CHAPTER LXV.

So, reader, thou art now at the secret of my heart.

Wonder not that I, a bookman's son, and, at certain periods of my

life, a bookman myself, though of lowly grade in that venerable

class,--wonder not that I should thus, in that transition stage between

youth and manhood, have turned impatiently from books.--Most students,

at one time or other in their existence, have felt the imperious demand

of that restless principle in man's nature, which calls upon each son

of Adam to contribute his share to the vast treasury of human deeds.

And though great scholars are not necessarily, nor usually, men of

action,--yet the men of action whom History presents to our survey,

have rarely been without a certain degree of scholarly nurture. For

the ideas which books quicken, books cannot always satisfy. And though

the royal pupil of Aristotle slept with Homer under his pillow, it

was not that he might dream of composing epics, but of conquering new

Ilions in the East. Many a man, how little soever resembling Alexander,

may still have the conqueror's aim in an object that action only can

achieve, and the book under his pillow may be the strongest antidote

to his repose. And how the stern Destinies that shall govern the man

weave their first delicate tissues amidst the earliest associations of

the child!--Those idle tales with which the old credulous nurse had

beguiled my infancy--tales of wonder, knight-errantry, and adventure,

had left behind them seeds long latent--seeds that might never have

sprung up above the soil--but that my boyhood was so early put under

the burning-glass, and in the quick forcing-house, of the London world.

There, even amidst books and study,--lively observation, and petulant

ambition, broke forth from the lush foliage of romance--that fruitless

leafiness of poetic youth! And there passion, which is a revolution in

all the elements of individual man, had called a new state of being,

turbulent and eager, out of the old habits and conventional forms it

had buried,--ashes that speak where the fire has been. Far from me,

as from any mind of some manliness, be the attempt to create interest

by dwelling at length on the struggles against a rash and misplaced

attachment, which it was my duty to overcome; but all such love, as I

have before implied, is a terrible unsettler:--

"Where once such fairies dance, no grass doth ever grow."

To re-enter boyhood, go with meek docility through its disciplined

routine,--how hard had I found that return, amidst the cloistered

monotony of college! My love for my father, and my submission to his

wish, had indeed given some animation to objects otherwise distasteful;

but, now that my return to the University must be attended with

positive privation to those at home, the idea became utterly hateful

and repugnant. Under pretence that I found myself, on trial, not yet

sufficiently prepared to do credit to my father's name, I had easily

obtained leave to lose the ensuing college term, and pursue my studies

at home. This gave me time to prepare my plans, and bring round--how

shall I ever bring round to my adventurous views those whom I propose

to desert? Hard it is to get on in the world--very hard! But the most

painful step in the way is that which starts from the threshold of a

beloved home.

How--ah, how, indeed! "No, Blanche, you cannot join me to-day; I am

going out for many hours. So it will be late before I can be home."

Home!--the word chokes me! Juba slinks back to his young mistress,

disconsolate; Blanche gazes at me ruefully from our favourite hilltop,

and the flowers she has been gathering fall unheeded from her basket.

I hear my mother's voice singing low, as she sits at work by her open

casement. How--ah, how, indeed!

ANCIENT PRACTICE OF PAINTING.[9]

[9] _Original Treatises on the Arts of Painting._ Preceded by a General

Introduction, with Translations, Prefaces, and Notes. By MRS

MERRIFIELD. 2 vols.

We are beginning to find out that the "dark ages" were not so utterly

dark as they have been represented. We ascertain that there was not

that universal blight upon the human mind which it has been the

practice of historians to contrast with the flourishing condition

of their own times. Nay, if we are now to take that measure which

those historians adopted, we should estimate their own era with as

disparaging a comparison with the present. But the inventions of our

own days--the great advance of arts and sciences--so far from having a

tendency to depreciate, throw a light upon, and acknowledge the value

of, those of the middle ages. The appreciation is becoming general.

We are old enough to remember the time when it was thought of little

moment to block up with low unseemly edifices, or mutilate for any

purpose, those amazing works of mediæval genius, our Gothic religious

structures. We need but refer to the dates on the mural deformities

in most of our old churches and cathedrals. Who, that will turn his

eye in disgust from such monstrosities of taste, to the decorations

they have misplaced and mutilated, and to the general aspect, of an

indestructible character, of our minsters, will not rather ask, which

were the dark ages--those of the builders and founders, or those of

the obliterators and defilers? It is astonishing that such wondrous

magnificence should ever have been viewed with indifference, and still

more astonishing that disfigurement and desecration should have been

suffered; yet men thought themselves wise in those days, and learned,

and ingenious. And so they were; but in respect of arts they were dark

enough--and the spirit of Puritanism was indeed a blight infecting that

darkness; and the effects of that blight have not yet passed away. It

may appear strange that, after a long period of worse than neglect, we

not only appreciate, but such is our admiration of those works of past

genius, that we imitate them, and study them for a discovery of the

canons of the art which we think we cannot with impunity set aside. We

here speak of those large and conspicuous monuments of the mind of the

middle ages, but the increasing admiration leads to discoveries of yet

more hidden treasures. The genius that designed the structures was as

busily and as devotionally employed in every kind of decoration; and

with a surprising unity of feeling; and as if with one sole object, to

carry out the new Christian principle--to make significant a "beauty

of holiness" in all outward things, that men might look to with an

awe and reverence--and learn. The sanctity of that one religious

art--architecture--demanded that nothing without or within should be

left "common" or "unclean," but that in the whole and minutest parts

this precept should be legible and manifest--"Do all to the glory of

God." All art was significant of the religion for which all art, all

science was pursued. The workers of those days laboured with a loving

and pious toil, and lifted up their works to an unseen and all-seeing

eye, and not to the applause of men; for who was there to value, or to

understand, even when in some degree they felt the influence of the

skill which designed and executed such infinite variety of parts, to

the manifestation of one great purpose?

We must no longer speak of the middle ages as a period of universal

intellectual darkness. If it were so, it would be a miracle, contrary

to the intention of miracle; and the thought has in it a kind of

blasphemy, which would weaken the sustaining arm of Providence, and

imply an unholy rest. We do not believe in the possibility of the

human race universally retrograding. We trust that there is always

something doing for the future as well as for the present; something

for progression, neither acceptable nor perceived by the present

generation--from whose sight it is, as it were, hidden--buried as

seed in the earth, to spring up in its proper abundance, and in its

due time. We want a history of the human mind, sifted from the large

doings--from events which fascinate us to read of, born as we are to

be active, taking interest in things of a bold violence, that have

really benefited the world but little, at least in the sense in which

we have accepted them. The rise of one nation, the subjugation of

another; dynasties, the dominion of the sword--these are the themes

of histories. But in reality all these historical actions, viewed for

their own purpose, are of little value; while out of all the turbulence

an unintended good has been the result. There has been throughout some

quiet and unobserved work going on, whose influence, felt more and

more by degrees, has at length become predominant, showing that the

stirring events and characters which had figured the scenes and amused

spectators, were but the underplots and subordinate _personæ_ of a

greater and more serious drama. Since the overthrow of heathenism, the

world's drama, still going on, is the development of Christianity; and

doubtless even now, however sometimes with a seeming contrary action,

every invention, every extension of knowledge--all arts, all sciences,

are working to that end. It is strange, but true, that our very wars

have furthered civilisation. The Crusades, worthless and fruitless as

regards their ostensible object, have ameliorated the condition and

softened the manners of our own and other nations.

In the fall of heathenism, fell the arts of heathenism; not, indeed,

to be entirely obliterated--not for ever, but for a time. Their

continuance would have been one of imitation: such imitation would

have little suited the new condition of mankind; they were therefore

removed, and hidden for awhile, that the new principle should develop

itself unshackled. The arts had to arise from, and to be rebuilt

upon, this new principle: all in them that would have interfered

with this great purpose was allowed to be set aside, to be resumed

only in after times, when that new principle should be safely and

permanently established. It was only by degrees that the old buried

art showed itself, and that the new was permitted to resume some of

the old perfection. It may be that even yet the two streams, from

such dissimilar sources, have not, in their fulness and plenitude,

united: the characteristic beauty which they bear is of body and of

soul; but they bear them separately, severally. What will the meeting

of the waters be? and may we yet hope to see it? If it was required

that there should be a kind of submerged world of heathenism, the

germs of the true and beautiful would not necessarily perish. The

church was, in fact, the ark of safety, to which all that intellect

had effected, all arts, all sciences, all learning, fled for refuge.

And as was the ark among the dark waters, so was the church and the

treasures it bore providentially preserved amid the storms without

that darkened and howled around it. What heathenism was to the middle

ages, in respect of the hidden treasures, the middle ages are or have

been to us. Their arts, their sciences, in their real beauty, have been

hidden; they have had, indeed, invisible but effective virtues--the

darkness, the blindness, has been ours. We have been doing the work of

our age, and are now discovering the good that was in theirs, and how

much we are indebted to them for our own advancement. Let us imagine

for a moment all that was then done obliterated, never to have been

done, we should now have to do the work of the so-called "dark ages."

It would be impossible to start up what we are without them. As we

reflect, their works present themselves to us in every direction.

Look where we will, we shall see that the church has been the school

of mankind, in which all knowledge was preserved, and from which new

sources of knowledge have arisen. She was the salt of the earth, to

rescue it from rankness. The germ of life was in her in the winter

of the times. When the wars of the Roses would have made our England

a howling wilderness, there were places and persons unprofaned and

respected by the murderer, the ravisher, the spoiler. When the nobles,

the great barons throughout Europe, were little better than plunderers,

and robbers even on the highway--Robin Hoods, without that outlaw's

fabulous virtue and honest humanity--what was then doing within the

walls of convents and monasteries? What were then the monks about?

Embodying laws of peace, and, with a faith in the future improvement

of mankind, cultivating sciences; planning and building up in idea

new society, foreseeing its wants, and for its sake pursuing the

useful arts; inventing, contriving, constructing, and decorating all,

and preparing even the outward face of the world, by their wondrous

structures, their practical application of their knowledge, more

worthily to receive a people whom it was their hope, their faith, to

bring out of a state of turbulence into peace. So far as the church

was concerned in governments, it is astonishing how, when the body of

the state was mutilated and dislocated, she kept the heart sound; so

that where it might seem tyranny would have overwhelmed all, she made,

and she preserved those wholesome laws to which we now owe our liberty

and every social advancement. But it is in the light of the arts and

sciences our present purpose directs us to view their doings. Let us

take one fact--walk the streets of even our inferior provincial towns,

see not only the comforts which, in their dwellings, surround the

inhabitants, but the magnificence of the shops with their glass fronts.

Whence are they? The first skill, the first invention, arose from the

study of ecclesiastics, and was practised by cloistered monks. Monastic

institutions grew out of the church; we speak of them as one. It would

not be very difficult, in fact, to trace every useful invention, in

its first principle, to the same source. But with a great portion of

mankind it would not be pleasing so to trace their means of enjoyment.

They have been habituated to think, or at least to feel, otherwise.

