103.

Coleridge says,--"Every human feeling is greater and larger than the

exciting cause." (A philosophical way of putting Rochefoucauld's neatly

expressed apophthegm: "Nous ne sommes jamais ni si heureux ni si

malheureux que nous l'imaginons.") "A proof," he proceeds, "that man is

designed for a higher state of existence; and this is deeply implied in

music, in which there is always something more and beyond the immediate

expression."

But not music only, every production of art ought to excite emotions

greater and thoughts larger than itself. Thoughts and emotions which

never perhaps were in the mind of the artist, never were anticipated,

never were intended by him--may be strongly suggested by his work. This

is an important part of the morals of art, which we must never lose

sight of. Art is not only for pleasure and profit, but for good and for

evil.

Goethe (in the _Dichtung und Wahrheit_) describes the reception of Marie

Antoinette at Strasbourg, where she passed the frontier to enter her new

kingdom. She was then a lovely girl of sixteen. He relates that on

visiting before her arrival the reception room on the bridge over the

Rhine, where her German attendants were to deliver her into the hands of

the French authorities, he found the walls hung with tapestries

representing the ominous story of Jason and Medea--of all the marriages

on record the most fearful, the most tragic in its consequences. "What!"

he exclaims, his poetical imagination struck with the want of moral

harmony, "was there among these French architects and decorators no man

who could perceive that pictures represent things,--that they have a

meaning in themselves,--that they can impress sense and feeling,--that

they can awaken presentiments of good or evil?" But, as he tells us, his

exclamations of horror were met by the mockery of his French companions,

who assured him that it was not everybody's concern to look for

significance in pictures.

These self-same tapestries of the story of Jason and Medea were after

the Restoration presented by Louis XVIII. to George IV., and at present

they line the walls of the Ball-room in Windsor Castle. We might repeat,

with some reason, the question of Goethe; for if pictures have a

significance, and speak to the imagination, what has the tragedy of

Jason and Medea to do in a ball-room?

Goethe, who thus laid down the principle that works of art speak to the

feelings and the conscience, and can awaken associations tending to good

and evil, by some strange inconsistency places art and artists out of

the sphere of morals. He speaks somewhere with contempt and ridicule of

those who take their conscience and their morality with them to an opera

or a picture gallery. Yet surely he is wrong. Why should we not? Are our

conscience and our morals like articles of dress which we can take off

and put on again as we fancy it convenient or expedient?--shut up in a

drawer and leave behind us when we visit a theatre or a gallery of art?

or are they not rather a part of ourselves--our very life--to graduate the

worth, to fix the standard of all that mingles with our life? The idea

that what we call _taste_ in art has something quite distinctive from

conscience, is one cause that the popular notions concerning the

productions of art are abandoned to such confusion and uncertainty; that

simple people regard _taste_ as something forensic, something to be

learned, as they would learn a language, and mastered by a study of

rules and a dictionary of epithets; and they look up to a professor of

taste, just as they would look up to a professor of Greek or of Hebrew.

Either they listen to judgments lightly and confidently promulgated with

a sort of puzzled faith and a surrender of their own moral sense, which

are pitiable; as if art also had its infallible church and its hierarchy

of dictators!--or they fly into the opposite extreme, and seeing

themselves deceived and misled, fall away into strange heresies. All

from ignorance of a few laws simple in their form, yet infinite in their

application;--_natural_ laws we must call them, though here applied to

art.

In my younger days I have known men conspicuous for their want of

elevated principle, and for their dissipated habits, held up as arbiters

and judges of art; but it was to them only another form of epicurism and

self-indulgence; and I have seen them led into such absurd and fatal

mistakes for want of the power to distinguish and to generalise, that I

have despised their judgment, and have come to the conclusion that a

really high standard of taste and a low standard of morals are

incompatible with each other.

[Illustration]

104.

"The fact of the highest artistic genius having manifested itself in a

polytheistic age, and among a people whose moral views were essentially

degraded, has, we think, fostered the erroneous notion that the sphere

of art has no connection with that of morality. The Greeks, with

penetrative insight, dilated the essential characteristics of man's

organism as a vehicle of superior intelligence, while their intense

sympathy with physical beauty made them alive to its most subtle

manifestations; and reproducing their impressions through the medium of

art, they have given birth to models of the human form, which reveal its

highest possibilities, and the excellence of which depends upon their

being individual expressions of ideal truth. Thus, too, in their

descriptions of nature, instead of multiplying insignificant details,

they seized instinctively upon the characteristic features of her

varying aspects, and not unfrequently embodied a finished picture in one

comprehensive and harmonious word. In association with their marvellous

genius, however, we find a cruelty, a treachery, and a licence which

would be revolting if it were not for the historical interest which

attaches to every genuine record of a bygone age. Their low moral

standard cannot excite surprise when we consider the debasing tendency

of their worship, the objects of their adoration being nothing more than

their own degraded passions invested with some of the attributes of

deity. Now, among the modifications of thought introduced by

Christianity, there is perhaps none more pregnant with important results

than the harmony which it has established between religion and

morality. The great law of right and wrong has acquired a sacred

character, when viewed as an expression of the divine will; it takes its

rank among the eternal verities, and to ignore it in our delineations of

life, or to represent sin otherwise than as treason against the supreme

ruler, is to retain in modern civilisation one of the degrading elements

of heathenism. Conscience is as great a fact of our inner life as the

sense of beauty, and the harmonious action of both these instinctive

principles is essential to the highest enjoyment of art, for any

internal dissonance disturbs the repose of the mind, and thereby

shatters the image mirrored in its depths."--_A. S._

[Illustration]

105.

"Mais vous autres artistes, vous ne considerez pour la plupart dans les

oeuvres que la beauté ou la singularité de l'exécution, sans vous

pénétrer de l'idée dont cet oeuvre est la forme; ainsi votre intelligence

adore souvent l'expression d'un sentiment que votre coeur repousserait

s'il en avait la conscience."--_George Sand._

[Illustration]

106.

Lavater told Goethe that on a certain occasion when he held the velvet

bag in the church as collector of the offerings, he tried to observe

only the hands; and he satisfied himself that in every individual, the

shape of the hand and of the fingers, the action and sentiment in

dropping the gift into the bag, were distinctly different and

individually characteristic.

What then shall we say of Van Dyck, who painted the hands of his men and

women, not from individual nature, but from a model hand--his own very

often?--and every one who considers for a moment will see in Van Dyck's

portraits, that, however well painted and elegant the hands, they in

very few instances harmonise with the _personalité_;--that the position

is often affected, and as if intended for display,--the display of what

is in itself a positive fault, and from which some little knowledge of

comparative physiology would have saved him.

There are hands of various character; the hand to catch, and the hand to

hold; the hand to clasp, and the hand to grasp. The hand that has

worked or could work, and the hand that has never done anything but hold

itself out to be kissed, like that of Joanna of Arragon in Raphael's

picture.

Let any one look at the hands in Titian's portrait of old Paul IV.:

though exquisitely modelled, they have an expression which reminds us of

claws; they belong to the face of that grasping old man, and could

belong to no other.

[Illustration]

107.

Mozart and Chopin, though their genius was differently developed, were

alike in some things: in nothing more than this, that the artistic

element in both minds wholly dominated over the social and practical,

and that their art was the element in which they moved and lived,

through which they felt and thought. I doubt whether either of them

could have said, "_D'abord je suis homme et puis je suis artiste_;"

whereas this could have been said with truth by Mendelsohn and by

Litzst. In Mendelsohn the enormous creative power was modified by the

intellect and the conscience. Litzst has no creative power.

Litzst has thus drawn the character of Chopin:--"Rien n'était plus pur et

plus exalté en même temps que ses pensées; rien n'était plus tenace,

plus exclusif, et plus minutieusement dévoué que ses affections. Mais

cet être ne comprenait que ce qui était identique à lui-même:--le reste

n'existait pour lui que comme une sorte de rêve fâcheux, auquel il

essayait de se soustraire en vivant au milieu du monde. Toujours perdu

dans ses rêveries, la réalité lui deplaisait. Enfant il ne pouvait

toucher à un instrument tranchant sans se blesser; homme il ne pouvait

se trouver en face d'un homme différent de lui, sans se heurter contre

cette contradiction vivante."

"Ce qui le préservait d'un antagonisme perpétuel c'était l'habitude

volontaire et bientôt invétérée de ne point voir, de ne pas entendre ce

qui lui deplaisait: en général sans toucher à ses affections

personelles, les êtres qui ne pensaient pas comme lui devenaient à ses

yeux comme des espèces de fantômes; et comme il était d'une politesse

charmante, on pouvait prendre pour une bienveillance courtoise ce qui

n'était chez lui qu'un froid dédain--une aversion insurmontable."

108.

The father of Mozart was a man of high and strict religious principle.

He had a conviction--in his case more truly founded than is usual--that

he was the father of a great, a surpassing genius, and consequently of a

being unfortunate in this, that he must be in advance of his age,

exposed to error, to envy, to injustice, to strife; and to do his duty

to his son demanded large faith and large firmness. But because he _did_

estimate this sacred trust as a duty to be discharged, not only with

respect to his gifted son, but to the God who had so endowed him; so, in

spite of many mistakes, the earnest straightforward endeavour to do

right in the parent seems to have saved Mozart's moral life, and to have

given that completeness to the productions of his genius, which the

harmony of the moral and creative faculties alone can bestow.

