to draw off the attention from its proper object, and to substitute laborious idleness for true pains and profitable study. Then a picture is to be copied as a preparation for undertaking a given sub- ject, or a library to be ransacked to ascertain the pre- Enrjlish Students at Borne. 325 cise truth of the historicLil facts or the exact conception of the characters ; and after a year thus lost in desultory and scrupulous researches, the whole plan is given up, either because no one comes forward efTectually to patronise it, or because some more tempting prospect is opened into the realms of art and high renown. Then again friends are to be consulted; some admire one thing, some another; some recommend the study of nature, others are all for the antique ; some insist on the utmost finishing, otliers explode all attention to mlnuticc ; artists find one fault, the unin- structed spectator another ; and in going backwards and for- wards from one to another, listening to new reasons and new objections, in reconciling all parties and pleasing none, life is passed in endless doubts and difficulties, and we discover that our most valuable years have fled in busy preparations to do — nothing. It is then too late, and we consume the remainder in vain regrets and querulous repinings, as we did the flower and marrow of our time in fanciful speculation and efrregious trifling. The student should of all thinirs steer clear of the character of the dilettante — it is the rock on which he is most likely to split. Pleasure, or extrava- gance, or positive idleness, are less dangerous ; for these he knows to be fatal to his success, and he indulges in them witli his eyes open ; but in the other case he is thrown off his guard by the most plausible ap[)earance3. Vanity here puts on the garb of humility ; indecision, of long-sighted l>erscvcrance ; and habitual sloth, of constant industry. Few \nll reproach us, while we arc accumulating the means of ultimate success, with neglecting the end ; or remind us that, thougli art is long, life is short. It is true, that art is a long and steep a.scent, but we must learn to scale it by regu- lar, practical stages, and not ity a hasty wish or still more futile calculations and measurements of the height. Wc can only, indeed, be sensible r»f its real height by the actual I)rogre.sH we have made, and by the glorious views that gra- dually dawn upon us, the cheercrs of our way and the har- 326 English Students at Rome, bingers of our success. It is only by attempting something that we feci \Yhere our strength lies, and if we have what travellers call a forte journee to perform, it is the more indispensable that we should set out betimes and not loiter on the road. What is well done is the consequence of doing much — perfection is the reward of numberless attempts and failures. The chief requisites are a practised hand and eye, and an active imagination. Indolent taste and passive acquirements are not enough. They will neither supply our wants while living, nor enable us to leave a name be- hind us after we are dead. Further, the brooding over ex- cellence with a feverish importunity, and stimulating our- selves to great things by an abstract love of fame, can do little good, and may do much harm. It is, no doubt, a very delightful and enviable state of mind to be in, but neither a very arduous nor a very profitable one. Nothing remarkable was ever done, except by following up the im- pulse of our own minds, by grappling with difficulties and improving our advantages, not by dreaming over our own premature triumphs or doating on the achievements of others. If it were nothing else, the having the works of the great masters of former times always before us is enough to dis- courage and defeat all ordinary attempts. How many elef^ant designs and meritorious conceptions must lie buried under the high-arched porticoes of the Vatican ! The walls of the Sistine Chapel must fall upon the head of inferior pretensions, and crush them. What minor pencil can stand in competition with the " petriflc mace " that painted the "Last Juilgmenti" What fancy can expand into blooming grace and beauty by the side of the " Heliodorus 1" What is it we could add, or what occasion, what need, what pre- tence is there to add anything, to the art after this ? Who in the presence of such glorious works does not wish to shrink into himself, or to live only for them 1 Is it not a pro- fanation to think he can hope to do anything like them ? EmjUsli Students at Home. 327 And who, having once seen, can think with common patience or with zealous enthusiasm of doing augbt but treading in their footsteps ? If the artist has a genius and •.urn of mind at all similar, they baulk and damp him ly their imposing, stately height : if his talent lies in a different and humbler walk, they divert and unsettle his nind. If he is contented to look on and admire, a vague and unattainable idea of excellence floats before his imagination, and tantalises him with equally vain hopes and vishes. If he copies, he becomes a mechanic, and besides runs another risk. He finds he can with ease produce in three days an incomparably finer effect than he could do, with all his efforts and after any length of time, in working without assistance. He is therefore disheartened and put out of countenance, and returns with reluctance to original composition ; for where is the sense of taking ten times the jiains and undergoing ten times the anxiety to produce not one-hundredth part of the effect? When I was young, I made one or two studies of strong contrasts of light and shade in the manner of ll'jmbrandt with great care and (as it was thought) with some success. But after I had once copied Bome of Titian's portraits in the Louvre, my ambition took a higher flight. Nothing would serve my turn but licads like Titian — Titian expressions, Titian complexions, Titian dresses ; and as I could not find these where I was, after one or two abortive attempts to engraft Italian art on English nature, I flung away my pencil in disgust and des- pair. Otherwise I might have done as well as others, I dare say, ))Ut from a desire to do too well. F did not con- sider that Nature is always the great thing, or that "Pan is a god, Apollo is no more!" Nor is the student repelled and staggered in his pnigrcss only l)y the degree of excel- lence, but distracted and puzzled by the variety of incom- patible claims upon his ingenuous and sincere enthu.'