astonished many of the Dutch connoisseurs, who had been so used to
minute delicacy of finish as to consider it essential to excellence. To
these critics he replied in a tone of irony, requesting that when they
perceived anything particularly wrong in his works, they would believe
that he had a motive for it. To others who examined his pictures too
closely, he observed, that the smell of the paint was unwholesome,
adding a very just observation, that the picture is finished when the
painter has expressed his intention.
Numerous copies of Rembrandt’s pictures were made by his pupils, which
he retouched and sold as originals. Sandraart asserts that he gained one
thousand two hundred florins yearly by this commerce. It is proper,
however, to state that most of the great masters have, more or less,
availed themselves of the labour of their scholars.
In one respect, however, Rembrandt acted worthily of his genius. He
never allowed the love of gain to interfere with or limit the time and
labour which were required to give excellence to his paintings. The
bravura of hand by which his later works are distinguished, has led to
an idea that he painted them carelessly and with great dispatch. No
doubt he wrought with firmness and decision when his plan was fixed; but
various studies are extant, which show that, before commencing a
picture, he constructed and reconstructed his design with indefatigable
attention. This was especially the case with his historical works; yet
in portrait painting he was scarcely less particular. Frequently when
the picture was considerably advanced, struck by some new arrangement,
an effect of light, a happy turn of drapery, a better position of the
head, he would begin again; and the patience of the sitter was sometimes
so much tried by a succession of these alterations, that works would
have been left unfinished on the artist’s hands, but for that confidence
in the ultimate excellence of the pictures, which rendered his employers
anxious to possess them at any outlay of time, patience, or money.
Descamps, the French biographer of the Flemish painters, enlarges on
Rembrandt’s misfortune in not having been born in Italy, or, at least,
not having spent some years there. “How different a painter would he
have been,” he says, “had he been familiar with the works of Raphael and
Titian.” That he would have been a different painter may be doubted;
that he would have been a better one is still less probable. Descamps
adds, that he owed his genius to nature and instinct alone; a much more
rational remark, and so true, that it appears almost demonstrable that
no system of discipline or education would have materially altered his
turn of mind. He was sufficiently well acquainted, through the medium of
prints, casts, and marbles, with the leading works both of ancient and
modern art; but he had no taste for refinement, and he knew that what is
called high art was not his vocation. He had collected quantities of old
armour, rich draperies, grotesque ornaments, and military weapons, which
he jocularly called his antiques; and he made no scruple of deriding the
exclusive claims to taste set up by particular schools. He felt that he
had no occasion to ask his passport to reputation from others; but that,
as Fuseli expresses it, he could enter the temple of fame by forging his
own keys.
Few painters, indeed, have so full a claim to the merit of originality
as Rembrandt. It would be hard to point out any of his predecessors to
whom he is indebted for any part of his style; but he has opened a rich
treasure of excellence for his successors to profit by. The full powers
of the management of light and shade, which we denominate by the Italian
phrase _chiar’ oscuro_, were not known until Rembrandt developed them.
It might have been supposed that the power and harmony, and splendour of
Corregio left nothing to be desired in this department of the art; but
Rembrandt gave to his masses a force and depth, and concentration,
unequalled, and peculiar to himself. Nor is _chiar’ oscuro_ in his hands
merely an instrument of picturesque effect; it is also a most powerful
vehicle of sentiment, especially in subjects characterized by solemnity
or terror. The ‘Crucifixion,’ ‘Christ and St. Peter in the Storm,’ and
‘Sampson seized by the Philistines,’ are striking but not singular
examples of this:—it is the excellence which pervades his works.
‘Jacob’s Dream,’ in the Dulwich Gallery, deserves mention as a most
remarkable instance of his peculiar powers, for it embodies images so
vague and undefinable, that they might be thought beyond the grasp of
painting. Forms float before us, apparently cognizable by our senses,
yet so vague, that when examined, they lose the semblance of form which
at first they wore, receding gradually to so immeasurable a distance,
that it would seem as if in truth the heavens were opened. It is the
most _spiritual_ thing conceivable, and breathes the very atmosphere of
a dream.