"The modifying power of circumstances on Mozart's style, is an

interesting consideration. Whatever of striking, of new or beautiful he

met with in the works of others left its impression on him; and he often

reproduced these efforts, not servilely, but mingling his own nature and

feelings with them in a manner not less surprising than delightful."

This is true equally of Shakespeare and of Raphael, both of whom adapted

or rather adopted much from their precursors in the way of material to

work upon; and whose incomparable originality consisted in the

interfusion of their own great individual genius with every subject

they touched, so that it became theirs, and could belong to no other.

The Figaro was composed at Vienna. The Don Juan and Clemenza di Tito at

Prague;--which I note because the localities are so characteristic of the

operas. Cimarosa's Matrimonio Segreto was composed at Prague; it was on

the fortification of the Hradschin one morning at sun-rise that he

composed the _Pria che spunti in ciel l'aurora_.

When called upon to describe his method of composing, what Mozart said

of himself was very striking from its _naïveté_ and truth. "I do not,"

he said, "aim at originality. I do not know in what my originality

consists. Why my productions take from my hand that particular form or

style which makes them _Mozartish_, and different from the works of

other composers is probably owing to the same cause which makes my nose

this or that particular shape; makes it, in short, Mozart's nose, and

different from other people's."

Yet, as a composer, Mozart was as _objective_, as dramatic, as

Shakspeare and Raphael; Chopin, in comparison, was wholly

_subjective_,--the Byron of Music.

[Illustration]

109.

Talking once with Adelaide Kemble, after she had been singing in the

"Figaro," she compared the music to the bosom of a full blown rose in

its voluptuous, intoxicating richness. I said that some of Mozart's

melodies seemed to me not so much composed, but found--found on some

sunshiny day in Arcadia, among nymphs and flowers. "Yes," she replied,

with ready and felicitous expression, "not _inventions_, but

_existences_."

[Illustration]

110.

Old George the Third, in his blindness and madness, once insisted on

making the selection of pieces for the concert of ancient music (May,

1811),--it was soon after the death of the Princess Amelia. "The

programme included some of the finest passages in Handel's 'Samson,'

descriptive of blindness; the 'Lamentation of Jephthah,' for his

daughter; Purcel's 'Mad Tom,' and closed with 'God save the King,' to

make sure the application of all that went before."

[Illustration]

111.

Every one who remembers what Madlle. Rachel was seven or eight years

ago, and who sees her now (1853), will allow that she has made no

progress in any of the essential excellences of her art:--a certain proof

that she is not a great artist in the true sense of the word. She is a

finished actress, but she is nothing more, and nothing better; not

enough the artist ever to forget or conceal her art; consequently there

is a want somewhere, which a mind highly toned and of quick perceptions

feels from beginning to end. The parts in which she once excelled--the

Phêdre and the Hermione, for instance--have become formalised and hard,

like studies cast in bronze; and when she plays a new part it has no

freshness. I always go to see her whenever I can. I admire her as what

she is--the Parisian actress, practised in every trick of her _métier_. I

admire what she does, I think how well it is all _done_, and am inclined

to clap and applaud her drapery, perfect and ostentatiously studied in

every fold, just with the same feeling that I applaud herself.

As to the last scene of Adrienne Lecouvreur, (which those who are

_avides de sensation_, athirst for painful emotion, go to see as they

would drink a dram, and critics laud as a miracle of art,) it is

altogether a mistake and a failure; it is beyond the just limits of

terror and pity--beyond the legitimate sphere of _art_. It reminds us of

the story of Gentil Bellini and the Sultan. The Sultan much admired

Bellini's picture of the decollation of John the Baptist, but informed

him that it was inaccurate--surgically--for the tendons and muscles ought

to shrink where divided; and then calling for one of his slaves, he drew

his scimitar, and striking off the head of the wretch, gave the

horror-struck artist a lesson in practical anatomy. So we might possibly

learn from Rachel's imitative representation, (studied in an hospital as

they say,) how poison acts on the frame, and how the limbs and features

writhe into death; but if she were a great moral artist she would feel

that what is allowed to be true in painting, is true in art generally;

that mere imitation, such as the vulgar delight in, and hold up their

hands to see, is the vulgarest and easiest aim of the imitative arts,

and that between the true interpretation of poetry in art and such base

mechanical means to the lowest ends, there lies an immeasurable

distance.

I am disposed to think that Rachel has not genius, but talent, and that

her talent, from what I see year after year, has a downward

tendency,--there is not sufficient moral seasoning to save it from

corruption. I remember that when I first saw her in Hermione she

reminded me of a serpent, and the same impression continues. The long

meagre form with its graceful undulating movements, the long narrow face

and features, the contracted jaw, the high brow, the brilliant

supernatural eyes which seem to glance every way at once; the sinister

smile; the painted red lips, which look as though they had lapped, or

could lap, blood; all these bring before me the idea of a Lamia, the

serpent nature in the woman's form. In Lydia, and in Athalie, she

touches the extremes of vice and wickedness with such a masterly

lightness and precision, that I am full of wondering admiration for the

actress. There is not a turn of her figure, not an expression in her

face, not a fold in her gorgeous drapery, that is not a study; but

withal such a consciousness of her art, and such an ostentation of the

means she employs, that the power remains always _extraneous_, as it

were, and exciting only to the senses and the intellect.

Latterly she has become a hard mannerist. Her face, once so flexible,

has lost the power of expressing the nicer shades and softer gradations

of feeling; so much so, that they write dramas for her with

supernaturally wicked and depraved heroines to suit her especial powers.

I conceive that an artist could not sink lower in degradation. Yet to

satisfy the taste of a Parisian audience and the ambition of a Parisian

actress this was not enough, and wickedness required the piquancy of

immediate approximation with innocence. In the Valeria she played two

characters, and appeared on the stage alternately as a miracle of vice

and a miracle of virtue: an abandoned prostitute and a chaste matron.

There was something in this contrasted impersonation, considered simply

in relation to the aims and objects of art, so revolting, that I sat in

silent and deep disgust, which was partly deserved by the audience which

could endure the exhibition.

It is the entire absence of the high poetic and moral element which

distinguishes Rachel as an actress, and places her at such an

immeasurable distance from Mrs. Siddons, that it shocks me to hear them

named together.

112.

It is no reproach to a capital actress to play effectively a very wicked

character. Mrs. Siddons played the abandoned Milwood as carefully, as

completely as she played Hermoine and Constance; but if it had required

a perpetual succession of Calistas and Milwoods to call forth her

highest powers, what should we think of the woman and the artist?

113.

When dramas and characters are invented to suit the particular talent of

a particular actor or actress, it argues rather a limited range of the

artistic power; though within that limit the power may be great and the

talent genuine.

Thus for Liston and for Miss O'Neil, so distinguished in their

respective lines of Comedy and Tragedy, characters were especially

constructed and plays written, which have not been acted since their

time.

114.

A celebrated German actress (who has quitted the stage for many years)

speaking of Rachel, said that the reason she must always stop short of

the highest place in art, is because she is nothing but an actress--that

only; and has no aims in life, has no duties, feelings, employments,

sympathies, but those which centre in herself in the interests of her

art;--which thus ceases to be _art_ and becomes a _métier_.

This reminded me of what Pauline Viardot once said to me:--"D'abord je

suis _femme_, avec les dévoirs, les affections, les sentiments d'une

femme; et puis je suis _artiste_."

115.

The same German actress whose opinion I have quoted, told me that the

Leonora and the Iphigenia of Goethe were the parts she preferred to

play. The Thekla and the Beatrice of Schiller next. (In all these she

excelled.) The parts easiest to her, requiring no effort scarcely, were

Jerta (in Houwald's Tragedy, "Die Schuld"), and Clärchen in Egmont; of

the character of Jerta, she said beautifully:--"Ich habe es nicht

gespielt, Ich habe es gesagt!" (I did not _play_ it, I _uttered_ it.)

This was extremely characteristic of the woman.

I once asked Mrs. Siddons, which of her great characters she preferred

to play? She replied, after a moment's consideration, and in her rich

deliberate emphatic tones:--"Lady Macbeth is the character I have most

_studied_." She afterwards said that she had played the character during

thirty years, and scarcely acted it once, without carefully reading

over the part and generally the whole play in the morning; and that she

never read over the play without finding something new in it;

"something," she said, "which had not struck me so much as it _ought_ to

have struck me."

Of Mrs. Pritchard, who preceded Mrs. Siddons in the part of Lady

Macbeth, it was well known that she had never read the play. She merely

studied her own part as written out by the stage-copyist; of the other

parts she knew nothing but the _cues_.

116.

When I asked Mrs. Henry Siddons, which of her characters she preferred

playing? she said at once "Imogen, in Cymbeline, was the character I

played with most ease to myself, and most success as regarded the

public; it cost no effort."

This was confirmed by others. A very good judge said of her--"In some of

her best parts, as Juliet, Rosalind, and Lady Townley, she may have been

approached or equalled. In Viola and Imogen she was never equalled. In

the grace and simplicity of the first, in the refinement and shy but

impassioned tenderness of the last, _I_ at least have never seen any one

to be compared to her. She hardly seemed to _act_ these parts; they came

naturally to her."