-iasni. While any one attends to what circumstances bring in his way, or keeps in the path that is prompted by his own 328 English Students at Rome. genius (such as it may be), he stands a fair chance, by- directing all his efforts to one point, to compass the utmost object of his ambition. But what likelihood is there of this from the moment that all the great schools, and all the most precious chefs-d'a'uvre of art, at once unveil their di- versified attractions to his astonished sit'ht 1 What Protesl- ant, for instance, can be properly and permanently imbuei Avith the fervent devotion or saint-like purity of ths Catholic religion, or hope to transfer the pride, pomp, and pageantry of that detested superstition to his own canvas Avith real feeling and con amore ? What modern can enter fully into the spirit of the ancient Greek mythology, or rival the symmetry of its naked forms'? What single individual 'will presume to unite "the colouring of Titian, the drawing of RafTaelle, the airs of Guido, the learning of Poussin, the purity of Domcnichino, the correggiosity of Correggio, and the grand contour of j\Iichael Angelo " in the same composition ? Yet those who are familiar with all these different styles and their excellences, require them all. !Mere originality will not suffice ; it is quaint and Gothic — commonplace perfection is still more intolerable; it is insipid and mechanical. Modern art is, indeed, like the fabled Sphinx, that imposes impossible tasks on her votaries, and as she clasps them to her bosom pierces them to the heart. Let a man have a turn and taste for landscape, she whispers him that nothing is truly interesting but the human face: if he makes a successful dehijit in portrait, he soon (under the same auspices) aspires to history ; but if painting in its highest walks seems within his reach, she then plays off the solid forms and shining surfaces of sculpture before his eyes, urging him to combine the simple grandeur of the antique with Canova's polished elegance ; or he is haunted with the majestic effects and scientific rules of architecture, and ruined temples and broken frag- ments nod in his bewildered imaLfination ! What is to be done in this case 1 What generally is done 1 — nothing. English Students at Rome. 329 Amidst so many pretensions, how is clioice possible ? Or where all are equally objects of taste and knowledge, how rest satisfied without giving some proofs of our practical proficiency in all ? To mould a clay figure that, if finished, might surpass the Venus ; to make a pen-and-ink drawing after a splendid piece of colouring by Titian ; to give the picturesque effect of the arch of some ancient aqueduct as seen by moonlight ; — some such meagre abstractions and flimsy refinements in art are among the spolia ojmna and patchwork trophies offered to the presiding Goddess of spleen, idleness, and affectation. Nothing can be conceived more unpropitious to "the high endeavour and the glad success" than the whole as- jtect and character of ancient Rome, both what remains as well as what is lost of it. Is this the Eternal City 1 Is this she that (Amazon or votaress) was twice mistress of the world ? Is this the country of the Scipios, the Cincinnati and the Gracclii, of Cato and of Brutus, of Pompey and of Sylla ? Is this the Capitol where Julius Caesar fell, where Cicero thundered against Catiline, the scene of combats and of triumphs, and through whose gates kings and'nations were led captive by the side of their conquerors' chariot- wheels 1 All is vanished. The names alone remain to liaunt the memory : the sfiirits of the mighty dead mock us as we pa.ss. The genius of antiquity bestrides the place like a colossus. Iluin here sits on her pedestal of pride, and reads a mortifying lecture to liuman vanity. We see all tliat ages, nations, a subjected world, conspired to build up to magnificence, overthrown or liastcning fast into decay : empire, religion, freedom, gods, and men trampled in the dust, or con.sigiied to the regions of lasting oblivion or of shadowy renown : and what arc we that, in this mighty wreck, we should think of cultivating our petty talents and advancing our individual jireteusions ? llniiic is the very tomb of ancient grcatncs.s, the grave of modern presumption. The mere consciousness of the presence in which wc stand 330 English Studenls at Home. ought to abash and overawe our pragmatical self-conceit. Men here seem no better than insects crawling about; every- thing has a Liliputian and insignificant appearance. Our big projects, our bloated egotism, shrink up within the enormous shadow of transitory power and splendour : tlie sinews of desire relax and moulder away, and the fever of youthful ambition is turned into a cold ague-fit. There is a languor in the air ] and the contagion of listless apathy infects the hopes that are yet