Appended to a fine portrait of Sir Walter Scott, in the _Literary
Souvenir_ for 1829, is the following--by _Barry Cornwall_:--
We can scarcely imagine a thing much more pleasant indeed, to an artist,
than to be brought face to face with some famous person, and permitted
to examine and scrutinize his features, with that careful and intense
curiosity, that seems necessary to the perfecting a likeness. It must
have been to Raffaelle, at once a relaxation from his ordinary study,
and a circumstance interesting in itself, thus to look into faces so
full of meaning as those of Julius and Leo--and to say, "That look--that
glance, which seems so transient, will I fix for ever. Thus shall he be
seen, with that exact expression (although it lasted but for an instant)
five hundred years after he shall be dust and ashes!"
This was probably the feeling of Raffaelle; and it must have been with a
somewhat similar pride that our excellent artist, Mr. Leslie,
accomplished his portrait of Sir Walter Scott, which the reader will
have already admired in this volume. It is surely a perfect work. No
one, who has once seen the great author, can forget that strange and
peculiar look (so full of meaning, and shrewd and cautious
observation--so entirely characteristic, in short, of the mind within)
which Mr. Leslie has succeeded in catching. One may gaze on it for ever,
and contemplate an exhaustless subject--all that the capacious
imagination has produced and is producing,--the populous, endless world
of fancy.
Let the reader look, and be assured that _there_ is the strange spirit
that has discovered and wrought all the fine shapes that he has been
accustomed to look upon with wonder--Claverhouse, and Burley, and
Bothwell,--Meg Merrilies and Elspeth--the high and the low--the fierce
and the fair--Cavaliers and Covenanters, and the rest--presenting an
assemblage of character that is absolutely unequalled, except in the
pages of Shakspeare alone. There is no other writer, be he Greek, or
Goth, or Roman, who has ever astonished the world by creations so
infinitely diversified. The mind of the author appears so free from
egotism, so large and serene, so clear of all images of self, that it
receives, as in a lucid mirror, all the varieties of nature.
* * * * *