As a colourist Rembrandt has scarcely a superior: if his tints are not
equal in truth and purity to those of Titian, yet his admirable
management of light and shadow gives to his colouring an almost
unrivalled splendour. In that quality of execution which painters call
_surface_, he was eminently skilled; perhaps none but Corregio and
Reynolds can compare with him in it. To his portraits he gave a most
speaking air of identity; but his delineations of the human form and
character in works of imagination are almost ludicrous, and little
better than travesties of the subject. Beauty certainly must have come
in his way; but he seems to have avoided and rejected it for the sake of
ugliness and vulgarity. The picture of a ‘Woman Bathing,’ in the
National Gallery, is a good instance both of his merits and faults,
treating with the utmost fidelity and beauty of execution a subject so
disagreeable, that admiration is neutralized by disgust. Indeed his
genius has no greater triumph than that of reconciling us to his
defects.
Rembrandt’s style of engraving, as of painting, is in great measure of
his own invention. His plates are partly etched, assisted with the dry
point, and sometimes, but not often, finished with the graver. His
prints possess the effect of colouring in a surprising degree; the light
and shade is managed, as might be expected, with consummate skill, and
the touch has a lightness and apparent negligence, which give to his
etchings an indescribable charm.
De Piles and some other writers have asserted that Rembrandt was at
Venice in the year 1635 or 1636. This mistake arose from the dates, and
the name of Venice which Rembrandt put at the bottom of some of his
prints, with the view of enhancing the price of them. He never quitted
Amsterdam after he first established himself there in 1630. He could
have had no inducement indeed to absent himself from a city in which he
was so rapidly acquiring both fame and fortune. In what related to his
art he never looked out of himself; and he was so far from seeking any
general acquaintance with the world, that he associated only with a
small circle in his own city, and that of an inferior class. The
burgomaster Six, who appreciated his extraordinary talents, and wished
to see him fill a place in society worthy of them, often attempted to
lead him among the wealthy and the great; but that inveterate want of
refinement which is visible in his works, pervaded his character, and he
confessed that he felt uneasy in such company; adding, that when he left
his painting-room, it was for the purpose of relaxation, which he was
more likely to find among his humble associates, and in the
convivialities of the tavern. He lived nearly to the age of sixty-eight
years, and died at Amsterdam in 1674.
Those who may be curious to know the different impressions and
variations of Rembrandt’s plates, and their respective rarity and value,
will find information in the catalogue of his works, first published by
Gersaint, at Paris, and P. Yver, at Amsterdam; which was afterwards
enlarged by our countryman Dalby, and has since been added to in a
publication by Adam Bartset, printed at Vienna in 1797.
Rembrandt’s works are nowhere more valued than in this country, which
may account for the vast influx of them hither. Originals are not often
met with on the Continent: here they may be found in every great
collection. The National and the Dulwich Galleries contain some of his
finest performances. Particulars of Rembrandt’s life and works may be
found in La Vie des Peintres Flamands, par Descamps, and in De Piles. In
English, in Bryan’s ‘Dictionary of Painters,’ and in Pilkington.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by C. E. Wagstaff._
DRYDEN.
_From a Picture by Houdson
in the Hall of Trinity College Cambridge._
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall
East._
]
[Illustration]
DRYDEN.
John Dryden was born at Aldwinkle, near Oundle, in Northamptonshire,
August 9, 1631, according to Dr. Johnson; but Mr. Malone raises a doubt
concerning the accuracy of this date. The inscription on his monument
says, only, _natus_, 1632. He was educated at Westminster School, under
Dr. Busby, and elected Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1650.