History has been too often written by men either averse to religion

itself, or inimical to churchmen. History, such as it has been put

into the hands of children, for the rudiments of their education, has

taught them to lisp falsehoods against the church, the priesthood. The

"rapacity" of churchmen is an early lesson. Nor can we wonder if men so

educated grow up with a prejudice, and, when they begin to, scramble

themselves for what they can get in the world's active concerns, and

know something of their own natures, are little inclined to cast the

film from their eyes, and more fairly to unravel the mysteries of

historical events. Were they in candour to make the attempt, they

would see rapacity elsewhere; and that, in times more irreverent than

the middle ages, the churchmen have not been the plunderers, but the

plundered. The church has been the nurse, of art, of knowledge, of

science. Let those who are accustomed to see light but a little way

beyond them, and to think all a blank darkness out of the illumination

of their own day, consider how they have often seen, in many a dark

and stormy night, little lights shining through a great distance, and

hailed them as notices of a warm and living virtue of domestic and

industrial peace; and then let them see, if they will have it that the

middle ages were so dark, the similitude; when the light in many a

monastic cell shone brightly upon the depth of that night, and dotted

the general gloom with as living a light; when monks, when churchmen,

were making plans for the minsters that we now gaze at with so much

astonishment--were transcribing, were illuminating works of sacred

use, were registering their discoveries in art, their "secreti"--and

at the same time, were not unobservant of the highest office to watch

and keep alive in their own and others' hearts the sacred fire, which

still we trust burns, and will burn more and more, sending forth its

light into surrounding darkness. We would speak of a general character,

as we from our hearts believe it to be the true one--not asserting

that there were no instances, as examples from which hostile writers

might draw plausible inferences to justify their prejudice. The fairest

spots are overshadowed by the passing clouds of a general storm, though

there may yet be lights of safety in many a dwelling. The history of

the arts is the history of civilisation, and these arts were preserved

or originated in monastic institutions. If the monks were legislators,

were physicians, were architects, painters, sculptors, it was because

all the learning of the age was centered in them. "Neither Frederic

Barbarossa, John, king of Bavaria, nor Philip the Hardy of France,

could read; nor could Theodoric or Charlemagne write. Of the barons

whose names are affixed to Magna Charta, very few could write."

We suspect that Mrs Merrifield has fallen into a common error,

propagated by historians such as Robertson, with regard to this

ignorance of letters. It was not only "usual for persons who could not

write to make the sign of the cross, in confirmation of a charter," but

for those who could. If a little more had been accurately ascertained

of the feelings and manners of the periods in question, it would have

been seen that the signature of the cross, instead of the name, was

more according to the dignity of the signing person and the sanctity

of the act--in fact, a better security for the full performance of

the contract. We are not quite sure that "pro ignoratione literarum"

implies so much as an inability to write a name; for, writing being

then not the kind of clerkship which it now is, but in documents of

moment, especially an artistic affair, it may not be very wonderful if

"persons of the highest rank" were unable to compete with the practised

hands, and were unwilling to show, and to the deterioration of the

outward beauty of the documents, their inferiority in caligraphy. But,

after all, the "innumerable proofs," between the eight and twelfth

centuries, amount only to four.

That of Tassilo duke of Bavaria, by its wording, may express the

ornamental character, "Quod manu propriâ, ut potui, characteres

chirographe inchoando depinxi coram judicibus atque optimatibus meis."

If, however, this Duke of Bavaria was so poor a scribe, he was at least

the founder of a convent that made full amends for his deficiency--one

of whose nuns, Diemudis, was the most indefatigable transcriber of

any age. An amazing list of her caligraphic handicraft is extant,

almost incredible, if we did not know the patient zeal of those days

of fervent piety. Those who are desirous to obtain better information

than is commonly received on the subject of the learning, as well

as the piety of the middle ages, will be amply repaid by consulting

Mr Maitland's "Dark Ages," in which the historians are refuted to

their shame, and the charge of ignorance is most fairly retorted. In

his very interesting volume, this list of Diemudis may be seen. The

works copied are indeed religious works, which some of our historians

may have looked upon with a prejudice, and as proofs of the darkness

of the times. Mr Maitland's book will undeceive any who are of that

opinion, containing, as it does, so many proofs, in original letters

and discourses, of erudition, perfect acquaintance with the sacred

Scriptures, of eloquence and intellectual acuteness. Whatever books

these "ignorant" monks and ecclesiastics possessed, there is one

invention of a time included by most censurers of the "dark ages" in

that invidious term, the absence of which would have deprived this

"enlightened" age of half the books it possesses, of half the knowledge

of the "reading public," and of we know not how many other inventions

to which it may have been the unacknowledged parent: we are grateful

enough to acknowledge that, without it, we should not be now writing

these remarks, and should certainly lose many readers--the invention

of spectacles. There are notices of them in A. D. 1299. It is said on

a monument in the church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, at Florence, that

Salvino degli Armati, who died in 1317, invented them. "Indeed P.

Marahese attributes the invention of spectacles to Padre Alesandro,"

(a Dominican and miniature painter;) "but the memorial of him in the

Chronicle of St Katherine, at Pisa, proves that he had seen spectacles

made before he made them himself; and that, with a cheerful and willing

heart, he communicated all he knew."

"The proof," says Mrs Merrifield, that Europe is indebted to religious

communities for the preservation of the arts during the dark ages,

rests on the fact that the most ancient examples of Christian art

consist of the remains of mural pictures in churches, of illuminations

in sacred books, and of vessels for the use of the church and the

altar, and on the absence of all similar decorations on buildings and

utensils devoted to secular uses during the same period--to which

may be added, that many of the early treatises on painting were the

work of ecclesiastics, as well as the paintings themselves. A similar

remark may be made with regard to architecture, many of the earliest

professors of which were monks." We believe Mrs Merrifield here is

short of the fact; and that, where the monks were not the builders,

they were in almost all instances the designers. Their architecture,

indeed, and all that pertained to it, was a Christian book to teach;

their designs contained Christian lessons, which the knowledge of

ecclesiastics could alone supply. "Painting was essentially a religious

occupation; the early professors of the art believed that they had

an especial mission to make known the works and miracles of God to

the common people who were unacquainted with letters:--'Agli uomini

grossi che non sanno lettere.' Actuated by this sentiment, it is not

surprising that so many of the Italian painters should have been

members of monastic establishments. It has been observed that the

different religious orders selected some particular branch of the

art, which they practised with great success in the convents of their

respective orders. Thus the Gesuati and Umiliati attached themselves

to painting on glass and architecture, the Olivetani to tarsia work,

the Benedictines and Camaldolites to painting generally; and the monks

of Monte Casino to miniature painting; while the Dominicans appear to

have practised all the various branches of the fine arts, (with the

exception of mosaic,) and to have produced artists who excelled in

each." Their devotion to the arts was, indeed, a religious devotion;

their treatises commence with most earnest prayers, and solemn

dedication of themselves and their works to the Holy Trinity; and not

unfrequently with a long exordium, introducing the creation and fall of

man, as we see in the prefaces of Theophilus and Cennino Cennini.

Whilst the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries saw the erection

of magnificent cathedrals, (our own York, Salisbury, and Westminster

were built in the thirteenth,) the manners of the people were yet

rude: one plate served for man and wife; there were no wooden-handled

knives; a house did not contain more than two drinking-cups. There were

neither wax nor tallow candles; clothes were of leather, unlined. Had

the middle and lower classes, in our day, no better dwellings than were

the houses belonging to those conditions so late as the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries, we dare not to conjecture how much worse would

be their moral condition. "In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,

the houses of the English, of the middle and lower classes, consisted

in general of a ground-floor only, divided into two apartments--namely

a hall, into which the principal door opened, and which was their room

for cooking, eating, and receiving visitors; and a chamber adjoining

the hall, and opening out of it, which was the private apartment of

the females of the family, and the bed-room at night. The greater part

of the houses in London were built after this plan." The more wealthy

classes were not very much better lodged; the principal difference,

being an upper floor, the access to which was by a flight of steps

outside. As arts advanced, manners refined: the Crusades had their

domestic as well as warlike effects; they induced a taste for dress,

and general luxury; and the Saracens were ready examples for imitation.

It was then, and when commercial enterprise enriched a few cities, the

arts of the monks began to be appreciated; but they did not readily

assume a secular character--painting and other decorations were in

design either religious, or historical with a religious reference or

moral. It is curious that clocks were not found in convents after

they had been among the articles of domestic furniture in castles and

palaces. Perhaps, this may be an instance of a devotional spirit of

the monks, who may have thought it an impiety to relax the discipline

of reckoning time by the repetition of Ave Marias, Paternosters and

Misereres. They were, however, generally adopted about the latter half

of the fifteenth century.

To those who are at all advanced in life, and who must themselves

remember a very different state of society from the present, and the

introduction of our present luxuries and comforts into houses, and

alteration of habits and manners, it must seem but a step backwards

into comparative barbarism. A very few centuries take us back to paper

windows; and even they were removable as furniture, not attached to the

house. We have ourselves heard an old person say, that he remembered

the time when there were only two carriages kept in a city, the second

in importance in England--who now in that city would task himself to

count the number? Nor was our own country singular in the deficiencies

of the luxuries of life. The changes were general and simultaneous; and

this is extraordinary, that the revival of arts and literature was not

confined to one country or one place, but arose as it were from one

general impulse, and simultaneously, among people under varieties of

climate, circumstances, and manners.

It is time we should say something of the book which has led us to make

this somewhat long introduction. It consists of two volumes, containing

original treatises, dating from the twelfth to the eighteenth

centuries, on the arts of painting in oil, miniature, mosaic, and on

glass; of gilding, dyeing, the preparation of colours and of artificial

gems, by Mrs Merrifield, whose valuable translation of Cennino Cennini

has been reviewed in the pages of Maga. Mrs Merrifield is likewise

the authoress of an excellent little volume on fresco painting,

very opportunely published. The present work is the result of a

commission from the Government to proceed to Italy, to collect MSS.,

and every possible information respecting the processes and methods

of oil-painting adopted by the Italians. As the Original Treatises

discovered, and now published, contain much other matter besides that

which relates to painting in oil, the work is more comprehensive

than the first purpose of the commission would have made it. The

introduction, which occupies nearly two-thirds of the first volume, is

a very able performance; in it is a comprehensive view of the history

of the fine arts. The conclusions drawn from the documents, the result

in detail of her search and labours, are so clearly laid before the

reader, with ample proofs of each particular fact and inference, as

greatly to facilitate the reader in his inquiry into the documents

themselves. He will find that Mrs Merrifield, by her arrangement of the

parts, and bringing them to bear upon her purpose, has saved him that

trouble which the nature of the work would otherwise have necessitated.

Besides that her introduction contains a separate and complete treatise

on each branch of art, the preliminary observations, heading each

document, render its contents most tangible. At the end of the second

volume is an index, which in a work of this kind it is most desirable

to possess--the want of which in Mr Eastlake's excellent _Materials for

a History of Oil-painting_ we have often had occasion to regret; and we

do hope that, in his forthcoming work on the Italian practice, he will

make amends for this defect by an index which will embrace the contents

of the "Materials." We have ourselves spent much time, that might have

been saved by an index, in turning over the pages for passages to

which we wished to refer, for that work is one strictly of reference,

although interesting in the first reading.