This reminds me of another anecdote of the same accomplished actress and

admirable woman. The people of Edinburgh, among whom she lived, had so

identified her with all that was gentle, refined and noble, that they

did not like to see her play wicked parts. It happened that Godwin went

down to Edinburgh with a tragedy in his pocket, which had been accepted

by the theatre there, and in which Mrs. Henry Siddons was to play the

principal part--that of a very wicked woman (I forget the name of the

piece). He was warned that it risked the success of his play, but her

conception of the part was so just and spirited, that he persisted. At

the rehearsal she stopped in the midst of one of her speeches and said,

with great _naïveté_, "I am afraid, Mr. Godwin, the people will not

endure to hear me say this!" He replied coolly, "My dear, you cannot be

always young and pretty--you must come to this at last,--go on." He

mistook her meaning and the feeling of "the people." The play failed;

and the audience took care to discriminate between their disapprobation

of the piece and their admiration for the actress.

117.

Madame Schroeder Devrient told me that she sung with most pleasure to

herself in the "Fidelio;" and in this part I have never seen her

equalled.

Fanny Kemble told me the part she had played with most pleasure to

herself, was Camiola, in Massinger's "Maid of Honour." It was an

exquisite impersonation, but the play itself ineffective and not

successful, because of the weak and worthless character of the hero.

118.

Mrs. Charles Kean told me that she had played with great ease and

pleasure to herself, the part of Ginevra, in Leigh Hunt's "Legend of

Florence." She _made_ the part (as it is technically termed), and it was

a very complete and beautiful impersonation.

These answers appear to me psychologically, as well as artistically,

interesting, and worth preserving.

[Illustration]

119.

Mrs. Siddons, when looking over the statues in Lord Lansdowne's gallery,

told him that one mode of expressing intensity of feeling was suggested

to her by the position of some of the Egyptian statues with the arms

close down at the sides and the hands clenched. This is curious, for the

attitude in the Egyptian gods is intended to express repose. As the

expression of intense passion self-controlled, it might be appropriate

to some characters and not to others. Rachel, as I recollect, uses it in

the Phêdre:--Madame Rettich uses it in the Medea. It would not be

characteristic in Constance.

[Illustration]

120.

On a certain occasion when Fanny Kemble was reading Cymbeline, a lady

next to me remarked that Imogen ought not to utter the words "Senseless

linen!--happier therein than I!" aloud, and to Pisanio,--that it detracted

from the strength of the feeling, and that they should have been uttered

aside, and in a low, intense whisper. "Iachimo," she added, "might

easily have won a woman who could have laid her heart so bare to a mere

attendant!"

On my repeating this criticism to Fanny Kemble, she replied just as I

had anticipated: "Such criticism is the mere expression of the natural

emotions or character of the critic. _She_ would have spoken the words

in a whisper; _I_ should have made the exclamation aloud. If there had

been a thousand people by, I should not have cared for them--I should not

have been conscious of their presence. I should have exclaimed before

them all, 'Senseless linen!--happier therein than I!'"

And thus the artist fell into the same mistake of which she accused her

critic--she made Imogen utter the words aloud, because _she_ would have

done so herself. This sort of subjective criticism in both was quite

feminine; but the question was not how either A. B. or F. K. would have

spoken the words, but what would have been most natural in such a woman

as Imogen?

And most undoubtedly the first criticism was as exquisitely true and

just as it was delicate. Such a woman as Imogen would _not_ have uttered

those words aloud. She would have uttered them in a whisper, and turning

her face from her attendant. With such a woman, the more intense the

passion, the more conscious and the more veiled the expression.

[Illustration]

121.

I read in the life of Garrick that, "about 1741, a taste for Shakespeare

had lately been revived by the encouragement of some distinguished

persons of taste of both sexes; but more especially by the ladies who

formed themselves into a society, called the 'Shakespeare Club.'" There

exists a Shakespeare Society at this present time, but I do not know

that any ladies are members of it, or allowed to be so.

[Illustration]

122.

The "Maria Maddalena" of Friedrich Hebbel is a domestic tragedy. It

represents the position of a young girl in the lower class of society-a

character of quiet goodness and feeling, in a position the most usual,

circumstances the most common-place. The representation is from the

life, and set forth with a truth which in its naked simplicity, almost

hardness, becomes most tragic and terrible. Around this girl, portrayed

with consummate delicacy, is a group of men. First her father, an honest

artisan, coarse, harsh, despotic. Then a light-minded, good-natured,

dissipated brother, and two suitors. All these love her according to

their masculine individuality. To the men of her own family she is as a

part of the furniture--something they are accustomed to see--necessary to

the daily well-being of the house, without whom the fire would not be on

the hearth, nor the soup on the table; and they are proud of her charms

and good qualities as belonging to them. By her lovers she is loved as

an object they desire to possess--and dispute with each other. But no one

of all these thinks of _her_--of what she thinks, feels, desires,

suffers, is, or may be. Nor does she seem to think of it herself, until

the storm falls upon her, enwraps her, overwhelms her. Then she stands

in the midst of the beings around her, and who are one and all in a kind

of external relation to her, completely alone. In her grief, in her

misery, in her amazement, her perplexity, her terror, there is no one to

take thought for her, no one to help, no one to sympathise. Each is

self-occupied, self-satisfied. And so she sinks down and perishes, and

they stand wondering at what they had not the sense to see, wringing

their hands over the irremediable. It is the Lucy Ashton of vulgar life.

The manners and characters of this play are essentially German; but the

_stuff_--the material of the piece--the relative position of the

personages, might be true of any place in this christian, civilised

Europe. The whole is wonderfully, painfully natural, and strikes home to

the heart, like Hood's "Bridge of Sighs." It was a surprise to me that

such a piece should have been acted, and with applause, at the Court

Theatre at Vienna; but I believe it has not been given since 1849.

[Illustration]

123.

Here is a very good analysis of the artistic nature: "Il ressent une

véritable émotion, mais il s'arrange pour la montrer. Il fait un peu ce

que faisait cet acteur de l'antiquité qui, venant de perdre son fils

unique et jouant quelque temps après le rôle d'Electre embrassant l'urne

d'Oreste, prit entre ses mains l'urne qui contenait les cendres de son

enfant, et joua sa propre douleur, dit Aulus Gellius, au lieu de jouer

celle de son rôle. Ce melange de l'émotion naturelle et de l'émotion

théatrale est plus fréquent qu'on ne croit, surtout à certaines époques

quand le raffinement de l'Education fait que l'homme ne sent pas

seulement ses émotions, mais qu'il sent aussi l'effet qu'elles peuvent

produire. Beaucoup de gens alors, sont naturellement comédiens; c'est à

dire qu'ils donnent un rôle à leurs passions: ils sentent en dehors au

lieu de sentir en dedans; leurs émotions sont _en relief_ au lieu d'être

_en profondeur_."--_St. Marc Girardin._

I think Margaret Fuller must have had the above passage in her mind when

she worked out this happy illustration into a more finished form. She

says:--"The difference between the artistic nature and the unartistic

nature in the hour of emotion, is this: in the first the feeling is a

cameo, in the last an intaglio. Raised in relief and shaped _out_ of the

heart in the first; cut _into_ the heart, and hardly perceptible till

you take the impression, in the last."

And to complete this fanciful and beautiful analogy, we might add, that

because the artistic nature is demonstrative, it is sometimes thought

insincere; and insincere it _is_ where the form is hollow in proportion

as it is cast outward, as in the casts and electrotype copies of the

solid sculpture. And because the unartistic nature is undemonstrative,

it is sometimes thought cold, unreal; for of this also there are

imitations; and in passing the touch over certain intaglios, we feel by

contact that they are not so deep as we supposed.

God defend us from both! from the hollowness that imitates solidity,

and the shallowness that imitates depth!

[Illustration]

124.

Goethe said of some woman, "She knew something of devotion and love, but

of the pure admiration for a glorious piece of man's handiwork--of a mere

sympathetic veneration for the creation of the human intellect--she could

form no idea."

This may have been true of the individual woman referred to; but that

female critics look for something in a production of art beyond the mere

handiwork, and that "our sympathetic veneration for a creation of human

intellect," is often dependent on our moral associations, is not a

reproach to us. Nor, if I may presume to say so, does it lessen the

value of our criticism, where it can be referred to principles. Women

have a sort of unconscious logic in these matters.

[Illustration]

125.

"When fiction," says Sir James Mackintosh, "represents a degree of ideal

excellence superior to any virtue which is observed in real life, the

effect is perfectly analogous to that of a model of ideal beauty in the

fine arts."

That is to say--As the Apollo exalts our idea of possible beauty, in

form, so the moral ideal of man or woman exalts our idea of possible

virtue, provided it be _consistent_ as a whole. If we gave the Apollo a

god-like head and face and left a part of his frame below perfection,

the elevating effect of the whole would be immediately destroyed, though

the figure might be more according to the standard of actual nature.

[Illustration]

126.