The year before he left the university, he wrote a poem on the death of
Lord Hastings. Of this production Dr. Johnson says, that “it was
composed with great ambition of such conceits as, notwithstanding the
reformation begun by Waller and Denham, the example of Cowley still kept
in reputation.” Dryden’s vacillation, both in religion and politics,
proves, that though perhaps not completely dishonest, he had no firm and
well-considered principles. His heroic stanzas on Oliver Cromwell,
written after the Protector’s funeral in 1658, were followed on the
restoration by his Astrea Redux, and in the same year by a second
tribute of flattery to his sacred Majesty, ‘A Panegyric on his
Coronation.’ The Annus Mirabilis is one of his most elaborate works; a
historical poem in celebration of the Duke of York’s victory over the
Dutch. He succeeded Sir William Davenant as poet laureat. He did not
obtain the laurel till August 18, 1670; but according to Malone, the
patent had a retrospect, and the salary commenced from the Midsummer
after Davenant’s death, in 1668. He was also made historiographer to the
king, and in the same year published his Essay on Dramatic Poetry.
Among the works of so voluminous a writer, we can only notice those
which are distinguished by excellence, or by some strong peculiarity.
Dryden was more than thirty years of age when he commenced dramatic
writer. His first piece, the Wild Gallant, met with so mortifying a
reception, that he resolved never more to write for the stage. The hasty
resolutions of anger are seldom kept, and are seldom worth keeping; but
in the present instance it would have been well had he adhered to the
first dictates of his resentment. We should not then have had to regret,
that so large a portion of a great writer’s life and labour has been
wasted on twenty-eight dramas: the comedies exhibiting much ribaldry and
but little wit; with neither ingenuity nor interest in the fable; with
no originality in the characters: the tragedies for the most part filled
with the exaggerations of romance, and the hyperboles of an extravagant
imagination, in the place of nature and pathos. His tragedy seldom
touches the passions: his staple commodities are pompous language,
poetical flights, and picturesque description. His characters all speak
in one language—that of the author. Addison says, “It is peculiar to
Dryden to make all his personages as wise, witty, elegant, and polite as
himself.” In confirmation of the proofs internally afforded by his
writings, that his taste for tragedy was not genuine, he expresses his
contempt for Otway, master as that poet was of the tender passions. But
however uncongenial with his natural talent dramatic composition might
be, his temporary disgust soon passed away. In his Essay on Dramatic
Poetry, he tells his patron, Dorset, that the writing of that treatise
served as an amusement to him in the country, when he was driven from
London by the plague; that he diverted himself with thinking on the
theatres, as lovers do by ruminating on their absent mistresses. But
whatever opinion he might entertain of his own tragic style, he was
himself sensible that his talents did not lie in the line of comedy.
“Those who decry my comedies do me no injury, except it be in point of
profit: reputation in them is the last thing to which I shall pretend.”
He retaliated on the criticisms levelled against his extravagances in
tragedy, by an ostentatious display of defiance. We find in his
Dedication of the Spanish Friar, “All that I can say for certain
passages of my own Maximin and Almanzor is, that I knew they were bad
enough to please when I wrote them.”
In 1671 he was publicly ridiculed on the stage in the Duke of
Buckingham’s comedy of the Rehearsal. The character of Bayes was at
first named Bilboa, and meant for Sir Robert Howard; but the
representation of the piece in its original form was stopped by the
plague in 1665: it was not reproduced till six years afterwards, when it
appeared with alterations in ridicule of the pieces brought out in the
interval, and with a correspondent change of the hero. Dryden affected
to despise the satire. In the Dedication to his Translation of Juvenal,
he says, “I answered not to the Rehearsal, because I knew the author sat
to himself when he drew the picture, and was the very Bayes of his own
farce.”
An Essay on Satire, said to be written jointly by Dryden and Lord
Mulgrave, was first printed in 1679. This piece was handed about in
manuscript, for some time before its publication. It contained
reflections on the Duchess of Portsmouth and Lord Rochester. Anthony
Wood says, that suspecting Dryden to be the author, the aggrieved
parties hired three ruffians, who cudgelled the poet in Will’s
coffee-house.