unborn. As to what remains of actual power and spiritual authoritj', Hobbes said well that " Popery was the ghost of the Roman Empire, sitting upon the ruins of Home." The only flourishing thing in Rome (and that is only half flourishing) is an old woman ; and who would wish to be an old woman? Greatness here is greatness in masquerade — one knows not whether to pity or laugh at it — and the Cardinals' red legs, peeping out like the legs of some outlandish stuffed bird in a museum, excite much the same curiosity and sur^^rise. No one (no English- man at least) can be much edified by the array of distinc- tions, that denote a consummationof Art or weakness. Still, perhaps, to the idle and frivolous there may be something alluring in this meretricious mummery and splendour, as moths are attracted with the taper's blaze, and perish in it! There is a great deal of gossiping and stuff going on at Rome. Tliere are conversaziones, where the Cardinals go and admire the fair complexions and innocent smiles of the young Englishwomen ; and where the English students who have the entree look at the former with astonishment as a sort of nondescripts, and are not the less taken with their pretty countrywomen for being the objects of attention to Popish Cardinals. Then come the tittle-tattle of who and who 's together, the quaint and piquant international gallantries, and the story of the greatest beauty in Rome said to be married to an English gentleman — how odd and at the same time how encouraging ! Then the manners English Students at Piorae. 331 and customs of Rome excite a buzz of curiosity, and the English imagination is always recurring to and teazed with that luckless question of cicisheism. Some affect to be candid, while others persist in their original blindness, and would set on foot a reform of the llonian metropolis — on the model of the British one ! In short, there is a great deal too much tampering and dalliance with subjects with which we have little acquaintance and less business ; all that passes the time, and relieves the mind either after the fatigue or in the absence of more serious study. Then there is to be an Academy Meeting at night, and a debate is to take place whether the Academy ought not to have a President, and, if so, whether the President of the Academy at Rome ought not (out of respect) to be a Royal Acade- mician, thus extending the links in the chain of professional intrigue and cabal from one side of the Continent to the other. A speech is accordingly to be made, a motion seconded, which requires time and preparation — or a sudden thought strikes the more raw and heedless adventurer, but is lost for words to express it — vox faucibus hcjcsit, and the cast of tlie Theseus looks dull and lumpish, as the dis- appointed candidate for popular applause surveys it by the light of his lamp in retiring to his chamber, Sedet infdix TUeseus, itc. So tlie next day Gibbon is bought and studied with great avidity to give him a command uf tropes and figures at their next meeting. The arrival of some new lord or squire of high degree or clerical virtuoso is announced, and a cabal immediately commences who is to share his jiatronagc, who is to guide his taste, who is to show him tlie lions, who is to pascpiinadc, epigrammatiac, or caricature him, and fix his prctensitms to tnsto and liberality as culminating from the zenith or sunk below zero. Everything here is transparent and matter of instant notoriety : nothing can be done in a corner. Tiic i^nglish arc comparatively few in number, and from their being in a foreign country arc objects of iniportancc to one another 332 English Students at Rome. as well as of curiosity to the natives. All ranks and classes are blended together for mutual attack or defence. The patron sinks into the companion ; the protege plays oflf the great man upon occasion. Indeed, the grand airs and haughty reserve of English maimers are a little ridiculous and out of place at Home. You are glad to meet with any one who will bestow his compassion and " his tedious- ness " upon you. You want some shelter from the insolence and indifference of the inhabitants, which are very much cal- culated to repel the feelings, and throw you back on your resources in common humanity or the partiality of your fellow-countrymen. Nor is this the least inconvenience of a stranger's residence at Rome. You have to squabble with every one about you to prevent being cheated, to drive a hard bargain in order to live, to keep your hands and your tongue within strict bounds, for fear of being stilettoed, or thrown into the Tower of St Angelo, or re- manded home. You have much ado to avoid the contempt of the inhabitants ; if you fancy you can ingratiate your- self with them and play off the amiable, you have a still more charming pursuit and bait for vanity and idleness. You must run the gauntlet of sarcastic words or looks iov a whole street, of laughter or want of comprehension in reply to all the questions you ask ! or if a pretty black- browed girl puts on a gracious aspect, and seems to interest herself in your perplexity, you think yourself in high luck and well repaid fur a thousand affronts. A smile from a Homan beauty must be well nigh fatal to many an English student at Home. In short, while abroad, and wliile our self-love is continually coming into collision with that of others, and neither knows what to make of the other, we are necessarily thinking of ourselves and of them, and in no pleasant or profitable way. Everything is strange and new ; we seem beginning life over again, and feel like children or rustics. We have not learned tlie alphabet of civilisation and humanity ; how, then, should we as2)ire to English Students at Borne. 