"In Dante, as in Shakespeare, every man selects by instinct that which

assimilates with the course of his own previous occupations and

interests." (_Merivale._) True, not of Dante and Shakespeare only, but

of all books worth reading; and not merely of books and authors, but of

all productions of mind in whatever form which speak to mind; all works

of art, from which we _imbibe_, as it were, what is sympathetic with our

individuality. The more universal the sympathies of the writer or the

artist, the more of such individualities will be included in his domain

of power.

[Illustration]

127.

The distinction so cleverly and beautifully drawn by the Germans (by

Lessing first I believe) between "Bildende" and "Redende Kunst" is not

to be rendered into English without a lengthy paraphrase. It places in

immediate contradistinction the art which is evolved in _words_, and the

art which is evolved in _forms_.

[Illustration]

128.

Venus, or rather the Greek Aphrodite, in the sublime fragment of

Eschylus (the Danaïdes) is a grand, severe, and pure conception; the

principle eternal of beauty, of love, and of fecundity--or the law of the

continuation of being through beauty and through love. Such a

conception is no more like the Ovidean Roman Venus than the Venus of

Milo is like the Venus de Medicis.

[Illustration]

129.

In the Greek tragedy, love figures as one of the laws of nature--not as a

power, or a passion; these are the aspects given to it by the Christian

imagination.

Yet this higher idea of love _did_ exist among the ancients--only we must

not seek it in their poetry, but in their philosophy. Thus we find it in

Plato, set forth as a beautiful philosophical theory; not as a passion,

to influence life, nor as a poetic feeling, to adorn and exalt it. Nor

do we moderns owe this idea of a mystic, elevated, and elevating love to

the Greek philosophy. I rather agree with those who trace it to the

mingling of Christianity with the manners of the old Germans, and their

(almost) superstitious reverence for womanhood. In the Middle Ages,

where morals were most depraved, and women most helpless and oppressed,

there still survived the theory formed out of the combination of the

Christian spirit, and the Germanic customs; and when in the 15th

century Plato became the fashion, then the theory became a science, and

what had been religion became again philosophy. This sort of speculative

love became to real love what theology became to religion; it was a

thesis to be talked about and argued in universities, sung in sonnets,

set forth in art; and so being kept as far as possible from all bearings

on our moral life, it ceased to find consideration either as a primæval

law of God, or as a moral motive influencing the duties and habits of

our existence; and thus we find the social code in regard to it

diverging into all the vagaries of celibacy on one hand, and all the

vilenesses of profligacy on the other.

[Illustration]

130.

Wilkie's "Life and Letters" have not helped me much. His opinions and

criticisms on his own art are sensible, not suggestive. I find, however,

one or two passages strongly illustrative of the value of _truth_ as a

principle in art, and the sort of _vitality_ it gives to scenery and

objects.

He writes, when travelling in Holland, to his friend, Sir George

Beaumont;--

"One of the first circumstances that struck me wherever I went was what

you had prepared me for; the resemblance that everything bore to the

Dutch and Flemish pictures. On leaving Ostend, not only the people,

houses, trees, but whole tracks of country reminded me of Teniers, and

on getting further into the country this was only relieved by the

pictures of Rubens and Wouvermans, or some other masters taking his

place.

"I thought I could trace the particular districts in Holland where

Ostade, Cuyp, and Rembrandt had studied, and could almost fancy the spot

where the pictures of other masters had been painted. Indeed nothing

seemed new to me in the whole country; and what one could not help

wondering at, was, that these old masters should have been able to draw

the materials of so beautiful a variety of art, from so contracted and

monotonous a theme."

Their variety arose out of their truthfulness. I had the same feeling

when travelling in Holland and Belgium. It was to me a perpetual

succession of reminiscences, and so it has been with others. Rubens and

Rembrandt (as landscape painters)--Cuyp, Hobbima, were continually in my

mind; occasionally the yet more poetical Ruysdaal; but who ever thinks

of Wouvermans, or Bergham, or Karel du Jardin, as national or natural

painters? their scenery is all _got up_ like the scenery in a ballet,

and I can conceive nothing more tiresome than a room full of their

pictures, elegant as they are.

131.

Again, writing from Jerusalem, Wilkie says, "Nothing here requires

revolution in our opinions of the finest works of art: with all their

discrepancies of detail, they are yet constantly recalled by what is

here before us. The background of the Heliodorus of Raphael is a Syrian

building; the figures in the Lazarus of Sebastian del Piombo are a

Syrian people; and the indescribable tone of Rembrandt is brought to

mind at every turn, whether in the street, the Synagogue, or the

Sepulchre." And again: "The painter we are always referring to, as one

who has most truly given the eastern people, is Rembrandt."

He partly contradicts this afterwards, but says, that Venetian art

reminds him of Syria. Now, the Venetians were in constant communication

with the East; all their art has a tinge of orientalism. As to

Rembrandt, he must have been in familiar intercourse with the Jew

merchants and Jewish families settled in the Dutch commercial towns; he

painted them frequently as portraits, and they perpetually appear in his

compositions.

132.

In the following passage Wilkie seems unconsciously to have anticipated

the invention (or rather the _discovery_) of the Daguerreotype, and some

of its results. He says:--"If by an operation of mechanism, animated

nature could be copied with the accuracy of a cast in plaster, a tracing

on a wall, or a reflection in a glass, without modification, and without

the proprieties and graces of art, all that utility could desire would

be perfectly attained, but it would be at the expense of almost every

quality which renders art delightful."

One reason why the Daguerreotype portraits are in general so

unsatisfactory may perhaps be traced to a natural law, though I have not

heard it suggested. It is this: every object that we behold we see not

with the eye only, but with the soul; and this is especially true of the

human countenance, which in so far as it is the expression of mind we

see through the medium of our own individual mind. Thus a portrait is

satisfactory in so far as the painter has sympathy with his subject, and

delightful to us in proportion as the resemblance reflected through

_his_ sympathies is in accordance with _our own_. Now in the

Daguerreotype there is no such medium, and the face comes before us

without passing through the human mind and brain to our apprehension.

This may be the reason why a Daguerreotype, however beautiful and

accurate, is seldom satisfactory or agreeable, and that while we

acknowledge its truth as to fact, it always leaves something for the

sympathies to desire.

133.

He says, "One thing alone seems common in all the stages of early art;

the desire of making all other excellences tributary to the expression

of thought and sentiment."

The early painters had _no other_ excellences except those of thought

and expression; therefore could not sacrifice what they did not possess.

They drew incorrectly, coloured ineffectively, and were ignorant of

perspective.

[Illustration]

134.

When at Dusseldorf, I found the President of the Academy, Wilhelm

Schadow, employed on a church picture in three compartments; Paradise

in the centre; on the right side, Purgatory; on the left side, Hell. He

explained to me that he had not attempted to paint the interior of

Paradise as the sojourn of the blessed, because he could imagine no kind

of occupation or delight which, prolonged to eternity, would not be

wearisome. He had therefore represented the exterior of Paradise, where

Christ, standing on the threshold with outstretched arms, receives and

welcomes those who enter. (This was better and in finer taste than the

more common allegory of St. Peter and his keys.) On one side of the

door, the Virgin Mary and a group of guardian angels encourage those who

approach. Among these we distinguish a martyr who has died for the

truth, and a warrior who has fought for it. A care-worn, penitent mother

is presented by her innocent daughter. Those who were "in the world and

the world knew them not," are here acknowledged--and eyes dim with

weeping, and heads bowed with shame, are here uplifted, and bright with

the rapturous gleam which shone through the portals of Paradise.

The idea of Purgatory, he told me, was suggested by a vision or dream

related by St. Catherine of Genoa, in which she beheld a great number of

men and women shut up in a dark cavern; angels descending from heaven,

liberate them from time to time, and they are borne away one after

another from darkness, pain, and penance, into life and light--again to

behold the face of their Maker--reconciled and healed. In his picture,

Schadow has represented two angels bearing away a liberated soul. Below

in the fore-ground groups of sinners are waiting, sadly, humbly, but not

unhopefully, the term of their bitter penance. Among these he had placed

a group of artists and poets who, led away by temptation, had abused

their glorious gifts to wicked or worldly purposes;--Titian, Ariosto,

and, rather to my surprise, the beautiful, lamenting spirit of Byron.

Then, what was curious enough, as types of ambition, Lady Macbeth and

her husband, who, it seems, were to be ultimately saved, I do not know

why--unless for the love of Shakespeare.

Hell, like all the hells I ever saw, was a failure. There was the usual

amount of fire and flames, dragons and serpents, ghastly, despairing

spirits, but nothing of original or powerful conception. When I looked

in Schadow's face, so beautiful with benevolence, I wondered _how_ he

could--but in truth he could _not_--realise to himself the idea of a hell;

all the materials he had used were borrowed and common-place.

But among his cartoons for pictures already painted, there was one

charming idea of quite a different kind. It was for an altar, and he

called it "THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE." Above, the sacrificed Redeemer lies

extended in his mother's arms. The pure abundant Waters of Salvation,

gushing from the rock beneath their feet, are received into a great

cistern. Saints, martyrs, teachers of the truth, are standing round,

drinking or filling their vases, which they present to each other. From

the cistern flows a stream, at which a family of poor peasants are

drinking with humble, joyful looks; and as the stream divides and flows

away through flowery meadows, little sportive children stoop to drink of

it, scooping up the water in their tiny hands, or sipping it with their

rosy smiling lips. A beautiful and significant allegory beautifully

expressed, and as intelligible to the people as any in the "Pilgrim's

Progress."

