Of artists, in the history of men of literary genius.--Their habits and
pursuits analogous.--The nature of their genius is similar in their
distinct works.--Shown by their parallel eras, and by a common end pursued
by both.
Artists and literary men, alike insulated in their studies, pass through
the same permanent discipline; and thus it has happened that the same
habits and feelings, and the same fortunes, have accompanied men who have
sometimes unhappily imagined their pursuits not to be analogous.
Let the artist share
The palm; he shares the peril, and dejected
Faints o'er the labour unapproved--alas!
Despair and genius!--
The congenial histories of literature and art describe the same periodical
revolutions and parallel eras. After the golden age of Latinity, we
gradually slide into the silver, and at length precipitately descend into
the iron. In the history of painting, after the splendid epoch of Raphael,
Titian, and Correggio, we meet with pleasure the Oarraccis, Domenichino,
Guido, and Albano; as we read Paterculus, Quintilian, Seneca, Juvenal, and
Silius Italicus, after their immortal masters, Cicero, Livy, Virgil, and
Horace.
It is evident that MILTON, MICHAEL ANGELO, and HANDEL, belong to the same
order of minds; the same imaginative powers, and the same sensibility, are
only operating with different materials. LANZI, the delightful historian
of the _Storia Pittorica_, is prodigal of his comparisons of the painters
with the poets; his delicacy of perception discerned the refined analogies
which for ever unite the two sisters, and he fondly dwelt on the
transplanted flowers of the two arts: "_Chi sente che sia Tibullo nel
poetare sente chi sia Andrea (del Sarto) nel dipingere_;" he who feels
what TIBULLUS is in poetry, feels what ANDREA is in painting. MICHAEL
ANGELO, from his profound conception of the terrible and the difficult in
art, was called its DANTE; from the Italian poet the Italian sculptor
derived the grandeur of his ideas; and indeed the visions of the bard had
deeply nourished the artist's imagination; for once he had poured about
the margins of his own copy their ethereal inventions, in the rapid
designs of his pen. And so Bellori informs us of a very curious volume in
manuscript, composed by RUBENS, which contained, among other topics
concerning art, descriptions of the passions and actions of men, drawn
from the poets, and demonstrated to the eye by the painters. Here were
battles, shipwrecks, sports, groups, and other incidents, which were
transcribed from Virgil and other poets, and by their side RUBENS had
copied what he had met with on those subjects from Raphael and the
antique.[A]
The poet and the painter are only truly great by the mutual influences of
their studies, and the jealousy of glory has only produced an idle
contest. This old family-quarrel for precedence was renewed by our
estimable President, in his brilliant "Rhymes on Art;" where he maintains
that "the narrative of an action is not comparable to the action itself
before the eyes;" while the enthusiast BARRY considers painting "as poetry
realised."[B] This error of genius, perhaps first caught from Richardson's
bewildering pages, was strengthened by the extravagant principle adopted
by Darwin, who, to exalt his solitary talent of descriptive poetry,
asserted that "the essence of poetry was picture." The philosophical
critic will find no difficulty in assigning to each, sister-art her
distinct province; and it is only a pleasing delirium, in the enthusiasm
of artists, which has confused the boundaries of these arts. The dread
pathetic story of Dante's "Ugolino," under the plastic hand of Michael
Angelo, formed the subject of a basso-relievo; and Reynolds, with his
highest effort, embodied the terrific conception of the poet as much as
his art permitted: but assuredly both these great artists would never have
claimed the precedence of the Dantesc genius, and might have hesitated at
the rivalry.
[Footnote A: Rubens was an ardent collector of works of antique art; and
in the "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 398, will be found an
interesting account of his museum at Antwerp.--ED.]
[Footnote B: The late Sir Martin Archer Shee, P.R.A. This accomplished
artist, who possessed a large amount of poetical and literary power, asks,
"What is there of _intellectual_ in the operations of the poet which the
painter does not equal? What is there of _mechanical_ which he does not
surpass? The advantage which poetry possesses over painting in continued
narration and successive impression, cannot be advanced as a peculiar
merit of the poet, since it results from the nature of language, and is
common to prose." Poetry he values as the earliest of arts, painting as
the latest and most refined.--ED.]
Who has not heard of that one common principle which unites the
intellectual arts, and who has not felt that the nature of their genius is
similar in their distinct works? Hence curious inquiries could never
decide whether the group of the Laocoön in sculpture preceded or was
borrowed from that in poetry. Lessing conjectures that the sculptor copied
the poet. It is evident that the agony of Laocoön was the common end where
the sculptor and the poet were to meet; and we may observe that the
artists in marble and in verse skilfully adapted their variations to their
respective art: the one having to prefer the _nude_, rejected the veiling
fillet from the forehead, that he might not conceal its deep expression,
and the drapery of the sacrificial robe, that he might display the human
form in visible agony; but the other, by the charm of verse, could invest
the priest with the pomp of the pontifical robe without hiding from us the
interior sufferings of the human victim. We see they obtained by different
means, adapted to their respective arts, that common end which each
designed; but who will decide which invention preceded the other, or who
was the greater artist?
This approximation of men apparently of opposite pursuits is so natural,
that when Gesner, in his inspiring letter on landscape-painting,[A]
recommends to the young painter a constant study of poetry and literature,
the impatient artist is made to exclaim, "Must we combine with so many
other studies those which belong to literary men? Must we read as well as
paint?" "It is useless to reply to this question; for some important
truths must be instinctively felt, perhaps the fundamental ones in the
arts." A truly imaginative artist, whose enthusiasm was never absent when
he meditated on the art he loved, BARRY, thus vehemently broke forth: "Go
home from the academy, light up your lamps, and exercise yourselves in the
creative part of your art, with Homer, with Livy, and all the great
characters, ancient and modern, for your companions and counsellors." This
genial intercourse of literature with art may be proved by painters who
have suggested subjects to poets, and poets who have selected them for
painters. GOLDSMITH suggested the subject of the tragic and pathetic
picture of Ugolino to the pencil of REYNOLDS.
All the classes of men in society have their peculiar sorrows and
enjoyments, as they have their peculiar habits and characteristics. In
the history of men of genius we may often open the secret story of their
minds, for they have above others the privilege of communicating their
own feelings; and every life of a man of genius, composed by himself,
presents us with the experimental philosophy of the mind. By living with
their brothers, and contemplating their masters, they will judge from
consciousness less erroneously than from discussion; and in forming
comparative views and parallel situations, they will discover certain
habits and feelings, and find these reflected in themselves.
SYDENHAM has beautifully said, "Whoever describes a violet exactly as to
its colour, taste, smell, form, and other properties, will find the
description agree in most particulars with all the violets in the
universe."
[Footnote A: Few writers were so competent to instruct in art as Gesner,
who was not only an author and a poet, but an artist who decorated his
poems by designs as graceful as their subject.--ED.]