The documents consist of the following MSS.--the manuscripts of Jehan

Le Begue, of St Audemar, of Eraclius, of Alcherius, in the first

volume. In the second--the Bolognese, Marciana, Paduan, Volpato, and

Brussels manuscripts; extracts from all original manuscript by Sig.

Gio. O'Kelly Edwards; extracts from a dissertation read by Sig. Pietro

Edwards, in the academy of fine arts at Venice, on the propriety of

restoring the public pictures.

As these several MSS. open to us new sources of information, most

important in establishing certain facts, from whence the art of

painting among us may enter upon great and important changes, it may

not be altogether unprofitable to give some short account of them in

their order.

The manuscript of Jehan Le Begue, "a licentiate in the law, and

notary of the masters of the mint in Paris," was composed by him in

the year 1431, in his sixty-third year. It is, however, professedly a

compilation from works of Jehan Alcherius, or Alcerius, of whom little

is known, nor is it certain that he was a painter. His work probably

preceded Le Begue's about twenty years. Alcherius himself was a

collector of recipes, from various sources, during thirty years, and

twenty years afterwards his MSS. came into the hands of Le Begue.

The manuscript of Petrus de St Audemar, according to Mr Eastlake, may

be of the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century.

He is supposed to have been a native of France, (Pierre de St Omer.)

Some of the recipes are found in the "Clavicula," attributed to the

twelfth century; but this is no argument against the date, for it was

at all times the practice to make selections from former "secreti."

The manuscripts of Eraclius consist of three books--the first two

metrical, the third in prose. Nothing is known of the author. "Two

ancient copies only of the MS. of Eraclius have been hitherto

discovered, and it is somewhat singular that both are bound up with

the MSS. of Theophilus." It is not easy to fix a date to Eraclius.

Mrs Merrifield thinks "that the metrical parts only constituted the

Treatise '_de coloribus et artibus Romanorum_' of Eraclius, and that

this part is more ancient than a great part of the third book."

Manuscripts of Alcherius.--These are of two dates, 1398, and again

corrected 1411, after his return from Bologna, "according to further

information, which he subsequently received by means of several

authentic books treating of such subjects, and otherwise." These are

the Le Begue manuscripts.

"The Bolognese manuscript is of the fifteenth century. It is a small

volume in duodecimo on cotton paper, and is preserved in the library

of the R. R. Canonici Regolari, in the convent of St Salvatore in

Bologna." There is no name of the author--it is written sometimes "in

Italianised Latin, and sometimes Italian, with a mixture of Latin

words, as was usual at that period." It has no precise date. It is an

interesting notice of all the decorative arts practised in Bologna

at that period, and contains a systematically arranged collection of

recipes.

The Marciana manuscript is of the sixteenth century, in the library of

St Marco at Venice. The recipes are in the Tuscan dialect, and some are

but little known. They appear to have been compiled for the use of a

convent, by some monk or lay brother, who, in his capacity of physician

to the infirmary, prepared both medicaments, varnishes, and pigments.

Names of artists are mentioned which show that the author lived at the

beginning or middle of the sixteenth century.

The Paduan manuscript, Mrs Merrifield asserts to be Venetian. It

is in quarto, on paper, without date; but the handwriting is of

the seventeenth century. It shows a manifest deviation from the

practice established in the Marciana MS.--the introduction of spirit

of turpentine as a diluent, and mastic varnish, instead of the hard

varnishes of amber and sandarac. In it we find that "oil-paintings had

begun to suffer from the effects of age; and that they required, or

it was believed that they required, to be washed with some corrosive

liquid, and to be revarnished. Directions, or rather recipes, for both

these processes are given." Some of the recipes are in Latin, supposed

"secreti," and therefore given in that language.

The Volpato manuscript.--The author, a painter, Giovanni Baptista

Volpato, of Bassano, was born 1633--a pupil of Novelli, who had been

a pupil of Tintoretto. A work from a MS. of Volpato was announced for

publication at Vicenza in 1685, but it is believed that it has not been

published. The MS. now first brought to light by Mrs Merrifield was

lent to her, with permission to copy, by Sig. Basseggio, librarian and

president of the Athenæum of Bassano. There is good reason to believe

that it was written during the latter end of seventeenth, or beginning

of eighteenth century.

The Brussels manuscript.--This now published is a portion of a MS.

preserved in a public library of Brussels, written by Pierre Le Brun,

contemporary with the Caracci and Rubens; its date is 1635.

Sig. Edwards's manuscript is written by the son of Sig. Pietro

Edwards, who was employed by the Venetian and Austrian governments in

the restoration of the pictures in Venice. He died in 1821. His son,

Sig. O'Kelly Edwards, wrote an account of the method of restoration,

with interesting matters respecting the public pictures generally.

Mrs Merrifield has taken extracts, the work not being permitted to be

published without the permission of the Academy of Venice, which was

refused.

There follow also extracts from a dissertation read by Sig. Pietro

Edwards to the Academy of Fine Arts at Venice, on the propriety of

restoring the public pictures.

Besides these documentary papers, Mrs Merrifield extended her inquiries

among the best modern painters, copiers, and restorers, and has

recorded their opinions: we cannot call them more than opinions, for

there is no certain conclusion, on any one point of inquiry, to be

drawn from her conferences with these persons. They give, indeed, their

information, such as it is, clearly and decidedly enough, but they are

at disagreement with each other. It is creditable to foreign artists

to add, that only in one instance was any reluctance shown to be

communicative.

It will have been observed that these documents go back far enough in

time, and down to a sufficiently late date; it should be presumed,

therefore, that in them will be found every particular of practice from

the change of method, from the tempera to painting in oil--such as it

was after "the discovery" of Van Eyck. But if we are to conclude that

the discovery of Van Eyck is actually contained in these documentary

"secreti" it must be admitted to have been rather a discovery of

application than of material.

There is no positive distinct statement to the effect that this and

this did Van Eyck, or where is the identical recipe which he introduced

into Italy. This is perhaps no proof, nor cause of reasonable

conjecture, that the materials of his method are not set forth in some

of these MS.,--on the contrary, it may have been the cause of their not

being set down as Van Eyck's, upon the assumption that a new practice

and application only was introduced. Indeed it will be scarcely

thought, now that so much has been brought to light, that any vehicle

for pigments has been kept back by the several writers of the MSS. If

it then be asked what is the conclusion to be drawn--what the really

valuable result of these commissions, and the indefatigable research of

such able persons as Mr Eastlake, Mr Hendrie, and Mrs Merrifield--it

may be answered that they all conclude in one and the same view--that

the practice of the best masters of the best time consisted in the use

of olio-resinous varnishes. We should have said _an_ olio-resinous

varnish, and that amber--were it not for the proof that sandarac and

amber were chiefly the _two_ substances--that they were frequently

synonymous the one for the other, and that they were not unfrequently

both used together. Nor can it be denied that there were occasionally

other additions. Mr Eastlake places great confidence in the _olio

d'abezzo_, which, not without a fair show of evidence, he concludes

(and we think in this Mrs Merrifield agrees with him) to have been the

varnish used by Correggio, according to Armenini. But we are nowhere as

yet assured that it was used by Correggio as a vehicle.

If we remember rightly, there is a passage in Mr Eastlake's book

which has a tendency to alarm our modern painters, and perhaps make

some abstain from the use of the old olio-resinous medium. He speaks

somewhere of its liability to crack, to come away in pieces, but after

a long lapse of time. We could have wished he had been more explicit on

this point: it would have been well to have shown the difference, if

there be any, as we feel somewhat confident there must be, between the

effect of olio-resinous varnishes used over the surface of a picture,

and as mixed with the colours in the painting. If we are not mistaken,

he refers to some of the old tempera paintings before Van Eyck's

time, covered with the varnish, and particularly to those of the old

Byzantine school. We do not ourselves remember to have ever seen on old

pictures such changes, though we have seen them to a lamentable and

obliterative degree on pictures painted within the last fifty years in

oil and mastic varnish. We throw out these observations because it may

attract the notice of Mr Eastlake, before his long-expected volume on

the Italian practice comes from the press. It may be doubtful if Van

Eyck had himself, at first, that entire confidence in his materials

which time has shown they deserved--for parts of his most elaborate

and famous picture were put in in distemper and varnished over--yet

we are led to believe that the peculiar effect of his medium was

the preservation of colours in their original purity. It should be

mentioned, also, that one improvement supposed to have been introduced

by Van Eyck, or rather the Van Eycks, was the dryer--the substitution

of white copperas for lead: and this appears to have been adopted from

chemical knowledge, it having been shown that, whereas oils take up the

lead, no portion of the copperas becomes incorporated with the oils,

that substance only facilitating the absorption of oxygen.

Although these MS. treatises do not go farther back than the twelfth

century, assuming that to be the date of the one by Eraclius, yet there

is reason to suppose that the earliest treatises are compilations of

the recipes, the _secreti_, of still earlier ages. They become thus

more interesting as links which, though broken here and there, indicate

the character of the chain in the history of arts, which may be still

left to complete without any material deviation from the original

pattern. That character was undoubtedly religious, but it is not true

that every other show of art was held in contempt, as some maintain.

The goldsmith, the jeweller, the workers in glass and all kinds of

metal, whose recipes may be found in these volumes of Mrs Merrifield,

showed as much skill, (and a far better taste in design) somewhat out

of the line of religious ornament, as any of the last two centuries.

Even in the ninth century, among the gifts of the King of Mercia to a

monastery, we find a golden curtain, on which is wrought the taking of

Troy, and a gilded cup which is chased over all the outside with savage

vine-dressers, fighting with serpents. We can imagine it a work of

which a Benvenuto Cellini need not have been ashamed.

A woodcut in page xxx. of the introduction, and which Mrs Merrifield

has adopted to ornament the cover, represents "a writer of the

fifteenth century." It is taken from a manuscript in the Bibliothèque

at Paris. It is not only curious as showing what an important and

laborious art writing was in those days, and what machinery it

required, but for the religious mark which designates the character

of the writing--in the corner is a painting of the crucifixion.

Mrs Merrifield had told us, that, in a catalogue of the sale of

"furniture of Contarini, the rich Venetian trader, who resided at

St Botolph's in London in 1481, or in that of a nobleman in 1572,"

neither looking-glasses nor chairs are mentioned! Yet in this woodcut

there is not only a chair, but exactly the one which has been recently

reintroduced in modern furnishing. Surely the date 1572 would throw

some excuse upon that of 1481--and offer a fair conjecture that there

must have been some peculiar cause for the omission. We must have

sufficient proof of chairs at the later date. Does the writer in this

cut sit alone?--the room is not even indicated--or was he one of

many sitting together in the Scriptorium? Mr Maitland thinks that,

in later times, the Scriptorium was a small cell, that would only

hold one person--not so in earlier times. We quote a passage from

his book upon the subject: "But the Scriptorium of earlier times was

obviously an apartment capable of containing many persons; and in

which many persons did, in fact, work together in a very business-like

manner, at the transcription of books. The first of these points is

implied in a very curious document, which is one of the very few

extant specimens of French Visigothic MS. in uncial characters, and

belongs to the eighth century. It is a short form of consecration, or

benediction, barbarously entitled '_Orationem in Scripturis_,' and is

to the following effect, 'Vouchsafe, O Lord, to bless this Scriptorium

of thy servants, and all that dwell therein, that, whatsoever sacred

writings shall be here read or written by them, they may receive

with understanding, and bring the same to good effect, through our

Lord,'" &c. We can imagine that we see the impress of this prayer in

the representation, in the corner of the woodcut of which we have

been speaking. Mrs Merrifield enumerates to a large extent the works

of such writers: many of them must have been extremely beautiful.