[Illustration]

135.

Haydon discussed "High Art" as if it depended solely on the knowledge

and the appreciation of _form_. In this lay his great mistake. Form is

but the vehicle of the highest art.

[Illustration]

136.

Southey says that the Franciscan Order "excluded all art, all

science;--no pictures might profane their churches." This is a most

extraordinary instance of ignorance in a man of Southey's universal

learning. Did he forget Friar Bacon? had he not heard of that museum of

divine pictures, the Franciscan church and convent at Assisi? And that

some of the greatest mathematicians, architects, mosaic workers,

carvers, and painters, of the 13th and 14th centuries were Franciscan

friars?

[Illustration]

137.

Wordsworth's remark on Sir Joshua Reynolds as a painter, that "he lived

too much for the age and the people among whom he lived," is hardly

just; as a portrait-painter he could not well do otherwise; his

profession was to represent the people among whom he lived. An artist

who takes the higher, the creative and imaginative walks of art, and who

thinks he can, at the same time, live for and with the age, and for the

passing and clashing interests of the world, and the frivolities of

society, does so at a great risk: there must be perilous discord between

the inner and the outer life--such discord as wears and irritates the

whole physical and moral being. Where the original material of the

character is not strong, the artistic genius will be gradually

enfeebled and conventionalised, through flattery, through sympathy,

through misuse. If the material be strong, the result may perhaps be

worse; the genius may be demoralised and the mind lose its balance. I

have seen in my time instances of both.

[Illustration]

138.

"The man," says Coleridge, "who reads a work meant for immediate effect

on one age, with the notions and feelings of another, may be a refined

gentleman but a very sorry critic."

This is especially true with regard to art: but Coleridge should have

put in the word, _only_, ("only the notions and feelings of another

age,") for a very great pleasure lies in the power of throwing ourselves

into the sentiments and notions of one age, while feeling _with_ them,

and reflecting _upon_ them, with the riper critical experience which

belongs to another age.

[Illustration]

139.

A _good_ taste in art feels the presence or the absence of merit; a

_just_ taste discriminates the degree,--the _poco-più_ and the

_poco-meno_. A _good_ taste rejects faults; a _just_ taste selects

excellences. A _good_ taste is often unconscious; a _just_ taste is

always conscious. A _good_ taste may be lowered or spoilt; a _just_

taste can only go on refining more and more.

[Illustration]

140.

Artists are interesting to me as men. Their work, as the product of

mind, should lead us to a knowledge of their own being; else, as I have

often said and written, our admiration of art is a species of atheism.

To forget the soul in its highest manifestation is like forgetting God

in his creation.

[Illustration]

141.

"Les images peints du corps humain, dans les figures où domine par trop

le savoir anatomique, en révèlant trop clairement à l'homme les secrets

de sa structure, lui en découvrent aussi par trop ce qu'on pourrait

appeler le point de vue _matériel_, ou, si l'on veut, _animal_."

This is the fault of Michal-Angelo; yet I have sometimes thought that

his very materialism, so grand, and so peculiar in character, may have

arisen out of his profound religious feeling, his stern morality, his

lofty conceptions of our _mortal_, as well as _immortal_ destinies. He

appears to have beheld the human form only in a pure and sublime point

of view; not as the animal man, but as the habitation, fearfully and

wondrously constructed, for the spirit of man,--

"The outward shape,

And unpolluted temple of the mind."

This is the reason that Michal-Angelo's materialism affects us so

differently from that of Rubens. In the first, the predominance of form

attains almost a moral sublimity. In the latter, the predominance of

flesh and blood is debased into physical grossness. Michal-Angelo

believed in the resurrection of THE BODY, emphatically; and in his Last

Judgment the dead rise like Titans, strong to contend and mighty to

suffer. It is the apotheosis of form. In Ruben's picture of the same

subject (at Munich) the bodily presence of resuscitated life is

revolting, reminding us of the text of St. Paul--"Flesh and blood shall

_not_ inherit the kingdom of God." Both pictures are _æsthetically_

false, but _artistically_ miracles, and should thus be considered and

appreciated.

I have never looked on those awful figures in the Medici Chapel without

thinking what stupendous intellects must inhabit such stupendous

forms--terrible in their quietude; but they are supernatural, rather than

divine.

"Heidnische Ruhe und Christliche Milde, sie bleiben Dir fremde;

Alt-testamentisch bist Du, Zürnender, wie ist Dein Gott!"

John Edward Taylor, in his profound and beautiful essay "MICHAEL-ANGELO,

A POET," says truly that "Dante worshipped the philosophy of religion,

and Michael-Angelo adored the philosophy of art." The religion of the

one and the art of the other were evolved in a strange combination of

mysticism, materialism, and moral grandeur. The two men were congenial

in character and in genius.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

A FRAGMENT ON SCULPTURE.

AND ON CERTAIN CHARACTERS IN HISTORY AND POETRY CONSIDERED AS

SUBJECTS OF MODERN ART.

1848.

I Should begin by admitting the position laid down by Frederick

Schlegel, that art and nature are not identical. "Men," he says,

"traduce nature, who falsely give her the epithet of artistic;" for

though nature comprehends all art, art cannot comprehend all nature.

Nature, in her sources of pleasures and contemplation is infinite; and

art, as her reflection in human works, finite. Nature is boundless in

her powers, exhaustless in her variety; the powers of art and its

capabilities of variety in production are bounded on every side. Nature

herself, the infinite, has circumscribed the bounds of finite art; the

one is the divinity; the other, the priestess. And if poetic art in the

_interpreting_ of nature share in her infinitude, yet in _representing_

nature through material, form, and colour, she is,--oh, how limited!

If each of the forms of poetic art has its law of limitation as

determined as the musical scale, narrowest of all are the limitations of

sculpture, to which, notwithstanding, we give the highest place; and it

is in regard to sculpture, we find most frequently those mistakes which

arise from a want of knowledge of the true principles of art.

Admitting, then, as necessary and immutable, the limitations of the art

of sculpture as to the management of the material in giving form and

expression; its primal laws of repose and simplicity; its rejection of

the complex and conventional; its bounded capabilities as to choice of

subject; must we also admit, with some of the most celebrated critics of

art, that there is but one style of sculpture, the Greek? And that every

deviation from pure Greek art must be regarded as a depravation and

perversion of the powers and subjects of sculpture? I do not see that

this follows.

It is absolute that Greek art reached long ago the term of its

development. In so far as regards the principles of beauty and

execution, it can go no farther. We may stand and look at the relics of

the Parthenon in awe and in despair; we can do neither more, nor better.

But we have not done with Greek sculpture. What in it is purely _ideal_,

is eternal; what is conventional, is in accordance with the primal

conditions of all imitative art. Therefore though it may have reached

the point at which development stops, and though its capability of

adaptation be limited by necessary laws; still its all-beautiful, its

immortal imagery is ever near us and around us; still "doth the old

feeling bring back the old names," and with the old names, the forms;

still, in those old familiar forms we continue to clothe all that is

loveliest in visible nature; still, in all our associations with Greek

art--

"'Tis Jupiter who brings whate'er is great,

And Venus who brings every thing that's fair."

That the supreme beauty of Greek art--that the majestic significance of

the classical myths--will ever be to the educated mind and eye as things

indifferent and worn out, I cannot believe.

But on the other hand it may well be doubted whether the impersonation

of the Greek allegories in the purest forms of Greek art will ever give

intense pleasure to the people, or ever speak home to the hearts of the

men and women of these times. And this not from the want of an innate

taste and capacity in the minds of the masses--not because ignorance has

"frozen the genial current in their souls"--not merely through a vulgar

preference for mechanical imitation of common and familiar forms; but

from other causes not transient--not accidental. A classical education is

not now, as heretofore, the _only_ education given; and through an

honest and intense sympathy with the life of their own experience, and

through a dislike to vicious associations, though clothed in classical

language and classical forms, _thence_ is it that the people have turned

with a sense of relief from gods and goddesses, Ledas and Antiopes, to

shepherds and shepherdesses, groups of Charity, and young ladies in the

character of Innocence,--harmless, picturesque inanities, bearing the

same relation to classical sculpture that Watts's hymns bear to Homer

and Sophocles.

Classical attainments of any kind are rare in our English sculptors;

therefore it is, that we find them often quite familiar with the

conventional treatment and outward forms of the usual subjects of Greek

art, without much knowledge of the original poetical conception, its

derivation, or its significance; and equally without any real

appreciation of the idea of which the form is but the vehicle. Hence

they do not seem to be aware how far this original conception is

capable of being varied, modified, _animated_ as it were, with an

infusion of fresh life, without deviating from its essential truth, or

transgressing those narrow limits, within which all sculpture must be

bounded in respect to action and attitude. To express _character_ within

these limits is the grand difficulty. We must remember that too much

value given to the head as the seat of mind, too much expression given

to the features as the exponents of character, must diminish the

importance of those parts of the form on which sculpture mainly depends

for its effect on the imagination. To convey the idea of a complete

individuality in a single figure, and under these restrictions, is the

problem to be solved by the sculptor who aims at originality, yet feels

his aspirations restrained by a fine taste and circumscribed by certain

inevitable associations.