In 1680 a translation of Ovid’s Epistles into English came out: two of
which, together with the Preface, were by Dryden. In the following year
he published Absalom and Achitophel; a work of first-rate excellence as
a political and controversial poem. Dr. Johnson ascribes to it “acrimony
of censure, elegance of praise, artful delineation of character, variety
and vigour of sentiments, happy turns of language, and pleasing harmony
of numbers; and all these raised to such a height as can scarcely be
found in any other English composition.” In the same year, the Medal, a
satire, was given to the public. This piece was occasioned by the
striking of a medal, on account of the indictment against Lord
Shaftesbury being thrown out, and is a severe invective against that
celebrated statesman.
In 1682 Dryden published ‘_Religio Laici_,’ in defence of revealed
religion against Deists, Papists, and Presbyterians. Yet soon after the
accession of James the Second, he became a Roman Catholic; and in the
hope of promoting Popery, was employed on a translation of Maimbourg’s
History of the League, on account of the parallel between the troubles
of France and those of Great Britain. This extraordinary conversion
exposed him to the ridicule of the wits, and especially to the gibes of
the facetious and celebrated Tom Brown.
The Hind and Panther, a controversial poem in defence of the Romish
church, appeared in 1687. The Hind represents the church of Rome, the
Panther the church of England. The first part of the poem consists
mostly of general characters and narration; which, says the author, “I
have endeavoured to raise, and give it the majestic turn of heroic
poetry. The second, being matter of dispute, and chiefly concerning
church authority, I was obliged to make as plain and perspicuous as
possibly I could, yet not wholly neglecting the numbers, though I had
not frequent occasion for the magnificence of verse. The third, which
has more of the nature of domestic conversation, is, or ought to be,
more free and familiar than the two former. There are in it two
episodes, or fables, which are interwoven with the main design; so that
they are properly parts of it, though they are also distinct stories of
themselves. In both of these I have made use of the commonplaces of
satire, whether true or false, which are urged by the members of one
church against another.” The absurdity of a fable exhibiting two beasts
discoursing on theology, was ridiculed in the City Mouse and Country
Mouse, a burlesque poem, the joint production of Montague, afterwards
Earl of Halifax, and Prior, who then put forth the first sample of his
talents. Dryden is supposed to have been engaged for the translation of
Varillas’s History of Heresies, but to have dropped the design, from a
feeling of his own incompetency to theological controversy. Bishop
Burnet, in his Reflections on the Ninth Book of the first Volume of M.
Varillas’s History, classes together that work, and the Hind and
Panther, as “such extraordinary things of their kind, that it will be
but suitable to see the author of the worst poem become likewise the
translator of the worst history that the age has produced.” Dr. Johnson
supports the Bishop’s hostile criticism so far as to pronounce the
scheme of the work injudicious and incommodious, and to censure the
absurdity of making one beast advise another to rest her faith on a pope
and council: but he allows it to be written “with great smoothness of
metre, a wide extent of knowledge, and an abundant multiplicity of
images; the controversy to be embellished with pointed sentences,
diversified by illustrations, and enlivened by sallies of invective;”
and a poem inlaid with such ornaments, however little worth the solid
material might be, was but peevishly represented as “the worst that the
age had produced.” Pope, a higher authority than the honest Bishop in
such matters, considered it as the most correct specimen of Dryden’s
versification. Malone has shown that Burnet was mistaken in attributing
to our author the answer to Burnet’s Remarks on the History.
In 1688 Dryden published Britannia Rediviva, a poem on the birth of the
Prince afterwards known by the title of the Pretender. The poem is to be
noticed only for its extravagant and ill-timed adulation, which
deservedly involved the author in the disgrace and fall of his party.