"The choral books belonging to the cathedral of Ferrara are thirty in

number, twenty-two of which are twenty-six inches long, by eighteen

in breadth, and the remaining eight smaller. They were begun in 1477,

and completed in 1533. The most interesting of these books, for

the beauty of the characters, as well as for the miniatures, were

executed by Jacopo Filippo d'Argenta, Frate Evangelista da Reggio,

a Franciscan, Andrea delle Veze, Giovanni Vendramin of Padua, and

Martino di Georgio da Modena. The parchment on which these books are

written is in excellent preservation. It is worthy of remark, that

great part of the parchment or vellum for these books was brought from

Germany, or at least was manufactured by Germans. There is an entry

in the records of the cathedral, for the year 1477, of a sum of money

paid to M. Alberto da Lamagna, for 265 skins of vellum; of another

sum paid in 1501, for 60 skins, to Piero Iberno, also a German; and

to Creste, another German, for 50 skins, furnished by them on account

of these books." Caligraphy and miniature-painting were sister arts:

so highly were both esteemed, that the right hands of the writer and

miniature-painters, who completed the choral books of Ferrara, and

those of the monastery degli Angeli in Florence, are preserved in a

casket with the utmost veneration. "The best miniature-painter of

the tenth century was Godemann, who was chaplain of the Bishop of

Winchester, from A.D. 963 to 984, and afterwards Abbot of Thornley. His

Benedictional, ornamented with thirty beautiful miniatures, is in the

possession of the Duke of Devonshire. In the eleventh century, schools

of painting were formed at Hildesheim and Paderborn, and the art was

exercised by ecclesiastics of the higher rank." Francesco dai Libri,

so called from his constant employment in illuminating MS., was one of

the most eminent _miniatori_ of the fifteenth century. What Vasari says

of him is quite delightful, whether it conveys the sentiment of Vasari

himself or of Francesco--that, having lived to a great age, "he died

contented and happy, because, in addition to the peace of mind which he

derived from his own virtues, he left a son who was a better painter

than himself." We doubt if this total absence of jealousy is a very

general parental virtue. The passage reminds us of the noble-hearted

Achilles, whose ghost in the shades below anxiously inquired respecting

his son if he excelled in glory, and being answered in the affirmative,

stalked away rejoicing greatly. It may not be universally known, that

the word miniature is derived from minium, red lead, with which the

initial letters were written, or perhaps more commonly painted: hence

our Rubrics.

Mosaic painting was for some time the rival of oil-painting. It was

much esteemed at Venice, where the damp affected other kinds of

painting. It was introduced unquestionably by the Greeks. It afforded

work for several centuries in the decoration of the church of St Mark,

commencing from the eleventh century.

This department of art was not without its jealousies. The Zuccati

were charged by their rivals with having filled up deficiencies in

their work with other painting, and though Titian vindicated them, and

is supposed to have assisted them in designs, the Venetian government

decreed that they should re-execute the work at their own cost, which

nevertheless was not done. Mosaic workers did not always work from the

designs of others; some, and these not inconsiderable, painters applied

themselves to this art. There were great "secreti" in the working in

mosaic, which even now may be useful. The most important of these of

working in mosaic was that of Agnolo, the son of Taddeo Gaddi, who,

in 1346, repaired some of the mosaics executed by Andrea Tafi in the

roof of St Giovanni at Florence. He fixed the cubes of the glass so

firmly into the ground, with a stucco composed of wax and mastic melted

together, that neither the roof nor the vaulting had received any

injury from water from the period of its completion until the time of

Vasari. May not our slate and mortar system be happily superseded? Mrs

Merrifield takes occasion to redeem from his prison, to which, in her

preface to the translation of Cennino Cennini, she had condemned, that

earnest old man, upon the authority of the subscription from the prison

of the Stinche--showing that it was the domicile of the transcriber,

not the author. Vasari asserts that Cennino Cennini, to whom the secret

of mosaic work was transmitted from Agnolo Gaddi, left a treatise on

the subject. No such work has been yet found; but as there are other

MSS. of the author, the treatise may be yet forthcoming. There is an

anecdote which shows there may be better gold than comes from the mint.

Alesso Baldovinetto, who spared no pains to learn the best methods of

working in mosaic, learned much of the art from a German traveller

to whom he had given a lodging. Thus, having been well informed, he

worked with great success. At eighty years of age, feeling the natural

infirmities fast approaching, he sought a retreat in the hospital of

St Paul. "It is related that, in order to insure himself a better

reception, he took with him to his apartments in the hospital a large

chest, which was thought to contain money; and, in this belief, the

officers of the hospital treated him with the greatest respect and

attention. But their disappointment may be imagined, when, on opening

the chest, after the decease of the aged artist, they found nothing

but drawings on paper, and a small book which taught the art of making

the mosaics, (_Pietre del Musaico_) the stucco, and the method of

working. At the present time, we should have considered this little

book a greater treasure than the money which was so much desired." We

here have another delightful passage from Vasari, which will readily be

accepted as the old man's excuse. "It was no wonder that they did not

find money, for Alesso was so bountiful, that everything he possessed

was as much at the service of his friends as if it had been their own."

The introductory remarks on mosaic may be well worth the builder's

and architect's attention, now that great improvements have been made

in the making of glass, and that it is rendered so cheap; whilst duty

was according to weight, the great art was to make it as thin as

possible, hence the greater nicety and expense in the manufacture. To

make thick, strong, or, in the language of mosaic art, cubes of glass

for ornamental purposes, and as a preservative from weather, is a

desideratum of the present day.

Few people will interest themselves about Tarsia work, of which Vasari

speaks slightingly, that it was fittest for those persons who have more

patience than skill in design. An art, however, of some antiquity may

yet be very commonly seen in the inlaid work of various woods in our

Tunbridge ware. Indeed, the art is even now becoming more important

in its application to furniture: our fashionable tables are a kind of

Tarsia work.

The history of painting on glass is extremely interesting, and has

engaged the attention of many writers. France and Germany have taken

the lead in this art, particularly the former; less attention has

perhaps been paid to its rise in Italy than the subject deserves.

The art itself is so exquisitely beautiful, and its application as a

religious ornament so impressive, that we rejoice to see its revival.

Mrs Merrifield enlarges much upon the subject, and very happily, though

her commission to Italy did not send her to a country where the best

materials may be collected. Specimens of painted glass in our own

country, both as to design and colour, are so admirable--some, indeed,

may vie with painting in oil of the best time, with regard to drawing

and effect--that we could wish a commission to collect and publish the

coloured specimens that are now unknown, excepting to the curious in

the art. Glass painting had attained great perfection in France in the

eleventh century. It was likewise much cultivated in our own country;

the windows of Lincoln cathedral show early specimens of great beauty.

Glass windows were introduced into England as early as A.D. 674, by

ecclesiastics, for decoration of their churches. In private houses,

glass was extremely rare in the middle ages; it was not in common use

till the reign of Henry VIII. It was the custom to remove windows as

furniture. Before the introduction of glass, thin parchment stretched

on frames, and varnished, and not unfrequently painted, protected the

interior of the houses from the weather. We have always understood

that, for the great improvement in glass-painting, and that which

rendered the cinque-cento style so beautiful, we are indebted to John

Van Eyck: before his time every variation in colour required a separate

piece. The painting on glass, as on canvass, and burning in different

tints and on colours on one surface, has been generally considered the

discovery of the inventor of oil-painting. Mrs Merrifield rather thinks

that at least a portion of this improvement is to be ascribed to Fra

Giacomo da Ulmo, who found out that a transparent yellow might be given

to the glass by silver--the origin of the invention being the letting

fall from his sleeve a silver button into the furnace, which being

closed, and the silver fused, a yellow stain had been imparted to the

glass. Pottery and glass-making are nearly allied; it would be curious,

if there be a fair ground for the supposition that the manufacture of

glass was brought from Tyre to Venice. "In the fourteenth century the

Venetians had still a colony at Tyre." The Venetian glass, however,

was deficient in transparency; hence probably the Venetian practice

of using black glass, which, by juxtaposition in small pieces, would

certainly tend to give the appearance of greater transparency to the

coloured.

We know not if there has been any great advance in the art of gilding,

from early times to the present, though that of gold-beating has been

brought to far greater perfection. Gold was extensively used at a

very early period in all kinds of decoration, and in the fifteenth

century was lavishly employed on pictures. Seven thousand leaves of

gold were used on the chapel of S. Jacopo de Pistoia. The gold, as

well as some of the expensive colours, was commonly provided by the

parties for whom pictures were painted. On mural paintings, leaves of

tinfoil, covered with a yellow varnish, were substituted for gold.

It would be curious to seek how some modern uses are indebted to the

publication of old recipes. "In order to economise gold, the old

masters had another invention, called 'porporino,' a composition made

of quicksilver, tin, and sulphur, which produced a yellow metallic

powder, that was employed instead of gold. The Bolognese MS. devotes

a whole chapter to this subject. A substance of a similar nature is

now in use in England, and is employed as a substitute for gold in

coloured woodcuts and chromo-lithographs." Wax was used as a mordant

in gilding. Its use as a vehicle in painting has been much discussed;

it was known to the ancients as encaustic, and, in another form, has

been strongly recommended by a modern painter of great ability, whose

works are fair tests of its efficiency; and if we may believe the

assertions with regard to the ancient practice of Greek and mediæval

painters, there may be little reason to doubt its durability. But as it

was certainly known and discarded by the old masters, even before the

invention of Van Eyck in oil painting, we should reasonably conclude

that it was inferior to other vehicles. There is a picture by Andrea

Mantegna at Milan, painted in wax, on which Mrs Merrifield makes the

following remarks:--"The picture is very perfect, the colours bright,

and the touches sharp. The darks are laid on very thick, but the paint

appears to have run into spots or streaks, as if it had been touched

with something which had touched the surface. It is said, however,

that it has never been repaired, and its authenticity is stated to be

undoubted. It is evident that the wax has been used liquid, for if

the colours had been fused by the application of heat, the sharpness

and precision of touch for which this picture, in common with other

paintings of this period, is remarkable, would have been lost and

melted down. The vehicle, whatever it was, appeared to me to have

been as manageable as that of Van Eyck." Mrs Merrifield refers to Mr

Eastlake's _Materials_ for the fullest account of all that pertains to

wax-painting. We would refer also to his _Reports_ of the Commission on

the Fine Arts for further detail.[10]

[10] In the third Report a recipe is given by Mr Eastlake, as

communicated by "Mr John King of Bristol," who is spoken of as

a "chemist." The recipe itself, in the Report, is considered an

improvement. We wish, however, to correct an error which somewhat

disparages the scientific reputation of a deceased friend, whom we

greatly esteemed for his many virtues, as well as for his enthusiasm,

knowledge, and taste, in all that regarded art. Mr King was not a

chemist, but an eminent surgeon of Clifton. Had he been a chemist, his

recipe would have been drawn up with greater chemical correctness: it

is certainly not _secundum artem chemicam_. We may here state that we

have heard from him, that early in life he had received this recipe

from an aged ecclesiastic, as the veritable recipe of ancient times.