333 the height of art? We are taken iip -with ourselves as English travellers and English students, when we should be thinking of something else. All the petty intrigue, vexation, and tracasserie of ordinary dealings should be banished as much as possible from the mind of the student, who requires to have his whole time and faculties to him- self ; all ordinary matters should go on mechanically of themselves without giving him a moment's uneasiness or interruption ; but here they are forced upon him with ten- fold sharpness and frequency, hurting his temper and hin- dering his time. Instead of " tearing from his memory all trivial, fond records," that he may devote himself to the service of art, and that " her commandment all alone may live within the book and volume of his brain, unmixed with baser matter," he is never free from the most pitiful an- noyances — they follow him into the country, sit down with Lim at home, meet him in the street, take him by the button, whisper in his ear, prevent his sleeping, waken him before the dawn, and plague him out of his very life, making it resemble a restless dream or an ill-written romance. Under such disadvantages, should an artist do anything, the Aca-- demy which has sent him out should lose no time in sending for him back ag.iin ; for there is nothing that may not be expected from an English student at Rome who has not become an idler, a pedi-mmtre, and a busybody ! Or if he is still unwilling to quit classic ground, is chained by the soft fetters of the climate or of a fair face, or likes to see the morning mi.st rise from the marshes of the Campagna and circle round the dome of St Peter's, and that to sever him from this would be to sever soul from body, let him go to Gensano, stop there for five years, visiting Rome only at interval.'*, wander by Albano's gleaming lake and wizard grottoc*, make studies c)f the heads and drcs.scs of the pea.s.'uit-girls in the ncighbourlumd, those goddcsf^es of health and good temper, cmbttdy them to the life, and show (as the result) what the world never saw before ! ( 334 ) FONTHILL ABBEY. The old sarcasm — Omne ignotum pro magnifico est — cannot be justly applied here. Fonthill Abbey, after being enveloped in impenetrable mystery for a length of years, has been unexpectedly thrown open to the vulgar gaze, and has lost none of its reputation for magnificence — though, perhaps, its visionary glory, its classic renown, have vanished from the public mind for ever. It is, in a word, a desert of magnificence, a glittering waste of labo- rious idleness, a cathedral turned into a toy-shop, an immense museum of all that is most curious and costly, and, at the sanae time, most worthless, in the productions of art and natnre. Ships of pearl and seas of amber are scarce a fable here — a nautilus's shell surmounted with a gilt triumph of Neptune — tables of agate, cabinets of ebony and precious stones, painted windows " shedding a gaudy, crimson light," satin borders, marble floors, and lamps of solid gold — Chinese pagodas and Persian tapestry — all the splendour of Solomon's temple is displayed to the view — in miniature whatever is far-fetched and dear-bought, rich in the materials, or rare and difficult in the workman- ship — but scarce one genuine work of art, one solid proof of taste, one lofty relic of sentiment or imagination ! The difficult, the unattainable, the exclusive are to be found here in profusion, in perfection ; all else is wanting, or is brought in merely as a foil or as a stop-gap. In this respect the collection is as satisfactory as it is unique. The specimens exhibited are the best, the most highly finished, the most costly and curious of that kind of ostentatious magnificence which is calculated to gratify the sense of Fonthill Ahhey. 335 property in the owner, and to excite tlie wondering curi- osity of the stranger, who is permitted to see or (as a choice privilege and favour) even to touch baubles so dazzling and of such exquisite nicety of execution ; and which, if broken or defaced, it would be next to impossible to replace. The same character extends to the pictures, which are mere furniture-pictures, remarkable chiefly for their antiquity or painful finishing, without beauty, without interest, and with about the same pretensions to attract the eye or delight the fancy as a well-polished mahogany table or a waxed oak-floor. Not one great work by one great name, scarce one or two of the worst specimens of the first masters, Leonardo's "Laughing Boy," or a copy from Piafi"aelle or Corrcggio, as if to make the thing remote and finical — but heaps of the most elaborate pieces of the worst of the Dutch masters, Breughel's "Sea-horses,'' with coats of mother-of-pearl, and Rothenhamer's " Elements " turned into a Flower-piece. The catalogue, in short, is guiltless of the names of those works of art " Which like a trumpet make the spiiit dance," and is sacred to those which rank no hi"hcr than vcnccrinf. and where the painter is on a precise par with the carver and gilder. Such is not our taste in art ; and we confess we should have been a little disappointed in viewing Font- hill, had nr)t our expectations been disabused beforeliand. Oh ! for a glimpse of the Esciirial ! where the piles of Titians lie ; whore nymphs, fairer than lilies, rc[)ose in green, airy, pastoral landscapes, and Cupids, with curled lockfl, pluck the wanton vino ; at whoso beauty, whose splendour, whose truth and freshness, Mcngs could not Contain his astonishment, nor Cumberland his raptures ; " While groves of Kdcn, vaniMliM now ho long, Live in description, and look green in song ;" the very thought of which, in that monastic seclusion and low dell, surrounded by craggy precipices, gives the mind 336 Fonthill Abbe?