[Illustration: FALMOUTH.]
This is one of the most beautiful and best-finished plates of the
series, and Turner has taken great pains with the drawing; but it is
sadly open to the same charges which were brought against the Dover, of
an attempt to reach a false sublimity by magnifying things in themselves
insignificant. The fact is that Turner, when he prepared these drawings,
had been newly inspired by the scenery of the Continent; and with his
mind entirely occupied by the ruined towers of the Rhine, he found
himself called upon to return to the formal embrasures and unappalling
elevations of English forts and hills. But it was impossible for him to
recover the simplicity and narrowness of conception in which he had
executed the drawing of the Southern Coast, or to regain the innocence
of delight with which he had once assisted gravely at the drying of
clothes over the limekiln at Comb Martin, or penciled the woodland
outlines of the banks of Dartmouth Cove. In certain fits of prosaic
humorism, he would, as we have seen, condemn himself to delineation of
the parades of a watering-place; but the moment he permitted himself to
be enthusiastic, vaster imaginations crowded in upon him: to modify his
old conception in the least, was to exaggerate it; the mount of
Pendennis is lifted into rivalship with Ehrenbreitstein, and hardworked
Falmouth glitters along the distant bay, like the gay magnificence of
Resina or Sorrento.
This effort at sublimity is all the more to be regretted, because it
never succeeds completely. Shade, or magnify, or mystify as he may, even
Turner cannot make the minute neatness of the English fort appeal to us
as forcibly as the remnants of Gothic wall and tower that crown the
Continental crags; and invest them as he may with smoke or sunbeam, the
details of our little mounded hills will not take the rank of cliffs of
Alp, or promontories of Apennine; and we lose the English simplicity,
without gaining the Continental nobleness.
I have also a prejudice against this picture for being disagreeably
noisy. Wherever there is something serious to be done, as in a battle
piece, the noise becomes an element of the sublimity; but to have great
guns going off in every direction beneath one's feet on the right, and
all round the other side of the castle, and from the deck of the ship of
the line, and from the battery far down the cove, and from the fort on
the top of the hill, and all for nothing, is to my mind eminently
troublesome.
The drawing of the different wreaths and depths of smoke, and the
explosive look of the flash on the right, are, however, very wonderful
and peculiarly Turneresque; the sky is also beautiful in form, and the
foreground, in which we find his old regard for washerwomen has not
quite deserted him, singularly skillful. It is curious how formal the
whole picture becomes if this figure and the gray stones beside it are
hidden with the hand.