After some interesting accounts of statue-painting, the propriety of

which has been so ably discussed by Mr Eastlake, and a few words on

implements used in painting, Mrs Merrifield treats of leather, niello,

and dyeing. The first of these leads her to lament the practice of

the monks "during the dark ages;" who, to the supposed loss of many

classic works, found out that, according to the old proverb, there

is "nothing like leather." We would recommend her to become a little

more acquainted with the real history of the monks during "the dark

ages," their actual habits and manners, rather than trust, as we fear

has been the case, to authors who have only misrepresented them. She

will find matter even as interesting as the documents discovered

respecting their arts and inventions. However there may be cause for

lamenting the misuse of parchments which had been written on, and their

conversion into waistcoats for warriors, and sandals for monks, there

was no need to fit the said sandals on "the sleek and well-fed monks;"

for certainly, if they were as described, they would have worn out

the fewer, as "sleek and well-fed" means but fat and lazy. It would

be hard to find any now who, equally with them, were given to fasting

and prayer. Indeed, the very arts which they practised, into which Mrs

Merrifield has made research, should, we think, rescue them from the

common ill report.

Leather was used for hangings, at first only behind the seats of the

owner of the house, subsequently round the room, and stamped and gilt,

and ornamented with tinfoil. We doubt if our modern papers, even

the "artistic," are an improvement. The old principle in furniture

was richness of effect, a depth, a home-warmth both in substance

and colour; the modern inferior taste is, or has been recently, for

all that is light, gaudy, and flimsy. We should not be sorry to

see the revival of leather hangings, as, in point of richness and

look of comfort--a great thing in a room--far superior to paper.

There is perhaps no very great beauty in niello, nor much cause for

regret that it has fallen into disuse; yet, unimportant as it is in

itself, it is the parent of the most delightful, the most useful

invention--engraving. Nigellum or niello was known to the ancients, and

practised during the middle ages: it is only known now by specimens in

museums. Yet we think there has been an attempt to revive it in Russia.

We have seen a specimen, but it was very coarsely executed.

Dyeing appears, during the middle ages, to have been the trade of the

Jews. It is not ascertained at what period it was introduced into

England. It is said that, in the reign of Henry III., woollen cloth

was worn white, for lack of the art of dyeing--though this is doubted,

as, woad having been imported in the time of John, it might be implied

that dyeing was known. Before the introduction of printing-blocks,

the practice of painting linen cloth intended for wearing-apparel,

with devices, flowers, and various ornaments, in imitation of

embroidery, was common in England. To what great results has this

little dress-vanity led! How much of our commercial prosperity has

its very origin in a taste condemned by the serious as frivolous! The

love of ornament is an instinct, and they are slanderers of Nature in

all her works, and in man's inventive mind, who would insert it in the

calendar of deadly sins. There is perhaps another love, the love of

profit, of a more ambiguous character: we believe there are not a few

who would have made a "drab creation" of this beautiful world, now from

their cotton-printing mills sending forth, by millions upon millions

of yards, this "frivolous vanity" to the ends of the earth. It may be

questioned if Penn's merchandise, as the bales were unpacked, would

have passed the custom-house of a white conscience. Have poor Indians

been as unscrupulously corrupted as cheated?

By far the greater portion of the introduction takes up the subject of

oil-painting, which was the chief object of the commission. We have

already spoken of the result, as well as of the little reliance to be

placed upon the experience of modern painters and restorers in the

country of the old masters. They flatly contradict each other. Even

as to method, did Titian paint first with cold colours? One affirms,

another denies. There is much evidence that the Venetian painters were

more sparing than others in the use of ultramarine. Their principal

blue, it appears, was azzurro della Magna, (German blue.) The receipts

for making azures are numerous. Blue is the most important of our

colours; it is well, therefore, that the attention of our colour-makers

should be particularly directed to it. We have often felt sure, on

looking at Venetian pictures, that the blues generally were not

ultramarine--the beauty of which colour, great as it is, does not bear

the mixture with _a body_ of white lead with impunity--it must be used

thin. One of the artists consulted said, "The Venetians never used

ultramarine, which inclined too much to the violet." Though he is wrong

in "_never_," for there is proof to the contrary, in reference to their

general practice he may be right, as also for their cause of setting

it aside. The very glowing, warm, general tones of the Venetians--of

Titian and Giorgione especially--required a _warmer_ blue, if we

may be allowed to apply such an epithet--for we are aware that most

classifiers of colours say that it is always cold; and we remember

the old controversy on the subject, which Gainsborough endeavoured

not unsuccessfully to decide, by painting his now celebrated picture,

called the "Blue Boy." Contrary to the opinion of many artists, we

are inclined to agree with Mr Field, whose chemical knowledge and

experience should have great weight, that the modern colour "Prussian

blue," if well prepared, is one of much value. It is certainly the

most powerful--not, however, to be recommended for the clear azure

of a sky. We should be glad to know the opinion of Mr Eastlake with

regard to the modern ultramarine, said to be made after an analysis of

the real substance. Though it belongs not to his investigation of the

old practice, a note upon the subject would be very acceptable. If our

blues and our chromes are permanent colours, we have little to regret

in the (supposed) loss of many used by the old masters.

It is curious that even colours were purchased of the "speziali,"--the

apothecaries. It is well known how much we are indebted to medical

science for many of the recipes in art, including those for the

purification of oils and the manufacture of varnishes. "Sig. A. told me

that, when he was at Venice, he made a point of going to the Piazza San

Salvatore, where Titian used to purchase his colours, to see whether

there were any "speziali" there still. He found one, and inquired of

him if he had any old colours, such as were used by the old painters,

and he was shown an orange-coloured pigment, which resembled a colour

frequently found on Venetian pictures." We have before us a document of

payments so late as 1699, by which it appears that, with us also, the

apothecary was the vender of painters' materials. "1699--Rob. Bayley,

apothecary--for oil, gold, and colours, £61." This was for painting a

high cross. Blackness has sometimes been objected to in the colouring

of the greatest of landscape painters, Gaspar Poussin. If the following

statement may be relied upon, the cause of this occasional blemish, if

it be one, may be conjectured. Sig. A. showed a black mirror, which

he said had been used in painting by Bamboccio, (Peter Van Laer,)

and that it had been "bequeathed by Bamboccio to Gaspar Poussin; by

the latter to some other painter, until it ultimately came into the

hands of Sig. A." In pictures of an early time the darks are thick and

substantial, the lights thin. This was reversed afterwards, excepting

with regard to some dark blue, and other draperies, of which examples

may be seen in Correggio. There is a peculiar impasto, however, of the

Bolognese school, which seems to have escaped the notice of Mr Eastlake

and Mrs Merrifield: it is mostly observable in Guercino. The paint on

the flesh, in heads, arms, &c., is frequently greatly raised, as if

modelled. We are curious to know something respecting this method--in

what way the manipulation is managed.

We cannot credit the accounts given by all whom Mrs Merrifield

consulted, that it was Titian's practice to lay by his pictures, after

each painting, for months, and even years. This slow process implies a

forbearance which can noways be reconciled with the fervour and usual

impatience of genius. Without fastening him down to so systematic a

necessity, we can easily believe that his pictures were long under his

hand, from the repeated glazings so remarkable in his works. Exposure

to the sun and air seems to have been universal. It is well known

that, a short time after painting, a portion, probably a deleterious

portion, of the oil rises to the surface. The atmosphere certainly

takes up this, but the exposure must be frequent, for this greasiness

will return. We strongly suspect that it is this deleterious exudation

which destroys the purity of colours; and would recommend, from a long

experience, the washing the surface of pictures, (we have used common

sand for the purpose,) as often as any greasiness returns. A time will

be ascertained when none recurs; and we think the picture is then

pretty secure from any farther change. In this case, a kind of abrasion

does what time would in the end do; but, not waiting for time, we often

varnish, and leave this deleterious part of the oil to do its mischief.

Much stress has been laid on the grinding of colours. The Venetians

were not very careful in this matter, excepting in their glazing

colours. It is very evident that, for some purposes of effect, they

purposely laid on their colours very coarsely ground, and scraped down

for granulation. White lead, however, it is admitted, cannot be too

finely ground, or too carefully made. It is _the_ pigment that Titian

was most solicitous about. There is a letter of his extant, in which

he laments the death of the person who manufactured it for him. "The

Italians, and especially the Venetians," says Mrs Merrifield, "were

extremely careful in the preparation of their white lead, which was

generally purified by washing." A recipe of Fra Fortunato of Rovigo,

recommends the grinding it with vinegar and washing it, repeating the

operation: "You will then have a white lead, which will be as excellent

for miniature painting as for painting in oil." With regard to the

glazings of Titian, an almost incredible story is told by an artist,

Sig. E. "He says that glazings are never permanent, and that nothing

can make them so; and, as a proof, he told me there were in a certain

palace several pictures by Titian, which had always been covered with

glasses: that he was present when the glasses were removed for the

time; when, to the surprise of every one present, the glazings were

found to have evaporated from the pictures, and to have adhered to the

inside of the glass. I considered this incredible, and it certainly

appears to require proof, although it must be recollected that Lionardo

da Vinci says, 'Il verde fatto dal rame, ancorchè tal color sia messo

a olio, se ne va in fumo,'" &c. If the colour evaporated from the

picture, it would certainly be retained by the glass; and this artist

distinctly said, that all the glazings were fixed on the inside of the

glass, exactly above the painting, and that the effect of the different

colours on the glass was very singular. From that time, he added, he

had left off glazing his pictures. This is the more strange, because

painters of the Flemish school may be said to have commenced their

pictures with glazing, and to have continued it throughout; yet we

never heard of such a fact, though many of their pictures have been

under glass.

We have elsewhere recommended, without knowing that it was an old

practice, the use of white chalk and such substances with the colours,

and are therefore pleased to find the following notice,--"White chalk,

marble dust, gesso, the bone of cuttle-fish, alumen, and travertine,

were occasionally used in white pigments. They were frequently mixed

with transparent vegetable colours, to give them body:" it might be

added to give them, by a semi-transparency, and that even to colours in

their own nature opaque, a luminous quality.

Does "grana in grano," the Spanish term for the scarlet pigment, show

the origin of the expression, "a rogue in grain." "Pierce Plowman,

whose _Vision_ is supposed to have been written in 1350, in describing

the dress of a lady richly clad, says, that her robe was of 'scarlet in

grain;' that is, scarlet dyed with grana, the best and most durable red

dye. The import of the words 'in grain,' was afterwards changed, and

the term was applied generally to all colours with which cloths were

dyed, which were considered to be permanent."