It is therefore a question open to argument and involving considerations

of infinite delicacy and moment, in morals and in art, whether the old

Greek legends, endued as they are with an imperishable vitality derived

from their abstract youth, may not be susceptible of a treatment in

modern art analogous to that which they have received in modern poetry,

where the significant myth, or the ideal character, without losing its

classic grace, has been animated with a purer sentiment, and developed

into a higher expressiveness. Wordsworth's Dion and Laodomia; Shelley's

version of the Hymn to Mercury; Goethe's Iphigenia; Lord Byron's

Prometheus; Keats's Hyperion; Barry Cornwall's Proserpina; are instances

of what I mean in poetry. To do the same thing in art, requires that our

sculptors should stand in the same relation to Phidias and Praxiteles,

that our greatest poets bear to Homer or Euripides; that they should be

themselves poets and interpreters, not mere translators and imitators.

Further, we all know, that there is often a necessity for conveying

abstract ideas in the forms of art. We have then recourse to allegory;

yet allegorical statues are generally cold and conventional and

addressed to the intellect merely. Now there are occasions, in which an

abstract quality or thought is far more impressively and intelligibly

conveyed by an _impersonation_ than by a _personification_. I mean, that

Aristides might express the idea of justice; Penelope, that of conjugal

faith; Jonathan and David (or Pylades and Orestes), friendship; Rizpah,

devotion to the memory of the dead; Iphigenia, the voluntary sacrifice

for a good cause; and so of many others; and such figures would have

this advantage, that with the significance of a symbol they would

combine all the powers of a sympathetic reality.

[Illustration]

HELEN.

I have never seen any statue of Helen, ancient or modern. Treated in the

right spirit, I can hardly conceive a diviner subject for a sculptor. It

would be a great mistake to represent the Greek Helen merely as a

beautiful and alluring woman. This, at least, is not the Homeric

conception of the character, which has a wonderful and fascinating

individuality, requiring the utmost delicacy and poetic feeling to

comprehend, and rare artistic skill to realise. The oft-told story of

the Grecian painter, who, to create a Helen, assembled some twenty of

the fairest models he could find, and took from each a limb or a

feature, in order to compose from their separate beauties an ideal of

perfection,--this story, if it were true, would only prove that even

Zeuxis could make a great mistake. Such a combination of heterogeneous

elements would be psychologically and artistically false, and would

never give us a Helen.

She has become the ideal type of a fatal, faithless, dissolute woman;

but according to the Greek myth, she is _predestined_,--at once the

instrument and the victim of that fiat of the gods which had long before

decreed the destruction of Troy, and _her_ to be the cause. She must not

only be supremely beautiful,--"a daughter of the gods, divinely tall, and

most divinely fair!"--but as the offspring of Zeus (the title by which

she is so often designated in the Iliad), as the sister of the great

twin demi-gods Castor and Pollux, she should have the heroic lineaments

proper to her Olympian descent, touched with a pensive shade; for she

laments the calamities which her fatal charms have brought on all who

have loved her, all whom she has loved:--

"Ah! had I died ere to these shores I fled,

False to my country and my nuptial bed!"

She shrinks from the reproachful glances of those whom she has injured;

and yet, as it is finely intimated, wherever she appears her resistless

loveliness vanquishes every heart, and changes curses into blessings.

Priam treats her with paternal tenderness; Hector with a sort of

chivalrous respect.

"If some proud brother eyed me with disdain,

Or scornful sister with her sweeping train,

Thy gentle accents softened all my pain;

Nor was it e'er my fate from thee to find

A deed ungentle or a word unkind."

Helen, standing on the walls of Troy, and looking sadly over the battle

plain, where the heroes of her forfeited country, her kindred and her

friends, are assembled to fight and bleed for her sake, brings before us

an image full of melancholy sweetness as well as of consummate beauty.

Another passage in which she upbraids Venus as the cause of her

fault--not as a mortal might humbly expostulate with an immortal, but

almost on terms of equality, and even with bitterness,--is yet more

characteristic. "For what," she asks, tauntingly, "am I reserved? To

what new countries am I destined to carry war and desolation? For what

new lover must I break a second vow? Let me go hence! and if Paris

lament my absence, let Venus console him, and for his sake ascend the

skies no more!" A regretful pathos should mingle with her conscious

beauty and her half-celestial dignity; and, to render her truly, her

Greek elegance should be combined with a deeper and more complex

sentiment than Greek art has usually sought to express.

I am speaking here of Homer's Helen--the Helen of the Iliad, not the

Helen of the tragedians--not the Helen who for two thousand years has

merely served "to point a moral;" and an artist who should think to

realise the true Homeric conception, should beware of counterfeits, for

such are abroad.[2]

There is a wild Greek myth that it was not the real Helen, but the

phantom of Helen, who fled with Paris, and who caused the destruction of

Troy; while Helen herself was leading, like Penelope, a pattern life at

Memphis. I must confess I prefer the proud humility, the pathetic

elegance of Homer's Helen, to such jugglery.

It may flatter the pride of virtue, or it may move our religious

sympathies, to look on the forlorn abasement of the Magdalene as the

emblem of penitence; but there are associations connected with

Helen--"sad Helen," as she calls herself, and as I conceive the

character,--which have a deep tragic significance; and surely there are

localities for which the impersonation of classical art would be better

fitted than that of sacred art.

I do not know of any existing statue of Helen. Nicetas mentions among

the relics of ancient art destroyed when Constantinople was sacked by

the Latins in 1202, a bronze statue of Helen, with long hair flowing to

the waist; and there is mention of an Etruscan figure of her, with wings

(expressive of her celestial origin, for the Etruscans gave all their

gods and demi-gods wings): in Müller I find these two only. There are

likewise busts; and the story of Helen, and the various events of her

life, occur perpetually on the antique gems, bas-reliefs, and painted

vases. The most frequent subject is her abduction by Paris. A beautiful

subject for a bas-relief, and one I believe not yet treated, would be

Helen and Priam mourning over the lifeless form of Hector; yet the

difficulty of preserving the simple sculptural treatment, and at the

same time discriminating between this and other similar funereal groups,

would render it perhaps a better subject for a picture, as admitting

then of such scenery and accessories as would at once determine the

signification.

[Illustration]

PENELOPE. ALCESTIS. LAODAMIA.

Statues of Penelope and Helen might stand in beautiful and expressive

contrast; but it is a contrast which no profane or prosaic hand should

attempt to realise. Penelope is all woman in her tenderness and her

truth; Helen, half a goddess in the midst of error and remorse.

Nor is Penelope the only character which might stand as a type of

conjugal fidelity in contrasted companionship with Helen: Alcestis, who

died for her husband; or, better still, Laodamia, whose intense love

and longing recalled hers from the shades below, are susceptible of the

most beautiful statuesque treatment; only we must bear in mind that the

leading _motif_ in the Alcestis is _duty_, in the Laodamia, _love_.

I remember a bas-relief in the Vatican, which represents Hermes

restoring Protesilaus to his mourning wife. The interview was granted

for three hours only; and when the hero was taken from her a second

time, she died on the threshhold of her palace. This is a frequent and

appropriate subject for sarcophagi and funereal vases. But there exists,

I believe, no single statue commemorative of the wife's passionate

devotion.

The modern sculptor should penetrate his fancy with the sentiment of

Wordsworth's Laodamia.

While the pen is in my hand I may remark that two of the stanzas in the

Laodamia have been altered, and, as it seems to me, not improved, since

the first edition. Originally the poem opened thus:

"With sacrifice, before the rising morn

Perform'd, my slaughter'd lord have I required;

And in thick darkness, amid shades forlorn,

Him of the infernal Gods have I desired:

Celestial pity I again implore;

Restore him to my sight--great Jove, restore!"

Altered thus, and comparatively flat:--

"With sacrifice before the rising morn

Vows have I made, by fruitless hope inspired;

And from the infernal Gods, mid shades forlorn

Of night, my slaughtered lord have I required:

Celestial pity I again implore;

Restore him to my sight--great Jove, restore!"

In the early edition the last stanza but one stood thus:--

"Ah! judge her gently who so deeply loved!

Her who, in reason's spite, yet without crime,

Was in a trance of passion thus removed;

Delivered from the galling yoke of time,

And these frail elements,--to gather flowers

Of blissful quiet 'mid unfading bowers!"

In the later editions thus altered, and, to my taste, spoiled:--

"By no weak pity might the Gods be moved;

She who thus perish'd not without the crime

Of lovers that in Reason's spite have loved,

Was doomed to wander in a grosser clime

Apart from happy ghosts, that gather flowers

Of blissful quiet 'mid unfading bowers."

Altered, probably, because Virgil has introduced the shade of Laodamia

among the criminal and unhappy lovers,--an instance of extraordinary bad

taste in the Roman poet; whatever may have been her faults, she surely

deserved to be placed in better company than Phædra and Pasiphäe.

Wordsworth's intuitive feeling and taste were true in the first

instance, and he might have trusted to them. In my own copy of

Wordsworth I have been careful to mark the original reading in justice

to the _original_ Laodamia.