/. a calenture, a longing desire to plunge through wastes and wilds, to visit at the shrine of such beauty, and be buried in the bosom of such verdant sweetness. Get thee behind us, Temptation ! or not all China and Jai)au will detain us, and this article will be left unfinished, or found (as a volume of Keats's poems was carried out by i\rr Ritchie to be dropped in the Great Desert) iu the sorriest inn in the farthest part of Spain, or in the marble baths of the Moorish Alhambra, or amidst the ruins of Tadmor, or in barbaric palaces, where Bruce encountered Abyssinian queens ! Anything to get all this frippery and finery and tinsel and glitter and embossing and system of tantalisation and fret-work of the imagination out of our heads, and take one deep, long, oblivious draught of the romantic and marvellous, the thirst of which the fame of Fonthill Abbey has raised in us, but not satisfied ! Mr Beckford has undoubted!}" shown himself an indus- trious hijoutier, a prodigious virtuoso, an accomplished patron of unproductive labour, an enthusiastic collector of expensive trifles — the only proof of taste (to our thinking) he has shown in this collection is his getting rid of it. What splendour, what grace, what grandeur might he substitute in lieu of it ! What a handwriting might he spread out upon the walls ! What a spirit of poetry and philosophy might breathe there ! What a solemn gloom, what gay vistas of fancy, like chequered light and shade, might genius, guided by art, shed around ! The author of Yathek is a scholar ; the proprietor of Fonthill has travelled abroad, and has seen all the finest remains of antiquity and boasted specimens of modern art. Why not lay his hands on some of these 1 He had power to carry them away. One might have expected to see, at least, a few fine old pictures, marble copies of the celebrated statues, the Apollo, the Venus, the Dying Gladiator, the Antinous, antique vases with their elegant sculptures, or casts from them ; coins, medals, bas-reliefs; something con- Fontliill Ahhey. 337 nected with the beautiful forms of external nature, or with what is great in the mind or memorable in the history of man — Egj'ptian hieroglyphics, or Chaldee manuscripts on paper made of the reeds of the Nile, or mummies from the Pyramids ! Not so ; not a trace (or scarcely so) of any of these — as little as may be of what is classical or imposing to the imagination from association or well-founded pre- judice ; hardly an article of any consequence that does not seem to be labelled to the following effect — This is mine, and there is no one else in the whole tcorld in tvhoni it can inspire the least interest, or amj feeling beyond a momentary mrprise! To show another your property is an act in itself ungracious, or null and void. It excites no pleasure from sympathy. Every one must have remarked the difference in his feelings on entering a venerable old cathedral, for instance, and a modern-built private mansion. The one seems to fill the mind and expand the form, while the other only produces a sense of listless vacuity, and disposes us to shrink into our own littleness. Whence is this, but that in the first case our associations of power, of interest, are general, and tend to a;_'grandise the species ; and that in the latter {viz., the case of private property) tliey are exclusive and tend to aggrandise none but the individual ? Tliis must be the effect, unless there is sometliing grand or beautiful in the objects tlicmsclves that makes us forget the distinction of mere pr.)]icrty, as from the noble arcliitecture or great antiquity of a building; or unless they remind us of common and universal nature, as pictures, statues do, like so many mirrors, reflecting the external land.scapc, and carrying us out of the ma;,'ic circle of self-love. I'ut all works of art come iindcr the licad of property or .showy furniture, wfiirh arc ncillicr distinguished by sublimity nor beauty, and arc estimated only by the labour required to produce what is triQing or worthies.^, and are consequently nothing more than obtrusive jtroofa of the wealth of the immediate possessor. Tiic motive for Y 338 Fonthill Ahhey. the production of such toys is mercenary, and the admira- tion of theni childish or servile. That which pleases merely from its novelty, or because it was never seen before, cannot be expected to please twice : that which is remarkable for the difficulty or costliness of the execution can be interesting; to no one but the maker or owner. A shell, however rarely to be met with, however highly wrought or quaintly embellished, can only flatter the sense of curiosity for a moment in a number of persons, or the feeling of vanity for a greater length of time in a single person. There are better things than this (we will be bold to say) in the world both of nature and art — things of universal and lasting interest, things tliat appeal to the ima- gination and the afi"ections. The village bell that rings out its sad or merry tidings to old men and maidens, to children and matrons, goes to the heart, because it is a sound significant of weal or woe to all, and has borne no unin- teresting intelligence to you, to me, and to thousands more who have heard it perhajjs for centuries. There is a senti- ment in it. The face of a Madonna (if equal to the subject) has also a sentiment in it " whose price is above rubies." It is a shrine, a consecrated source of high and pure feeling, a well-head of lovely expression, at which the soul drinks and is refreshed, age after age. The mind converses with the mind, or with that nature which, from long and daily intimacy, has become a sort of second self to it : but what senthnent lies hid in a piece of porcelain 1 What soul can you look for in a gilded cabinet or a marble slab ? Is it possible there can be anything like a feeling of littleness or jealousy in this proneness to a merely ornamental taste, that, from not sympathising with the higlicr and more expansive emanations of thought, shrinks fnnn their display with conscious weakness and inferiority 1 If it were an apprehension of an invidious comparison between the pro- prietor and the author of any signal work of genius, which the former did not covet, one would think he must be at least I Fontldll Abbey. 