The banquet-hall of our Islanders was in the rich palace of the absent
Borromæan family. They conceded to the lovely island the prize-apple of
Paris and the laurel-wreath. Augusti and Gaspard wrote their eulogies
upon it in a clear, easy style, only Gaspard used the more antitheses.
Albano's breast was filled with a new world, his eye with radiance, his
cheeks with joyous blood. The Architect extolled as well the taste as
the purse of the hereditary Prince, who by means of both had brought
with him to his country, not artistic masters indeed, but still
masterpieces, and at whose instance this very Dian was going to Italy to
take casts for him there of the antiques. Schoppe replied: "I hope the
German is as well supplied with painters' academies and painters' colics
as any other people; our pictures on goods, our illuminated Theses in
Augsburg, our margins of newspapers, and our vignettes in every dramatic
work, (whereby we had an earlier _Shakespeare Gallery_ than London,) our
gallows-birds hung in effigy,--are well known to every one, and show at
first sight how far we carry the thing. But I will even allow that
Greeks and Italians paint as well as we; still we tower far above them
in this, that we, like nature and noble suitors, never seek isolated
beauty, without connected advantage. A beauty which we cannot also
roast, sell at auction, wear, or marry, passes with us only for just
what it is worth; beauty is with us (I hope) never anything else but
selvage and trimming to utility, just as, also, at the Diet of the
Empire, it is not the side-tables of confectionery, but the
session-tables, that are the proper work-tables of the body politic.
Genuine Beauty and Art are therefore with us set, painted, stamped only
on things which at the same time bring in something; e. g. fine Madonnas
only in the journals of fashion,--etched leaves only on packages of
tobacco-leaves,--cameos on pipe-bowls,--gems on seals, and wood-cuts on
tallies; flower-pieces are sought, but on bandboxes,--faithful
Wouwermanns, but in horses' stalls before the stallions,[14]--bas-reliefs
of princes' heads, either on dollars or on Bavarian beer-pitcher covers,
but both must be of unalloyed pewter,--rose-pieces and lily-pieces, but
on tattooed women. On a similar principle, in Basedow's system of
education, beautiful painting and the Latin vocabulary were always
linked together, because the Institute more easily retains the latter by
the help of the former. So, too, Van der Kabel never painted a hare to
order, without requiring for himself one freshly-shot model after
another to eat and copy. So again, the artist Calear painted beautiful
hose, but painted them immediately on to his own legs."
The Knight heard such talk with pleasure, though he neither laughed at
nor imitated it; to him all colors in the prism of genius were
agreeable. Only to the Architect it was not enough in Greek taste, and
not courtly enough for the Lector. The latter turned round to the
departing Dian, with a somewhat flattering air, while Schoppe was
recovering breath for renewed detraction of us Germans, and said:
"Formerly Rome took away from other lands only works of art, but now
artists themselves."
Schoppe continued: "So also our statues are no idle, dawdling citizens,
but they all drive a trade;--such as are caryates hold up houses; such
as are angels bear baptismal vessels; and heathen water-gods labor at
the public fountains, and pour out water into the pitchers of the
maidens."
The Count spoke warmly for us, the Lector brilliantly: the Knight
remarked, that the German taste and the German talent for poetic
beauties made good and explained their want of both for other beauties
(on the ground of climate, form of government, poverty, &c.). The Knight
resembled a celestial telescope, through which the planets appear larger
and the suns smaller; like that instrument, he took away from suns their
borrowed lustre, without restoring to them their true and greater glory;
he cut in twain, indeed, the noose of a Judas, but he extinguished the
halo on a Christ's head, and in general he sought to make out
ingeniously a parity and equality between darkness and light.
Schoppe was never silenced (I am sorry that in his toleration-mandate
for Europe the German Circles should have been left out). He began
again: "The little which I just brought forward in praise of the
serviceable Germans has, it seems, provoked contradiction. But the
slight laurel-crown which I place upon the holy body of the Empire shall
never blind my eyes to the bald spots. I have often thought it
commendable in Socrates and Christ, that they did not teach in Hamburg,
in Vienna, or in any Brandenburg city, and go through the streets with
their disciples; they would have been questioned, in the name of the
magistrates, whether they could not work; and had both been with
families in Wetzlar, they would have extorted from the latter the
_negligence-money_.[15] Touching the poetic art, Sir Knight, I have
known many a citizen of the Empire who could make but little out of an
ode unless it were upon himself: he fancied he could tell when poetic
liberties infringed upon the liberty of the Empire: such a man, who
certainly always marched to his work regularly, composedly, and
considerately in Saxon term-times, was exceedingly pained and perplexed
by poetic flights. And is it, then, so unaccountable and bad? The worthy
inhabitant of an imperial city binds on in front a napkin when he wishes
to weep, in order that he may not stain his satin vest, and the tears
which fall from his eyes upon a letter of condolence he marks as he
would any darker punctuation: what wonder, if, like the ranger, he
should know no fairer flower than that on the posteriors of the stag,
and if the poetical violets, like the botanical,[16] should operate upon
him as a mild emetic. Such were, according to my notion, one way at
least of warding off the reproach which is flung at us Germans."