[Illustration]

HIPPOLYTUS. NEOPTOLEMUS.

I have never met with a statue, ancient or modern, of Hippolytus; the

finest possible ideal of a Greek youth, touched with some individual

characteristics which are peculiarly fitted for sculpture. He is a

hunter, not a warrior; a tamer of horses, not a combatant with spear and

shield. He should have the slight, agile build of a young Apollo, but

nothing of the God's effeminacy; on the contrary, there should be an

infusion of the severe beauty of his Amazonian mother, with that

sedateness and modesty which should express the votary and companion of

Diana; while, as the fated victim of Venus, whom he had contemned, and

of his stepmother Phædra, whom he had repulsed, there should be a kind

of melancholy in his averted features. A hound and implements of the

chase would be the proper accessories, and the figure should be

undraped, or nearly so.

A sculptor who should be tempted to undertake this fine, and, as I

think, untried subject--at least as a single figure--must begin by putting

Racine out of his mind, whose "Seigneur Hippolyte" makes sentimental

love to the "Princesse Aricie," and must penetrate his fancy with the

conception of Euripides.

I find in Schlegel's "Essais littéraires," a few lines which will assist

the fancy of the artist, in representing the person and character of

Hippolytus.

"Quant à l'Hippolyte d'Euripide il a une teinte si divine que pour le

sentir dignement il faut, pour ainsi dire, être initié dans les mystères

de la beauté, avoir respiré l'air de la Grèce. Rappelez vous ce que

l'antiquité nous a transmis de plus accompli parmi les images d'une

jeunesse héroïque, les Dioscures de Monte-Cavallo, le Méléagre et

l'Apollon du Vatican. Le caractère d'Hippolyte occupe dans la poësie à

peu près la même place que ces statues dans la sculpture." "On peut

remarquer dans plusieurs beautés idéales de l'antique que les anciens

voulant créer une image perfectionnée de la nature humaine ont fondu les

nuances du caractère d'un sexe avec celui de l'autre; que Junon, Pallas,

Diane, out une majesté, une sévérité mâle; qu' Apollon, Mercure,

Bacchus, au contraire, ont quelque chose de la grace et de la douceur

des femmes. De même nous voyons dans la beauté héroïque et vierge

d'Hippolyte l'image de sa mère l'Amazone et le reflet de Diane dans un

mortel."

(The last lines are especially remarkable, and are an artistic

commentary on what I have ventured to touch upon ethically at page 85.)

The story of Hippolytus is to be found in bas-reliefs and gems; it

occurs on a particularly fine sarcophagus now preserved in the cathedral

at Agrigentum, of which there is a cast in the British Museum.

Under the heroic and classical form, Hippolytus conveys the same idea of

manly chastity and self-control which in sacred art would be suggested

by the figure of Joseph, the son of Jacob.

A noble companion to the Hippolytus would be Neoptolemus, the son of

Achilles. He is the young Greek warrior, strong and bold and brave; a

fine ideal type of generosity and truth. The conception, as I imagine

it, should be taken from the Philoctetes of Sophocles, where

Neoptolemus, indignant at the craft of Ulysses, discloses the trick of

which he had been made the unwilling instrument, and restores the fatal,

envenomed arrows to Philoctetes. The celebrated lines in the Iliad

spoken by Achilles--

"Who dares think one thing and another tell

My soul detests him as the gates of hell!"

should give the leading characteristic _motif_ in the figure of his son.

There should be something of remorseful pity in the very youthful

features; the form ought to be heroically treated, that is, undraped,

and he should hold the arrows in his hand.

Neoptolemus, as the savage avenger of his father's death, slaying the

grey-haired Priam at the foot of the altar, and carrying off Andromache,

is, of course, quite a different version of the character. He then

figures as Pyrrhus--

"The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,

Black as his purpose, did the night resemble."

The fine moral story of Neoptolemus and Philoctetes is figured on the

Etruscan vases. Of the young, truth-telling, Greek hero I find no single

statue.

[Illustration]

IPHIGENIA.

I have often been surprised that we have no statue of this eminently

beautiful subject. We have the story of Iphigenia constantly repeated in

gems and bas-reliefs; the most celebrated example extant being the

Medici Vase. But no single figure of Iphigenia, as the Greek ideal of

heroic maidenhood and self-devotion, exists, I believe, in antique

sculpture. The small and rather feebly elegant statuette by Christian

Tieck is the only modern example I have seen.

Iphigenia may be represented under two very different aspects, both

beautiful.

First, as the Iphigenia in Aulis; the victim sacrificed to obtain a fair

wind for the Grecian fleet detained on its way to Troy. Extreme youth

and grace, with a tender resignation not devoid of dignity, should be

the leading characteristics; for we must bear in mind that Iphigenia,

while regretting life and the "lamp-bearing day," and "the beloved

light," and her Argive home and her "Mycenian handmaids," dies

willingly, as the Greek girl ought to die, for the good of her country.

She begins, indeed, with a prayer for pity, with lamentations for her

untimely end, but she resumes her nobler self; and all her sentiments,

when she is brought forth, crowned for sacrifice, are worthy of the

daughter of Agamemnon. She even exults that she is called upon to perish

for the good of Greece, and to avenge the cause of right on the Spartan

Helen. "I give," she exclaims, "my life for Greece! sacrifice me--and let

Troy perish!" When her mother weeps, she reproves those tears: "It is

not well, O my mother! that I should love life too much. Think that thou

hast brought me forth for the common good of Greece, not for thyself

only!" She glories in her anticipated renown, not vainly, since, while

the world endures, and far as the influences of literature and art

extend, her story and her name shall live. The scene in Euripides should

be taken as the basis of the character--the finest scene in his finest

drama. The tradition that Iphigenia was not really sacrificed, but

snatched away from the altar by Diana, and a hind substituted in her

place, should be present to the fancy of the artist, when he sets

himself to represent the majestic resignation of the consecrated virgin;

as adding a touch of the marvellous and ideal to the Greek elegance and

simplicity of the conception.

The _picture_ of Iphigenia as drawn by Tennyson is wonderfully vivid;

but it wants the Greek dignity and statuesque feeling; it is

emphatically a picture, all over colour and light, and crowded with

accessories. He represents her as encountering Helen in the land of

Shadows, and, turning from her "with sick and scornful looks averse,"

for she remembers the tragedy at Aulis.

"My youth (she said) was blasted with a curse:

This woman was the cause!

I was cut off from hope in that sad place

Which yet to name my spirit loathes and fears.

My father held his hand upon his face;

I, blinded with my tears,

Essayed to speak; my voice came thick with sighs

As in a dream; dimly I could descry

The stern black-bearded kings with wolfish eyes

Waiting to see me die.

The tall masts quiver'd as they lay afloat,

The temples and the people and the shore;

One drew a sharp knife thro' my tender throat

Slowly--and nothing more."

The famous picture of the sacrifice of Iphigenia by Timanthes, the theme

of admiration and criticism for the last two thousand years, which every

writer on art deems it proper to mention in praise or in blame, could

hardly have been more vivid or more terrible than this.

The analogous idea, that of heroic resignation and self-devotion in a

great cause, would be conveyed in sacred art by the figure of Jephtha's

daughter; she too regrets the promises of life, but dies not the less

willingly. "My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do

to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch

as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the

children of Ammon." And for a single statue, Jephtha's daughter would be

a fine subject--one to task the powers of our best sculptors; the

_sentiment_ would be the same as the Iphigenia, but the _treatment_

altogether different.

For the Iphigenia in Tauris I think the modern sculptor would do well to

set aside the character as represented by Euripides, and rather keep in

view the conception of Goethe.[3] In his hand it has lost nothing of its

statuesque elegance and simplicity, and has gained immeasurably in moral

dignity and feminine tenderness. The Iphigenia in Tauris is no longer

young, but she is still the consecrated virgin; no more the victim, but

herself the priestess of those very rites by which she was once fated to

perish. While Euripides has depicted her as stern and astute, Goethe has

made her the impersonation of female devotedness, and mild, but

unflinching integrity. She is like the young Neoptolemus when she

disdains to use the stratagem which Pylades had suggested, when

she dares to speak the truth, and trust to it alone for help and safety.

The scene in which she is haunted by the recollection of her doomed

ancestry, and mutters over the song of the Parcæ on that far-off sullen

shore, is sublime, but incapable of representation in plastic art. It

should, however, be well studied, as helping the artist to the abstract

conception of the character as a whole.

Carstens made a design, suggested by this tragedy, of the Three Parcæ

singing their fatal mysterious song. A model of one of the figures (that

of Atropos) used to stand in Goethe's library, and a cast from this is

before me while I write: every one who sees it takes it for an antique.

[Illustration]

EVE.

I have but a few words to say of Eve. As she is the only undraped figure

which is allowable in sacred art, the sculptors have multiplied

representations of her, more or less finely imagined; but what I

conceive to be the true type has seldom, very seldom, been attained. The

remarks which follow are, however, suggestive, not critical.