339 equally mortified at sinking to a level in taste and pursuits with the maker of a Dutch toy. ]\Ir Beckford, however, has always had the credit of the highest taste in works of art as well as in vertu. As the showman in Goldsmith's comedy declares that " his bear dances to none but the genteelest of tunes — Water parted from the Sea, The Minuet in Ariadne" — so it was supposed that this celebrated collector's money went for none but the finest Claudes and the choicest specimens of some rare Italian master. The two Claudes are gone. It is as well — they must have felt a little out of their place here — they are kept in counte- nance, where they are, by the very best company ! We once happened to have the pleasure of seeing Mr Beckford in the Great Gallery of the Louvre — he was very plainly dressed in a loose great coat, and looked somewhat pale and thin — but what brought the circumstance to our minds was that we were told on this occasion one of those thumping matter-of-fact lies which are pretty common to other Frenchmen besides Gascons — viz., that he had offered the First Consul no less a sum than two hundred thousand guineas for tlie purcluise of the St Peter Martyr. Would that he had ! and that Napoleon had taken him at his word ! — which we think not unlikely. With two hundred thousand guineas he might have taken some almost impre"-- nablc fortress, " Magdeburg," said Bonaparte, " is wurtli a hundred queens:" and lie would have thought such another stronghold worth at least one Saint. As it is, what an opportunity have we lost of giving the public an account of this picture ! Yet why not describe it, as wo see it still "in our mind's eye," standing on tlie fluor of the Tuilcries, with none of its brightness impaired, throuuh the long perspective of waning years? There it stands, and will for ever stand in our imagination, with the dark, scowling, terrific face of the murdered monk lo()kiMg uj) to his assassin, the horror-struck features of the Hying jiricst, and the skirts of his vest waving in the wind, the shuttered 340 FonlMll Ahbcy. branches of the autumnal trees that feel tlie coming gale, with that cold convent spire rising in the distance amidst the sapphire hills and golden sky — and overhead are seen the cherubim bringing with rosy fingers the crown of martyrdom ; and (such is the feeling of truth, the soul of faith in the picture) you hear floating near, in dim har- monies, the pealing antliem and the heavenly choir ! Surely, the St Peter Martyr surpasses all Titian's other works, as he himself did all other painters. Had this picture been transferred to the present collection (or any picture like it) what a trail of glory would it have left behind it ! for what a length of way would it have haunted the imagination ! how often should we have wished to revisit it, and how fondly would the eye have turned back to the stately tower of Fonthill Abbey, that from the western horizon gives the setting sun to other climes, as the beacon and guide to the knowledge and the love of high art ! The Duke of Wellington, it is said, has declared Fonthill to be "the finest thing in Europe." If so, it is since the dispersion of the Louvre. It is also said that the King is to visit it. We do not mean to say it is not a fit place for the King to visit, or for the Duke to praise : but we know this, that it is a very bad one for us to describe. The father of Mr Christie was supposed to be " equally great on a ribbon or a Raphael." This is unfortunately not our case. We are not " great" at all, but least of all in little things. We have tried in various ways : we can make nothing of it. Look here — this is the Catalogue. Now what can we say (who are not auctioneers but critics) to Six Japan heron-pattern embossed dishes ; or, Twelve burnt-in dishes in compartments ; or, Sixteen ditto enamelled with insects and birds; or, Seven embossed soup-plates, with plants and rich borders ; or, Nine chocolate cups and saucers of egg-shell china, blue lotus pattern ; or, Fontldll Ahhey. 341 Two butter pots on feet, and a bason, cover, and stand of Japan ; or, Two basous and covers, sea-green mandarin; or, A very rare specimen of the basket-work Japan, ornamented with flowers in relief, of the finest kind, the inside gilt, from the Rag- land Museum ; or, Two fine enamelled dishes scolloped ; or. Two blue bottles and two red and gold cups — extra fine ; or, A very curious egg-shell lanthern ; or. Two very rare Japan cups mounted as milk buckets, with silver rims, gilt and chased ; or, Two matchless Japan dishes ; or A very singular tray, the ground of a curious wood artificially waved with storks in various attitudes on the shore, mosaic border, and aventurine back ; or. Two extremely rare bottles with chimseras and plants, mounted in silver gilt ; or. Twenty-four fine old sevues desert plates ; or, Two precious enamelled bowl dishes, with