"Biadetto," the artificial carbonate of copper, is said to be the

blue most resembling that found in Venetian pictures. Mrs Merrifield

erroneously places coal among the black pigments. It is a brown, and

we know of none so useful; it is deep, but not the hot brown, such as

Vandyke brown, resembling that of Teniers: Mr Eastlake has shown that

it was used by the Flemish and Dutch painters. We had long used it,

before we were acquainted with so authoritative a recommendation.

We find many very useful observations on oils, as to their

purification, and the methods of rendering them drying. As Mrs

Merrifield offers in a note a new dryer, certainly a desideratum, we

quote the passage, that trials of it may be made:--

"The most powerful of all dryers is perhaps chloride of lime

in a dry state: a small quantity of this, added to clarified

oil, will convert it into a solid. For this reason it must be

employed very cautiously: if too much be used, it may burn the

brushes, and injure the colours. It has the advantage of not

darkening the oil, and its drying property appears to arise

from its absorbing the watery particles of the oil. Chloride

of calcium is equally efficacious as a dryer, but the small

quantity of iron which it contains dissolves in the oil, and

darkens it. It seems probable that, if the chloride of lime

were judiciously employed, it might prove serviceable as a

dryer; but as I am not aware that it has been tried as such by

any person but myself, the utmost caution would be required,

and some experiments would be necessary, in order to ascertain

the smallest possible quantity which would answer the purpose

intended."

We are surprised to find, in the Bolognese MS., olive oil mentioned

as mixed with linseed oil in equal proportions, because we never yet

heard of any successful experiment to render it drying. As it is the

property of olive oil to turn lighter, not, as other oils, darker, a

proof of successful experiment would be valuable. Pacheco mentions

"salad oil" with honey, in a mixture of flour paste for grounds; but

this may have been nut-oil. Besides the passages in Vasari and Lomazzo,

which attribute to Lionardo the use of distilled oil, there is the

recipe in the _Secreti_ of Alessio, which is conclusive as to the fact

that linseed-oil was distilled and used to dilute amber varnish. We

are aware that Mr Hendrie, in his valuable translation of Theophilus,

strongly insists upon the superiority of distilled over other oil, but

it does not appear ever to have been in general use.

The recommendation of amber varnish being the chief result of the

commission, numerous authorities as well as recipes are given. "It

appears to be mentioned in the Marciana MS., under the term 'carbone,'

which has undoubtedly been written instead of 'caribe,' the Arabic

and Persian term for amber." We would suggest the possibility that

"carbone" may still be the right word, and mean amber, if it has been

before mentioned in the MS.,--for one mode of making the varnish was

to burn the amber to a "carbone," and then to grind it, as recommended

in the recipe. In speaking of amber varnish as the result of Mrs

Merrifield's research, we should be wrong in ascribing it to that

alone; nor should we be doing justice to her own liberal and full

acknowledgment of the prior recommendation of it by Mr Sheldrake in

1801, whose authority she quotes at much length, with detail of his

experiments. "The use of amber varnish as a vehicle for painting, was

revived and recommended so long ago as 1801, by Mr Sheldrake, in a

paper published in the 19th volume of the _Transactions of the Society

of Arts_. In these papers, Mr Sheldrake endeavours to prove that this

varnish was used by the Italian painters; and as his opinion has been

in a great measure confirmed by documentary evidence, his papers

acquire additional interest from his having recorded the experiments

made by himself in painting with this varnish."

The authority of Gerard Lairesse, given in a note, we think little of;

for the work bearing his name was not written by him, but after his

death, by some who professed to give an account of his instructions.

There is an amusing anecdote, which is introduced for the purpose of

showing that varnish was in use; we insert it for its pleasantry:--

"As an indirect proof, but not the less valuable on that

account, is the following anecdote, related by Luigi Crespi

of his father, Guiseppe Maria Crespi, called Lo Spagnuolo.

'One day, Cardinal Lambertini was in our house, sitting for

his portrait, which my father was painting, when one of my

brothers entered the room, bringing a letter, just arrived

by post, from another brother who was at Modena on business.

The Cardinal took the letter, and, on opening it, said to my

father, 'Go on painting, and I will read it.' Having opened

the letter, he began to read quickly, inventing an imaginary

letter, in which the absent son, with the greatest expressions

of shame and humiliation, prostrated himself at the feet of

his father, begging his pardon, and saying that he had found

it impossible to disengage himself from a stringent promise of

marrying a certain Signora Apollonia, whence.... But he had

hardly proceeded thus far, when my father leaped on to his

feet, knocking over palette, pencils, and chair; _and upsetting

oil, varnish, and everything else which was on the little

bench_; and uttering all kinds of exclamations. The Cardinal

jumped at the same time, to quiet and pacify him, telling him,

as well as he could for laughing, that it was all nonsense,

and entirely an invention of his own. Meanwhile, my father was

running round the room in despair, the Cardinal following him,

and thus pleasantly ended the morning's work. After this time,

whenever his eminence came to see my father, before getting out

of the carriage, he would whisper, That he had no doubt Signora

Apollonia was at home, and with him.'"

We refer the artist-reader to the work itself, for valuable matter

on the subject of grounds; we have already trespassed too far to

allow of our here entering minutely into the subject. Mr Eastlake

and Mrs Merrifield, however, think a knowledge of grounds of the

first importance. The evidence is in favour of white grounds, of size

and gesso. De Piles thinks them, however, liable to crack. And in

this place Mrs Merrifield narrates, on the authority of the French

painter, M. Camille Rogier, to Sig. Cigogna, who inserted it in his

_Inscrizeoni Veneziane_, a circumstance which strongly savours of the

astute exchange of armour in the _Iliad_--brass for gold. Owing to the

gesso or white tempera ground, it is said that the celebrated Nozze

di Cana, by Paolo Veronese, was in such a condition as to render it

necessary to line it very carefully, to prevent the paint scaling from

the canvass. "But when, in 1815, the picture was about to be restored

to Venice, according to the treaty, it was perceived that the colours

crumbled off and fell into dust at the slightest movement. To continue

the operation, therefore, was to expose one of the finest works of the

Venetian school to certain destruction; and the committee decided that

the picture of Paolo should remain at Paris, and that a painting of

Lebrun's should be sent to Venice in its stead." "Credat Judæus!" If

this were so--if the picture was really in that condition, how could

it have been lined? and if it could, by any care, bear the necessary

rough usage and removals of lining, would it not have borne careful

conveyance? The French are able diplomatists. We think Mr Peel, and

much less experienced liners, must laugh at the simplicity of the

committee. Were they a committee on the Fine Arts? We have heard of

valuable pictures having been smuggled into this country, with other

pictures painted over them--if the proof which satisfied the committee,

(if the story have any real foundation of truth,) had been a free

pass through the custom-house, we have not the slightest doubt our

picture-dealers would have readily supplied it, and have skilfully so

attached dry colours as to peel off on the slightest shaking. We should

rather give credence to the glazings of Titian flying off to the glass,

than to this supposed danger of removal from the cause ascribed.

In now taking leave of Mrs Merrifield, we express our hope that,

having so ably and so faithfully done the work confided to her by the

Commission on the Fine Arts, she will not think her labours at an end;

for we are quite sure that her judicious mind and clear style may be

most profitably employed in the service of art, to whose practical

advancement she has contributed so much.

TENNYSON'S POEMS.[11]

[11] _Poems._ By ALFRED TENNYSON. Fifth Edition.

_The Princess: a Medley._ By ALFRED TENNYSON.

There is no living poet who more justly demands of the critic a calm

and accurate estimate of his claims than Alfred Tennyson; neither is

there one whom it is more difficult accurately and dispassionately to

estimate. Other living and poetical reputations seem tolerably well

settled. The older bards belong already to the past. Wordsworth all the

world consents to honour. Living, he already ranks with the greatest

of our ancestors. His faults even are no longer canvassed; they are

frankly admitted, and have ceased to disturb us. Every man of original

genius has his mannerism more or less disagreeable; once thoroughly

understood, it becomes our only care to forget it. No one now thinks

of discovering that Wordsworth is occasionally, and especially when

ecclesiastical themes overtake him, sadly prosaic; no one is now more

annoyed by this than he is at the school divinity of Milton, or the

tangled, elliptical, helter-skelter sentences into which the impetuous

imagination of Shakspeare sometimes hurries him. Moore, another

survivor of the magnates of the last generation, has judgment passed

upon him with equal certainty and universality. He, with a somewhat

different fate, has seen his fame collapse. He no longer stalks a

giant in the land, but he has dwindled down to the most delightful of

minstrel-pages that ever brought song and music into a lady's chamber.

So exquisite are his songs, men willingly forget he ever attempted

anything higher. We have no other remembrance of his _Lalla Rookh_

than that he has embedded in it some of those gems of song--some of

those charming lyrics which scarcely needed to be set to music; they

are melody and verse in one. They sing themselves. If his fame has

diminished, it has not tarnished. It has shrunk to a little point, but

that little point is bright as the diamond, and as imperishable. Of

the poets more decidedly of our own age and generation, there are but

few whom it would be thought worth while to estimate according to a

high standard of excellence. The crowd we in general consent to praise

with indulgence, because we do not look upon them as candidates for

immortality, but merely for the honours of the day--a social renown,

the applause of their contemporaries, the palm won in the race with

living rivals.

Poetry of the very highest order, coupled with much affectation, much

defective writing, many wilful blunders, renders Alfred Tennyson a

very worthy and a very difficult subject for the critic. The extreme

diversity and unequal merit of his compositions, make it a very

perplexing business to form any general estimate of his writings.

The conclusion the critic comes to at one moment he discards the

next. He finds it impossible to satisfy himself, nor can ever quite

determine in what measure praise and censure should be mixed. At one

time he is so thoroughly charmed, so completely delighted with the

poet's verse, that he is disposed to extol his author to the skies;

he is as little inclined to any captious and disparaging criticism as

lovers are, when they look, however closely, into the fair face which

has enchanted them. At other times, the page before him will call up

nothing but vexation and annoyance. Even the gleams of genuine poetry,

amongst the confusion and elaborate triviality that afflict him, will

only add to his displeasure. A heap of rubbish never looks so vile,

or so disagreeable, as when a fresh flower is seen thrown upon it.

Were Tennyson to be estimated by some half-dozen of his best pieces,

he would be the compeer of Coleridge and of Wordsworth--if by a like

number of his worst performances, he would be raised very little above

that nameless and unnumbered crowd of dilettanti versifiers, whose

utmost ambition seems to be to see themselves in print, and then, as

quickly as possible, to disappear--

"One moment _black_, then gone for ever."

This diversity of merit is not to be accounted for by the diverse

nature of the subject-matter which the poet has at different times

treated; for Mr Tennyson has given us the happiest specimens of the

most different styles of composition, employed on a singular variety

of topics. He has been grave and graceful, playful and even broadly

comic, with complete success. As a finished portraiture of a peculiar

state of mind--conceived with philosophic truth, and embellished with

all the fascinating associations which it is the province of poetry

to call around us--nothing could surpass the poem of the _Lotos

Eaters_. For playfulness, and tender, amorous fancy--warm, but not too

warm--spiritual, but not too spiritual--we shall go far before we find

a rival to the _Talking Oak_, or to the _Day Dream_: what better ballad

can heart desire than the _Lord of Burleigh_? And how well does a

natural indignation speak out in the clear ringing verse of _Lady Clara

Vere de Vere_! Specimens of the richly comic, as we have hinted, may

here and there be found: we have one in our eye which we shall seek an

opportunity for quoting. In harmonising metaphysic thought with poetic

imagery and expression, he does not always succeed; on the contrary,

some of his saddest failures arise from the abortive attempt; yet there

are some admirable passages even of this description of writing.