But even had he not so identified himself with the ejected dynasty, his
conversion to Popery disqualified him for holding his place. He was
accordingly dispossessed of it; and the mortification of its being
conferred on an object of his confirmed dislike, aggravated the
pecuniary loss, which he could ill afford. Shadwell, his successor, was
an old enemy, whom he had formerly stigmatized under the name of Og. In
consequence of this appointment, Dryden again attacked him in a poem
called MacFlecknoe; one of the severest as well as most witty satires in
the English language. The poetry of the new laureat was so indifferent,
as to give ample scope for ridicule:—
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young
Was call’d to empire, and had governed long;
In prose and verse, was own’d, without dispute,
Through all the realms of nonsense, absolute.
Although these lines be written of Flecknoe, Shadwell is the hero of the
piece, introduced as if selected by Flecknoe to succeed him on the
throne of dulness. Richard Flecknoe was an Irish priest, well known
about the court; but notwithstanding Cibber’s assertion in his Lives of
the Poets, he was never poet laureat. The above is the story told by all
the biographers; but if Mr. Malone’s laborious and minute researches
have been pursued with his usual accuracy, they have been mistaken in
the date of the publication, which he fixes in October, 1682. If this be
correct, the satire must have been a sportive anticipation of an event,
which its author little expected to come to pass; and not the ebullition
of revenge for the loss of an honourable and lucrative employment.
Taking the earlier as the true date, we might suspect that the prophecy
was fulfilled in the person of Shadwell, as a vindictive aggravation of
the deposed laureat’s fall. Yet it is difficult to reconcile it to
probability that Dryden should have dishonoured an office which he had
been holding for the last twelve years, and must then have calculated on
holding for his life, by a fictitious successive inauguration of two
blockheads, who “never deviated into sense.”
Pope’s Dunciad, though more extended in its plan, and more diversified
in its incidents, was professedly written in imitation of this poem. The
leisure and pains bestowed on his performance gave the imitator the
superiority in point of elaborate execution; but there are bursts of
pleasantry in MacFlecknoe, and sallies of wit and humour, equal if not
superior to any thing in Pope or Boileau, or perhaps in any poet
excepting Horace. Dr. Joseph Warton says of it, that “in point of
satire, both oblique and direct, contempt and indignation, clear
diction, and melodious versification, this poem is perhaps the best of
its kind in any language.”
Dr. Johnson doubts whether Dryden was the translator of the Life of
Francis Xavier, by Father Bouhours, to which his name is affixed. The
borrowing of popular names for title-pages was very prevalent in those
days, and the loan probably not without profit to the lenders.
In 1693 a translation of Juvenal and Persius appeared. The first, third,
sixth, tenth, and sixteenth satires of Juvenal, and the whole of
Persius, are Dryden’s: also the Dedication to Lord Dorset, a long and
ingenious discourse, in which the writer gives an account of a design,
which he never carried into effect, of writing an epic poem either on
Arthur or the Black Prince. Lord Dorset well deserved the compliment of
so masterly a dedication; for he continued to patronise the poet in the
reverse of his fortunes, and allowed him an annuity equal to the salary
which he had lost.
In 1694 Dryden published a prose translation of Du Fresnoy’s Art of
Painting, with a Preface, exhibiting a parallel between painting and
poetry. Pope addressed a copy of verses to Jervas, the painter, in
praise of this work.
The most laborious of Dryden’s works, the translation of Virgil, was
given to the world in 1697. The Pastorals were dedicated to Lord
Clifford, the Georgics to Lord Chesterfield, and the Æneid to Lord
Mulgrave: an economical and lucrative combination of flattery which the
wits suffered not to pass unnoticed. The translation had an extensive
sale, and has since passed through many editions. Like most of Dryden’s
longer productions, it has many careless passages, which do not well
accord with an original so remarkable for finish and correctness; but it
still stands its ground, and is a stock-book in the face of the more
careful and perhaps more scholarlike performances of Warton, Sotheby,
and Pitt.