silver handles; — Or, to stick to the capital letters in tins Paradise of Dainty Devices, lest we should be suspected of singling out the meanest articles, we will just transcribe a few of them, for the satisfaction of the curious reader : — A Rich and Highly Ounamented Casket of the very rare old Japan, completely covered with figures. An OuiENTAL ScuLi'TUiiED Tassa OF Lapis Lazuli, mountod in silver gilt, and sot with lapis lazuli intaglios. From the CJarde 3Ieublc of the late King of France. A Pkrbian Jad Vask and Coveii, inlaid with flowers and oniampntB composed ressit — which was immediately after the anatomical researches and improvements of Hippocrates, Democritus, and their disciples ; and we shall find, in the same manner, all the improvements in art followed improvements in science." Yet almost in the next page, Mr Flaxman himself acknowledges that even in the best times of Grecian sculpture, and the era of Phidias I Flaxmans Lectures on Sculpture. 357 and Praxiteles, dissections Avere rare, and anatomy very imperfectly understood, and cites "the opinion of the learned professor of anatomy, that the ancient artists owed much more to the study of living than dead bodies." Sir Anthony Carlisle, aware of the deficiencies of former ages in this branch of knowledge, and yet conscious that he himself would be greatly puzzled to carve the Apollo or the Venus, very naturally and wisely concludes that the latter depends upon a course of study, and an acquaintance with forms very different from any which he possesses. It is a smattering and affectation of science that leads men to sujjpose that it is capable of more than it really is, and of supplying the undefined and evanescent creations of art with universal and infallible principles. There cannot be an opinion more productive of presumption and sloth. The same turn of thought is insisted on in the fourth lecture — on science; nearly the whole of which, indeed, is devoted to a fuller development and exempliflcation of what appears to us a servile prejudice, though it would be unjust to Mr Flaxman to suppose and to insinuate that he is without a better sense and better principles of art, when- ever he trusted to his own feelings and experience, instead of being hoodwinked by an idle theory. The lecturer bestow.s due and eloquent praise on the horses in the Elgin collection, which he Kui)po.ses to have been done under the .superintendence and prob.ibly from designs by Phidias ; but we arc sorry he lias not extended his eulogium to the figure of the Theseus, wliidi appears to us a world of grace and grandeur in itself, and to say to the sculptor's art, " Hitherto HJialt thou come and no fur- ther ! " Wliat went before it was rude in the conqtarison ; what came after it was artificial. It is tlic perfection of style, and would have afforded a niucli better cxcnqilifica- tion of the force and meaning of that term than the si^hool- boy definition adopted in the lecture on this subject ; namely, that as poets and engravcra use a sfi/li/s, or style, 358 Flaxmans Lectures on Sculpture. to execute tlicir works, the name of the instrument was metaphorically applied to express the article itself. Style properly means the mode of representing nature ; and this again arises from the various character of men's minds, and the infinite variety of views which may be taken of nature. After seeing the Apollo, the Hercules, and other celebrated works of antiquity, we seem to have exhausted our stock of admiration, and to conceive that there is no higher perfection for sculpture to attain, or to aspire to. But, at the first sight of the Elgin Marbles, we feel that we have been in a mistake, and the ancient objects of our idolatry fall into an inferior class or style of art. They are comparatively, and without disparagement of their vast and almost superhuman merit, stuclc-up gods and goddesses. But a new principle is at work in the others, which we had not seen or felt the want of before (not a studied trick or curious refinement, but an obvious truth, arising from a more intimate acquaintance with, and firmer reliance on nature) ; a principle of fusion, of motion, so that the mar- ble flows like a wave. The common antiques represent the most perfect forms and proportions, with each part per- fectly understood and executed ; everything is brought out, everything is made as exquisite and imposing as it can be in itself ; but each part seems to be cut out of the marble, and to answer to a model of itself in the artist's mind. But in the fragment of the Theseus, the whole is melted into one impression, like wax ; there is all the flexibility, the malleableness of flesh ; there is the same alternate tension and relaxation ; Ihe same sway and yield- ing of the parts ; "■ the right hand knows what the left hand doeth ; " and the statue bends and plays under the framer's mighty hand and eye, as if, instead of being a block of marble, it was provided with an internal machinery of nerves and muscles, and felt every the slightest pressure or motion from one extremity to the other. This, then, is the greatest grandeur of style, from the comprehensive idea Flaxmans Lectures on Sculpture. 