It is not, therefore, the difference of style aimed at, or

subject-matter adopted, which determines whether Tennyson shall be

successful or not. Perhaps it will be said that the marked inequality

in his compositions is sufficiently accounted for by the simple fact,

that some were written at an earlier age than others; that some are

the productions of his youth, and others of his maturity--that, in

short, it is a mere question of dates. There is indeed a very striking

difference between those poems which commence the volume, and bear the

date of 1830, and the other and greater number, which bear the date

of 1832: the difference is so great, that we question whether, upon

the whole, the fame of Mr Tennyson would not have been advanced by the

omission altogether from his collected works of this first portion of

his poems; for though much beauty would be lost, far more blemish would

be got rid of. Still, however, as the same inequality pursues us in

his later writings, and is evident even in his last production--_The

Princess_--there remains something more to be explained than can be

quite accounted for by the mere comparison of dates. This something

more we find explained in _a bad school of taste_, under the influence

of which Mr Tennyson commenced his poetic authorship. Above this

influence he often rises, but he has never quite liberated himself from

it. To this source we trace the affectations of many kinds which deface

his writings--affectation of a super-refinement of meaning, ending in

mere obscurity, or in sheer nonsense; affectation of antique simplicity

ending in the most jejune triviality; experimental metres putting

the ear to torture; or an utter disregard of all metre, of all the

harmonies of verse, together with an incessant toil after originality

of phrase; as if no new idea could be expressed unless each separate

word bore also an aspect of novelty.

At the time when Tennyson commenced his career, poetry and poets were

in a somewhat singular position. Never had there been so great a thirst

for poetry--never had there existed so large a reading public with so

decided a predilection for this species of literature; and rarely, if

ever, has there arisen--at once the cause and effect of this public

taste--so noble a band of contemporary poets as those who were just

then retiring from the stage. The success which attended metrical

composition was quite intoxicating. Poems, now gradually waning from

the sight of all mankind, were rapturously welcomed as masterpieces.

It seemed that the poet might dare anything. Meanwhile, the novelty

to which he was emboldened was rendered urgent and necessary; for, in

addition to the old rivals of times long past, there was this band of

poets, whose echoes were still ringing in the theatre, to be competed

with. Was it any wonder that at such an epoch we should have Keats

writing his _Endymion_, or Tennyson elaborating his incomprehensible

ode _To Memory_, or inditing his foolish songs _To the Owl_, or

torturing himself to unite old _balladry_ with modern sentiment in

his _Lady of Shalott_, for ever rhyming with that detested town of

_Camelot_; or that he should have been stringing together fulsome,

self-adulatory nonsense about _The Poet and the Poet's Mind_--or,

in short, committing any conceivable extravagance in violation of

sense, metre, and the English language? The young poet of this time

was evidently carried off his feet. He had drank so deep of those

springs about Parnassus, that he had lost his footing on the solid

ground. It did not follow that he and his compeers always soared

above us because they could no longer walk on a level with us. Men,

in a dream, think they are flying when they are only falling. They

reeled much, these intellectual revellers. It is true that sober men

discountenanced them, rebuked them, reminded them that liberty was not

license, nor imagination another name for insanity; but there was still

a considerable crowd of indiscriminate admirers to cheer and encourage

them in their wildest freaks.

One tendency, gathered from these times, seems, all along and

throughout his whole progress, to have beset our author--the reluctance

to subside for a moment to the easy natural level of cultivated minds.

He has a morbid horror of commonplace. He will be grotesque, if you

will; absurd, infantine--anything but truly simple: when he girds

himself for serious effort, he would give you the very essence of

poetry, and nothing else. This wish to have it all blossoms, no stem or

leaves, has perhaps been one cause why he has written no long work. It

is a tendency which is, in some measure, honourable to him. Though it

has assisted in betraying him into the errors we have already noticed,

it must be allowed that we are never in danger of being wearied with

the monotony of commonplace.

It may be worth while to consider for a moment this characteristic--the

wish to seize upon the essence, and the essence only, of poetry.

In our high intellectual industry, there goes on a certain division

and subdivision of labour analogous to that which marks the progress

of our commercial and manufacturing industry. The first men of genius

were historians, poets, philosophers, all in one. If they wrote

verse, they found a place in it for whatever could in any manner

interest their contemporaries, whether it was matter of knowledge,

or matter of passion. The theology of a people, and the agriculture

of a people--chaos and night, and how to sow the fields--the progeny

of gods, and the breeding of bulls--were alike materials for the

poem. A Hesiod or a Gower chant all they know--science, or religion,

or morality. The first epic is the first history. But the narrative

here becomes too engrossing to admit of large admixtures of didactic

matter. This is relegated to some other form of composition, and

handed over to some other master of the art. The dramatic form carries

on this division still further. The representation of the narrative

relieves the poem of its historic character, and a dialogue which is

to accompany action becomes necessarily devoted to the passions of

life, or such strains of reflection as result from, and harmonise

with, those passions. The lyric minstrel seizes upon these eliminated

elements of passion and reflection, and adds thereto a greater liberty

of imagination. At length comes that mere intellectual luxury Of

imaginative thought--that gathering in of beauty and emotion from all

sources--that subtle blending of a thousand pleasing allusions and

flitting images--exquisite for their own sake, and constituting what

is considered as pre-eminently the poetical description of natural

scenery, or the poetical delineation of human feeling.

But it is possible that this intellectual division of labour may be

carried too far. This luxury of imaginative thought may be found

supporting itself on the slenderest base imaginable of either incident

or reflection, may be almost divorced from those first natural

sources of interest which affect all mankind. Now, although this may

be the most poetical element of the poem--though this subtle play of

imagination may constitute, more than anything else, the difference

between poetry and prose, it does not follow that a good poem can be

constructed wholly of such materials. It does not even follow that,

in a good poem, this is really the most essential part; for that

which constitutes the specific distinction between prose and poetry

may not be an ingredient so important as others which both prose and

poetry have in common. It is the _hilt_, and its peculiar formation,

which more particularly distinguishes the sword from any other cutting

instrument; but the blade--the faculty of cutting which it shares in

common with the most domestic knife--is, after all, the most important

part, the most requisite property of the sword. A peculiar play of

imagination is pre-eminently poetic, but thought, reflection, the

genuine passions of man--these must still constitute the greater

elements of the composition, whether it be prose or poem.

If, therefore, we carry this division of labour too far, we shall be

in danger of carving elegant and elaborate hilts that have no blades,

or but a sham one. We ask no one to write didactic or philosophic

poems--we should entreat of them to abstain; we call on no man to

describe again the culture of the sugarcane, (though it bids fair to

become amongst us one of the lost arts,) or the breeding of sheep, in

numerous verse; we hope no one will again fall into that singular error

of imagining that the "art of poetry" must be a peculiarly appropriate

subject for a poem, and the very topic that the spirit of a poetic

reader was thirsting for. Art of poetry! what poetic nutriment will

you extract from that? As well think to dine a man upon the art of

cookery! It is quite right that what is best said in prose should be

confined to prose; but neither must we divorce substantial thought, the

broad passions of mankind, or a deep reflection, from the poetic form.

This would be to build nothing but steeples, and minarets, and all the

filigree of architecture. We should have pillars and porticoes enough,

but not a temple of any kind to enter into.

We often hear it asserted, on the one hand, that the taste for poetry

has declined. We hear this, on the other hand, vigorously contested and

denied. No, says the indignant champion of the muse, _verse_ may have

sunk much in estimation, and the ingenious labours of the rhymist may

be put on a par, if you will, with the tricks of the juggler or the

caprices of art. Difficulties conquered! Nonsense. We want good things

executed. It is your folly if you do not choose the best means. The

man who plays on his fiddle with one string only, shall have thanks

if he plays well, but not because he plays on one string; if he could

have played better, using the four, his thanks shall be diminished

by so much. Yes, verse may be depreciated, but _poetry_--which grows

perennial from the very heart of humanity--you may plough over the

soil deep as you please, you will only make it grow the faster, and

strike the deeper root. The answer is well, and yet there may be

something left unexplained. If poetry has been deserting the highroads

of human thought--if it has grown more limited as it has grown more

subtle--there may be some ground for suspecting that the public will

desert it. Without wishing to detract anything from the high merit

of his best performances, we should refer to a great portion of the

poetry of _Shelley_ as an illustration of these remarks, and also to a

considerable part of the poetry of _Keats_.

It is especially in the class of descriptive poetry, that we moderns

have carried the over-refinement we are speaking of, to so remarkable

an extent. The poets of Greece and Rome, it has been often observed,

rarely, if ever, described natural scenery simply for its own sake.

It was with their verse as with their paintings--the landscape was

always a mere accessory, the main interest lying with the human or

superhuman beings who inhabited it. The truth seems to be, that the

pagan imagination was so full of its goddesses and nymphs, that these

obscured the genuine impression, which the scene itself would have

produced. Not but that the ancient poet must have felt the charm of a

beautiful or sublime scene; but instead of dwelling upon this natural

charm, he turned immediately to what seemed a more worthy subject--to

the supernatural beings with which superstition had peopled the scene.

Scarcely could he see the wood for the dryads, or the river for those

smooth naiads that were surely living in its lucid depths. And even

if we suppose that these pagan faiths had lost their hold both of

writer and of reader, it is still very easy to understand that simple

nature--trees, and hills, and water--however pleasing to the beholder,

might not be thought an appropriate subject, or one sufficiently

important for an exclusive description. What is open to every one's

eye, and familiar to every man's thought, is not the first, but the

last topic to which literature resorts. Not till all others are

exhausted does it betake itself to this. Just as the heroic in human

existence would be sung and resung, long before a Fielding portrays the

common life that is lying about him; so portents and prodigies, gods

and satyrs, and Ovidian fables of metamorphosed damsels, would precede

the description of groves and bays, verdure and water, and the light of

heaven seen shining every day upon them.

Even the sacred poets and prophets amongst the Hebrews, who gave such

sublime views of nature, always associated her with the presence of

God. This, indeed, was the secret of their sublimity. With them nature

was never seen alone. The clouds rolled about His else invisible path;

the thunder was His, the hills were His; nature was the perpetual

vesture of the Deity.

It is only in modern times that the scenery of nature has been

allowed to speak for itself, to make its own impression, as the great

representative of the Beautiful here below. But now, as this scenery is

to be described, not by admeasurements, or the items of a catalogue,

as so much land, so much water, so much timber, but by the deep, and

varied, and often shadowy sentiments it calls forth, it is manifest

that it must become a theme inexhaustible to the poet, and a theme also

somewhat dangerous to him, as tempting him more and more towards those

refined, and vague, and evanescent feelings which are not found on the

highways of human thought, and are known only to the experience of a

few.

