my little reading knows of none, beyond what dictionaries have gathered
from popular history and vague tradition, rather than manuscripts of old
time, and Asser, the original biographer. Of this last work, written
originally in Saxon, and since translated into Latin, I submit that a
popular English version is imperatively called for; a translation from a
translation being never advisable, (compare Smollett's Anglo-Gallified
dilution of '_Don Quixote_,') the primary source should be again
consulted; and seeing that profound ignorance of the ancient Saxon
coupled with, as now, total indifference about its acquisition, place me
in the list of incapables, I leave the good suggestion to be used by
pundits of the Camden or Roxburghe or other book-learned society. If it
may have been already done by some neglected scribe, bring it to the
light, and let us see the bright example set to all future ages by that
early Crichton; if never yet accomplished, my zeal is over-paid should
the hint be ever acted on; and if, which is still possible, an English
version of the life of Alfred should be positively rife and common among
the reading public, your humble ignoramus has nothing for it but to pray
pardon of its author for not having known him, and to walk softly with
the world for writing so much before he reads.
But this is an accessory--an episode; I plead for a statue to King
Alfred: and--(now for another episode; is there _no_ cure for these
desperate parentheses?)--_apropos_ of statues, let me, in the simple
untaught light of nature, suggest a word or two with regard to some
recent under-takings. Notwithstanding classical precedents, whereof more
presently, it does seem ridiculous to common sense, to set a man like a
scavenger-bird at Calcutta, or a stork at Athens, or a sonorous Muezzin,
or a sun-dried Simeon Stylites, on the top of a column a hundred feet
high: sculpture imitates life, and who would not shudder at such an
unguarded elevation? sculpture imitates life, and who can recognise a
countenance so much among the clouds? Again for the precedents: I
presume that Pompey's pillar, (which, indeed, perhaps never had any
thing on its summit except some Egyptian emblem, as the cap and throne
of higher and lower Egypt, or a key of the Nile as likely as any thing,)
is the most notable, if not the first, of solitary columns: now,
Pompey, or, as some prefer, Diocletian, and others Alexander Severus,
had that fine pillar ferried over from the quarries of Lycian Xanthus;
at least, this is a good idea, seeing that near that place still lie
three or four other columns of like gigantic dimensions, unfinished, and
believed to have been intended to support the triglyph of some new
temple. Pompey's idea was to fix the pillar up as a sea-mark, for either
entering the harbour of Alexandria, or to denote shallows, anchorage, or
the like; but apart from this actual utility, and apart also from its
acknowledged ornament as a sentinel on that flat strand, I take it to be
an architectural absurdity to erect a regular-made column with little or
nothing to support: an obelisk now, or a naval trophy, or a tower
decorated with shields, or a huge stele or cippus, or a globe, or a
pyramid, or a Waltham-cross sort of edifice, (of course all these
supporting nothing on their apices,) in fact, _any thing but_ a
Corinthian or Tuscan, or other regular pillar, seems to be permissable;
but for base, shaft, and capital to have nothing to do but lift a
telescopic man from earth's maternal surface, does look not a little
unreasonable; and therefore as much out of taste, as for the marble arch
at Buckingham Palace to spend its energies in supporting a flag-staff.
The magnificent column of Trajan is exempted from this hasty bit of
criticism, (as also of course is its modern counterpart, Napoleon's,)
because it is, both from decoration and proportions, out of the
recognised orders of architecture; it partakes rather of the character
of a triumphal tower, than of one among many pillars separated chiefly
from the rest; the man is a superlative accessory, a climax to his
positive exploits; he does not stand a-top, as if dropt from a balloon,
but like a gallant climber treading on his conquests: and, as to
Phocas's column at Rome, I shall only say, that it illustrates my
meaning, except in so far as an immense base to the super-imposed
statuere deems it from the jockey imputation of carrying too light a
weight. Now, with respect to the Nelson memorial, your meddlesome scribe
had an unexhibited notion of his own. Mehemet Ali is understood to have
given certain two obelisks respectively to the French and English
nations: the Parisians appropriated theirs, and have set it up,
thorn-like, in their midst, perhaps as an emblem of what African
conquest has been in the heartside of France; but we English, less
imaginative, and therefore less antiquarian, have permitted our _petit
cadeau_ to lie among its ruins of Luxor or Karnac, unclaimed and
unconsidered.
Nelson of the Nile might have had this consecrated to his honour: and
if, as is probable, it be of insufficient elevation, I should have
proposed a high flight of steps and a base, screened all round by
shallow Egyptian entrances, with an Etruscan sarcophagus just within the
principal one, (Egypt and Etruria were cousins germane,) and an
alto-relievo of Nelson dying, but victorious, recumbent on the lid: the
globe and wings, emblems alike of Nelson's rapidity, his universal fame,
and his now-emaciated spirit, might be sculptured over each entrance; a
sphinx, or a Prudhoe lion, being allusive to England as well as Egypt,
should sit guardiant at each corner of the steps; and the three
remaining doorways would be represented closed, and carved externally
with some allegorical personations of Nelson's career, of the Nile,
Copenhagen, and Trafalgar. This, then, had it been strictly in my
metier, (a happy metier mine of literary leisure,) should have been my
limned outline for the Nelson testimonial: the real interesting antique
needle, rising from the midst of its solid Egyptian architecture, and
pointing to the skies; not a steeple, however, but merely the obelisk
raised upon a heavy base, only hollowed far enough to admit of an
interior alto-relievo.
It is probable that the exhibition of designs, which an _alibi_
prevented me from seeing, included several obelisks; but the
peculiarities I should have insisted on, would have been first to make
good use of the real thing, the rarely carved old Egypt's porphyry; and,
next, to have had our hero's likeness within reasonable distance of the
eye.
But to return from this other desperate digression: Alfred, the great
and wise, deserves his Saxon cross; or let him lie enshrined in a grove
of florid Gothic pinnacles, a fretted roof on clustered columns
reverently keeping off the rain; or, best of all, let him stand majestic
in his own-time costume, colossal bronze on a cube of granite, and so
put to shame the elegancies of a Windsor uniform, and the absurdity of
sticking heroes, as at St. George's, Bloomsbury, and elsewhere, on the
summit of a steeple. So, friend, let all this tirade serve to introduce
a most unlikely and chaotic treatise on