359 of the whole joined to the greatest simplicity, from the entire union and subordination of the parts. There is no ostentation, no stiffness, no over-laboured finishing. Every thing is in its place and degree, and put to its proper use. The greatest power is combined with the greatest ease ; there is the perfection of knowledge, with the total absence of a conscious display of it. We find so little of an appear- ance of art or labour that we might be almost tempted to suppose that the whole of these groups were done by means of casts from fine nature ; for it is to be observed that the commonest cast from nature has the same style or character of union, and re-action of parts, being copied from that which has life and motion in itself. What adds a passing gleam of probability to such a suggestion is that these statues were jjlaccd at a height where only the general effect could be distinguished, and that the back and hinder parts, which are just as scrupulously finished as the rest, and as true to the mould of nature, were fixed against a wall where they could not be seen at all ; and where the labour (if we do not sufjpose it to be in a great measure abridged mechanically) was wholly thrown away. How- ever, we do not lay much stress on this consideration ; for we are aware that "the labour we delight in physics pain," and we believe that tlie person who rould do the statue of the Theseus tvould do it, under all circumstances, and without fee or reward of any kind. We conceive that the Elgin Marbles settle another dis- puted point of vital interest to the arts. Sir Joslnm Iley- nolds contends, among others, that grandeur of fctylo con.sists in giving only the massex, and leaving out the details. Tlie .statues we are Kpcaking of repudiate this doctrine, and at least demonstrate the possibility of uniting the two tilings, whirh had been idly represented t(j be incomiiatililc, as if tiny wore not obviously found together in nature. A great number of parts may be col- lected into one mass ; as, on the other hand, a work may 360 Flaxmans Lectures on Sctdpture. equally want minute details, or large and imposing masses. Suppose all the light to be thro\Yn on one side of a face, and all the shadow on the other; the chiaroscuro may be worked up with the utmost delicacy and pains in the one and every vein or freckle distinctly marked on the other, Avithout destroying the general effect — that is, the two broad masses of light and shade. Mr Flaxman takes notice that there were two eras of Grecian art before the time of Pericles and Phidias, when it was at its height. In the first, they gave only a gross or formal representa- tion of the objects ; so that you could merely say, " This is a man, that is a horse." To this clumsy concrete style succeeded the most elaborate finishing of parts, without selection, grace, or grandeur. "^Elaborate finishing was soon afterwards " (after the time of Daedalus and his scholars) " carried to excess ; undulating locks and spiral knots of hair like shells, as well as the drapery, were wrought with the most elaborate care and exactness ; whilst the tasteless and barbarous character of the face and limbs remained much the same as in former times." This was the natural course of things, to denote first the gross object, then to run into the opposite extreme, and give none but the detached parts. The difiiculty was to unite the two in a noble and comprehensive idea of nature. We are chiefly indebted, for the information or amuse- ment we derive from Mr Flaxman's work, to the historical details of his subject. We cannot say that he has removed any of the doubts or stumbling-blocks in our way, or extended the land-marks of taste or reasoning. We turned with some interest to the lecture on beauty; for the artist has left specimens of this quality in several of his works. We were a good deal disappointed. It sets out in this manner : " That beauty is not merely an imaginary quality, but a real essence, may be inferred from the har- mony of the universe ; and the perfection of its wondrous parts we may understand from all surrounding nature ; Flaxman's Lectures on Sculpture. 361 and in this course of observation we find that man has more of beauty bestowed on him as he rises higher in crea- tion." The rest is of a piece with this exordium, containing a dissertation on the various gradations of being, of Avhich man is said to be at the top — on the authority of Socrates, who argues " that the human form is the most perfect of all forms, because it contains in it the principles and powers of all inferior forms." This assertion is either a flat con- tradicti(jn of the fact, or an antique riddle, which we do not pretend to solve. Indeed, we hold the ancients, with all our veneration for them, to have been wholly destitute of philosophy in this department ; and Mr Flaxman, who was taught when he was young to look up to them for light and instruction in the philosophy of art, has engrafted too much of it on his lectures. He defines beauty thus : "The most perfect human beauty is that most free from deformitij, either of body or mind, and may be therefore defined — The most perfect soul in the most perfect body." In sup- port of this truism, he strings a number of quotations together, as if he were stringing pearls : — "In Plato's dialogue concerning the beautiful, he shows the power and inliuence of mental beauty on corporeal ; and in liis dialogue, entitled * The greater nii>i)ias,' Socrates observes in argument, 'That as a beautiful vase is inferior to a beautiful horse, and as a beautiful horse is not to be conii)arcd with a beautiful virgin, in the same manner a beautiful virgin is inferior in beauty to the immortal god.s ; for,' says lie, * there is a beauty incor- ruptible, ever the same.' It is remarkable tliat, imme- diately after, he says, * Phidias is skilful in beauty.' Aristotle, the scholar of Plato, begins his Treatise on Morals thus : — * Every art, every method and in.stitiition, every action and council Bccms to seek flonic good ; tlierc- forc the ancients pronounced tlio Iwauliful to be good.' Much, indeed, might be colIectei\n