But to return more immediately to Mr Tennyson. We have said that, at

the time when he commenced writing, poetry was in a certain feverish

condition. The young poet had been spoilt--had grown over-confident.

He was like Spencer's Knight in the Palace of Love, who sees written

over every door, "Be bold! Be bold!" Only over one door does he read

the salutary caution, "Be not too bold!" Public opinion, or the opinion

of a large and powerful coterie, favoured his wildest excesses. That

language was strained and distorted, was a sure sign of the original

power of thought that was struggling through the imperfect medium.

Obscurity was always honoured. People strained their eyes to watch

their favourite as he careered amongst the clouds: if they lost sight

of him, the fault was presumed to be in their own vision; they were

not likely, therefore, to confess any inability to follow him. The

young aspirants of the day even learnt to despise the trammels of their

own art. The measure and melody of their verse was sacrificed to the

irresistible afflatus which bore them onward. Metre was put to the

torture,--at least our ears were tortured--in order that no iota of

the heaven-breathed strain should be lost. They still wrote in verse,

because verse alone could disguise the empty, meaningless phraseology

they had enlisted in their service; but it was often a jingling rhythm,

harsher to the ear than the most crabbed prose, which was retained

as an excuse or concealment for that resplendent gibberish they had

imported so largely into the English language. From a super-refinement

of thought, altogether transcendental, they delighted to descend to

an imitation of childish or antique simplicity. The natural level of

cultivated thought was by all means to be avoided. If you were not in

the clouds, you must be seen sitting amongst the buttercups.

Turn now to the opening and earlier poems in Mr Tennyson's volume;

they are considerably altered from the state in which they made their

first appearance, but they still leave traces enough of the unfortunate

influence we have attempted to describe. The best amongst them is a

sort of gallery of portraits of fair ladies--Claribel, and Lilian, and

Isabel, and Adeline, and Madeline, and others. From these might be

extracted some few very beautiful lines, but none of them pleases as

a whole. There is an air of effort and elaboration, coupled with much

studied negligence, which prevents us from surrendering ourselves to

the charms of any of these portraitures. The _Claribel_, with which the

volume commences, might be a woman or a child for anything that the

poem tells us; we only gather from the expression "low lieth," that she

is dead, and over her grave there rings a chime of words, which leave

as little impression on the living ear as they would on the sleeper

beneath. It was a pity--since alterations have been permitted--that

the volume was still allowed to open with this mere monotonous chant.

And why were these two absurd songs _To the Owl_ still preserved? Was

it to display a sort of moral courage, and as they were first written

out of bravado to common sense, was it held a point of honour to

persist in their republication? I, Tennyson, have written good things;

therefore this, my nonsense, shall hold its ground in spite of the

murmurs of gentle reader, or the anger of malignant critic! But we must

not commence an inquisition of this kind, nor ask why this or that

has been permitted to remain, for we should carry on such an inquiry

to no little extent. We should make wide clearance in this first part

of his volume. Here is a long _Ode to Memory_, which craves to be

extinguished, which ought in charity to be forgotten. An utter failure

throughout. We cannot read it again, to enable us to speak quite

positively, but we do not think there is a single redeeming line in the

whole of it. A dreary, shapeless, metaphysical mist lies over it; there

is no object seen, and not a ray of beauty even colours the cloud. Then

comes an odious piece of pedantry in the shape of "A Song." What metre,

Greek or Roman, Russian or Chinese, it was intended to imitate, we have

no care to inquire: the man was writing English, and had no justifiable

pretence for torturing our ear with verse like this:--

SONG.

"A spirit haunts the year's last hours,

Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers:

To himself he talks;

For at eventide, listening earnestly,

At his work you may hear him sob and sigh,

In the walks.

Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks

Of the mouldering flowers."

Of the _Lady of Shalott_ we have already hinted our opinion. They must

be far gone in dilettantism who can make an especial favourite of such

a caprice as this--with its intolerable vagueness, and its irritating

repetition, every verse ending with the "Lady of Sha_lott_," which

must always rhyme with "Came_lot_." We cannot conceive what charm Mr

Tennyson could find in this species of odious iteration, which he

nevertheless repeatedly inflicts upon us. It matters not what precedent

he may insist upon--whether he quotes the authority of Theocritus, or

the worthy example of old English ballad-makers--the annoyance is none

the less. In a poem called _The Sisters_, we have the verse framed

after this fashion:--

"We were two daughters of one race;

She was the fairest in the face:

_The wind is blowing in turret and tree._

They were together, and she fell;

Therefore revenge became me well.

_O the earl was fair to see!_"

And so we go on to the end of the chapter, with "The wind is blowing in

turret and tree," and "The earl was fair to see," brought in, no matter

how, but always in the same place. The rest of the verse is not so

abundantly clear as to be well able to afford this intervenient jingle,

which is indeed no better than the _fal lal la!_ or _tol de rol!_

of facetious drinking-songs. These have their purpose, being framed

expressly for people in that condition when they want noise, and noise

only, when the absence of all sense is rather a merit; but what earthly

use, or beauty, or purpose there can be in the melancholy iterations

of Mr Tennyson, we cannot understand. Certainly we agree here with

Hotspur--we would rather hear "a kitten cry Mew, than one of these

same metre ballad-mongers."

_Oriana_ is fashioned on the same plan:--

"My heart is wasted with my woe,

Oriana.

There is no rest for me below,

Oriana."

As if some miserable dog were baying the moon with the name of _Oriana_.

_Mariana in the Moated Grange_ is not by any means improved by this

habit of repetition, every stanza ending with the same lines, and those

not too skilfully constructed:--

"She only _said_, 'My life is dreary;

He cometh not,' she _said_!

She _said_, 'I am aweary, aweary;

I would that I were dead!'"

This piece of _Mariana_ has been very much extolled; the praise we

should allot to it would seem cold after the applause it has frequently

received. The descriptive powers of Tennyson are, in his happiest

moments, unrivalled; on these occasions there is no one of whom it

may be said more accurately, that his words paint the scene; but the

description here and in the subsequent piece, _Mariana in the South_,

has always appeared to us too studied to be entirely pleasing. We have

tried to _feel_ it, but we could not.

For instances of graver faults of style, and in productions of higher

aim, we should point, amongst others, to _The Palace of Art_, _The

Vision of Sin_, _The Dream of Fair Women_. In all of these, verses

of great merit may be found, but the larger part is very faulty. An

obscurity, the result sometimes of too great condensation of style,

and a jerking spasmodic movement, constantly mar the effect. From _The

Palace of Art_ we quote, almost at haphazard, the following lines.

The soul has built her palace, has hung it with pictures, and placed

therein certain great bells, (a sort of music we do not envy her,) that

swing of themselves. It is then finely said of her--

"She took her throne,

She sat betwixt the shining oriels

To sing her songs alone."

After this the strain thus proceeds:--

"No nightingale delighteth to prolong

Her low preamble all alone,

More than my soul to hear her echoed song

_Throb through the ribbed stone_;

"Singing and murmuring in her feastful mirth,

Trying to feel herself alive;

Lord over nature, lord of the visible earth,

Lord of the senses five.

"Communing with herself: 'All these are mine;

And let the world have peace or wars,

'Tis one to me.' She--when young night divine

Crown'd dying day with stars,

"Making sweet close of his delicious toils--

Lit light in wreaths and anadems,

And pure quintessences of precious oils

In hallow'd moons of gems,

"To mimic heaven; and clapt her hands, and cried,

'I marvel if my still delight

In this great house, so royal, rich, and wide,

Be flattered to the height.

"'From shape to shape at first within the womb,

The brain is modell'd,' she began,

'And through all phases of all thought I come

Into the perfect man.

"'All nature widens upward, evermore

The simpler essence lower lies;

More complex is more perfect, owning more

Discourse, more widely wise.'

"Then of the moral instinct would she prate,

And of the rising from the dead,

As hers by right of full-accomplish'd Fate;

And at the last she said--"

Now this surely is not writing which can commend itself to the judgment

of any impartial critic. One cannot possibly admire this medley of

topics, moral and physiological, thrown pell-mell together, and mingled

with descriptions which are themselves a puzzle to understand. To hear

one's own voice "throbbing through the ribbed stone," is a startling

novelty in acoustics, and the lighting up of the apartment is far from

being a lucid affair. We can understand "the wreaths and anadems;" our

experience of an illumination-night in the streets of London, where

little lamps or jets of gas, assume these festive shapes, comes to our

aid, but "moons of gems" would form such globes as even the purest

quintessence of the most precious oil must fail to render very luminous.

_The Vision of Sin_ commences after this fashion:--

"I had a vision when the night was late:

A youth came riding toward a palace-gate;

_He rode a horse with wings, that would have flown_,

_But that his heavy rider kept him down_.

And from the palace came a child of sin,

_And took him by the curls, and led him in_,

Where sat a company with heated eyes,

Expecting when a fountain should arise."

Thus it commences, and thus it proceeds for some time, in the same very

intelligible strain. It is our fault, perhaps, that we cannot interpret

the vision; but we confess that we can make nothing of it till the

measure suddenly changes, and we have a bitter, mocking, sardonic song,

a sort of devil's drinking-song, through which some species of meaning

becomes evident enough.

In a vision of sin we may count upon a little mystery; but we should

expect to find all clear and beautiful in _A Dream of Fair Women_. But

here, too, everything is singularly misty. Those who have witnessed

that ingenious exhibition called The Dissolving Views, will recollect

that gay and gaudy obscurity which intervenes at the change of each

picture; they will remember that they passed half their time looking

upon a canvass covered with indistinct forms, and strangely mingled

colours. Just for a few minutes the picture stands out bright and well

defined as need be, then it breaks up, and confuses its dim fragments

with the colours of some other picture, which is now struggling to make

itself visible. Half our time is spent amongst mingled shadows of the

two, the eye in vain attempting to trace any perfect outline. Precisely

such a sensation the perusal of this, and some other of the poems of

Tennyson, produces on the reader. For a moment the scene brightens out

into the most palpable distinctness, but for the greater part we are

gazing on a glittering mist, where there is more colour than form, and

where the colours themselves are flung one upon the other in lawless

profusion. In the _Dream of Fair Women_, the form of Cleopatra stands

forth magnificently; it is almost the only portion of the poem that has

the great charm of distinctness, or which fixes itself permanently on

the memory.

We cannot bring ourselves to quote line after line, and verse after

verse, of what we hold to be bad and unreadable: we have given some

examples, and mentioned a considerable number of the pieces, on which

we should found a certain vote of censure; the intelligent reader can

easily check our judgment by his own,--confirm or dispute it. We turn

to what is a more grateful task. Well known as these poems are, we

must be permitted to give a few specimens of those happy efforts which

have secured, we believe, to Tennyson, in spite of the defects we have

pointed out, an enduring place amongst the poets of England. We shall

make our selection so as to illustrate his success in very different

styles, and on different topics. We shall make this selection from the

volume of _The Poems_, and then dwell separately, and somewhat more at

large, upon _The Princess_, which is comparatively a late publication.