It appears to me--and I speak it with reverence--that the Miltonic type is

not the highest conceivable, nor the best fitted for sculptural

treatment. Milton has evidently lavished all his power on this fairest

of created beings; but he makes her too nymph-like--too goddess-like. In

one place he compares her to a Wood-nymph, Oread, or Dryad of the

groves; in another to Diana's self, "though not, as she, with bow and

quiver armed." The scriptural conception of our first parent is not like

this; it is ampler, grander, nobler far. I fancy her the sublime ideal

of maternity. It may be said that this idea of her predestined

motherhood should not predominate in the conception of Eve before the

Fall: but I think it should.

It is most beautifully imagined by Milton that Eve, separated from her

mate, her Adam, is weak, and given over to the merely womanish nature,

for only when linked together and supplying the complement to each

other's _moral_ being, can man or woman be strong; but we must also

remember that the "spirited sly snake," in tempting Eve, even when he

finds her alone, uses no vulgar allurements. "Ye shall be as Gods,

knowing good and evil." Milton, indeed, seasons his harangue with

flattery: but for this he has no warrant in Scripture.

As the Eve of Paradise should be majestically sinless, so after the Fall

she should not cower and wail like a disappointed girl. Her infinite

fault, her infinite woe, her infinite penitence, should have a touch of

grandeur. She has paid the inevitable price for that mighty knowledge of

good and evil she so coveted; that terrible predestined experience--she

has found it, or it has found her;--and she wears her crown of grief as

erst her crown of innocence.

I think the noble picture of Eve in Mrs. Browning's Drama of Exile, as

that of the Mother of our redemption not less than the Mother of

suffering humanity, might be read and considered with advantage by a

modern sculptor.

"Rise, woman, rise

To thy peculiar and best altitudes

Of doing good and of resisting ill!

Something thou hast to bear through womanhood;

Peculiar suffering answering to the sin,

Some pang paid down for each new human life;

Some weariness in guarding such a life,

Some coldness from the guarded; some mistrust

From those thou hast too well served; from those beloved

Too loyally, some treason. But go, thy love

Shall chant to itself its own beatitudes

After its own life-working!

I bless thee to the desert and the thorns,

To the elemental change and turbulence,

And to the solemn dignities of grief;

To each one of these ends, and to this end

Of Death and the hereafter!

_Eve._ I accept,

For me and for my daughters, this high part

Which lowly shall be counted!"

The figure of Eve in Raphael's design (the one engraved by Marc Antonio)

is exquisitely statuesque as well as exquisitely beautiful. In the

moment that she presents the apple to Adam she looks--perhaps she ought

to look--like the _Venus Vincitrice_ of the antique time; but I am not

sure; and, at all events, the less of the classical sentiment the

better.

[Illustration]

ADAM.

I have seen no statue of Adam; but surely he is a fine subject, either

alone or as the companion of Eve; and the Miltonic type is here

all-sufficient, combining the heroic ideal of Greek art with something

higher still--

"Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure,"

whence true authority in men--in fact, essential manliness.

Goethe had the idea that Adam ought to be represented with a spade, as

the progenitor of all who till the ground, and partially draped with a

deerskin, that is, after the Fall; which would be well: but he adds that

Adam should have a child at his feet in the act of strangling a serpent.

This appears to me objectionable and ambiguous; if admissible at all,

the accessory figure would be a fitter accompaniment for Eve.

[Illustration]

ANGELS.

Angels, properly speaking, are neither winged men nor winged children.

Wings, in ancient art, were the symbols of a divine nature; and the

early Greeks, who humanised their gods and goddesses, and deified

humanity through the perfection of the forms, at first distinguished the

divine and the human by giving wings to all the celestial beings; thus

lifting them above the earth. Our religious idea of angels is altogether

different. Give to the child-form wings, in other words, give to the

child-nature, innocent, and pure, the adjuncts of wisdom and power, and

thus you realise the idea of the angel as Raphael conceived it. It is

so difficult to imagine in the adult form the union of perfect purity

and perfect wisdom, the absence of experience and suffering, and the

capacity of thinking and feeling, a condition of being in which all

conscious _motive_ is lost in the _impulse_ to good, that it remains a

problem in art. The angels of Angelico da Fiesole, who are not only

winged, but convey the idea of movement only by the wings, not by the

limbs, are exquisite, as fitted to minister to us in heaven, but hardly

as fitted to keep watch and ward for us on earth--

"Against foul fiends to aid us militant."

The feminine element always predominates in the conception of angels,

though they are supposed to be masculine: I doubt whether it ought to be

so.

While these sheets are going through the press, I find the following

beautiful passage relative to angels in the last number of "Fraser's

Magazine":--

"It is safer, even, and perhaps more orthodox and scriptural, to

'impersonate' time and space, strength and love, and even the laws of

nature, than to give us any more angel worlds, which are but dead

skeletons of Dante's creations without that awful and living reality

which they had in his mind; or to fill children's books, as the High

Church party are doing now, with pictures and tales of certain winged

hermaphrodites, in whom one cannot think (even by the extremest stretch

of charity) that the writers or draughtsmen really believe, while one

sees them servilely copying mediæval forms, and intermingling them with

the ornaments of an extinct architecture; thus confessing _naïvely_ to

every one but themselves, that they accept the whole notion as an

integral portion of a creed, to which, if they be members of the Church

of England, they cannot well belong, seeing that it was, happily for us,

expelled both by law and by conscience at the Reformation."

This is eloquent and true; but not the less true it is, that if we have

to represent in art those "spiritual beings who walk this earth unseen,

both when we sleep and when we wake"--beings, who (as the author of the

above passage seems to believe) may be intimately connected with the

phenomena of the universe--we must have a type, a bodily type, under

which to represent them; and as we cannot do this from knowledge, we

must do it symbolically. Angels, as we figure them, are _symbols_ of

moral and spiritual existences elevated above ourselves--we do not

believe in the forms, we only accept their significance. I should be

glad to see a better impersonation than the impossible creatures

represented in art; but till some artist-poet, or poet-artist, has

invented such an impersonation, we must employ that which is already

familiarised to the eye and hallowed to the fancy without imposing on

the understanding.

[Illustration]

MIRIAM. RUTH.

Both the Old and the New Testament abound in sculptural subjects; but

fitly to deal with the Old Testament required a Michal-Angelo. Beautiful

as are the gates of Ghiberti they are hardly what the Germans would call

"alt-testamentische," they are so essentially elegant and graceful, and

the old Hebrew legends and personages are so tremendous. Even Miriam and

Ruth dilate into a sort of grandeur. In representation I always fancy

them above life-size.

I doubt whether the same artist who could conceive the Prophets would be

able to represent the Apostles, or that the same hand which gave us

Moses could give us Christ. Michal-Angelo's idea of Christ, both in

painting and sculpture is, to me, revolting.

[Illustration]

CHRIST. SOLOMON. DAVID.

I do not like the idea of Moses and Christ placed together. Much finer

in artistic and moral contrast would be the two teachers,--Christ as the

divine and spiritual law-giver, Solomon as the type of worldly wisdom.

They should stand side by side, or be seated each on his throne, a

crowned King, with book and sceptre--but how different in character!

We have multiplied statues of David. I have never seen one which

realised the finest conception of his character, either as Hero, King,

Prophet, or Poet. In general he figures as the slayer of Goliath, and is

always too feeble and boyish. David, singing to his lute before Saul;

David as the musician and poet, young, beautiful, half-draped,

heaven-inspired, exorcising by his art the dark spirit of evil which

possessed the jealous King:--this would be a theme for an artist, and

would as finely represent the power of sacred song as a figure of St.

Cecilia. But the sentiment should not be that of a young Apollo, or an

Orpheus; therein would lie the chief difficulty.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

HAGAR. REBEKAH. RACHEL.

I remember to have seen fine statues of Hagar holding her pitcher, of

Rebekah contemplating her bracelet, and of Rachel as the shepherdess.

But I would have a different version; Hagar as the poor cast-away,

driven forth with her boy into the wilderness; Rebekah as the exulting

bride; and Rachel as the mild, pensive wife. They would represent, in a

very complete manner, contrasted phases of the destiny of Woman,

connected together by our religious associations, and appealing to our

deepest human sympathies.

[Illustration]

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA.

The Queen of Sheba would be a fine subject for a single statue, as the

religious type of the queenly, intellectual woman, the treatment being

kept as far as possible from that of a Pallas or a Muse.

The journey of the Queen of the South to visit Solomon would be a

capital subject for a processional bas-relief, and as a _pendant_ to the

journey of "the Wise Men of the East," to visit a greater than Solomon.

The latter has been perpetually treated from the fourth century. Of the

journey of the Queen of Sheba I have seen, as yet, no example.

[Illustration]

LADY GODIVA.

With regard to statuesque subjects from modern history and

poetry,--_Romantic Sculpture_, as it is styled,--the taste both of the

public and the artist evidently sets in this direction. That the

treatment of such subjects should not be classical is admitted; but in

the development of this romantic tendency there is cause to fear that we

may be inundated with all kinds of picturesque vagaries and violations

of the just laws and limits of art.

I remember, however, a circumstance which makes me hopeful as to the

progress of feeling; knowledge may come hereafter. I remember about

twenty years ago proposing the figure and story of Lady Godiva as

beautiful subjects for sculpture and painting. There were present on

that occasion, among others, two artists and a poet. The two artists

laughed outright, and the poet extemporised an epigram upon Peeping Tom.

If I were to propose Lady Godiva as a subject now[4], I believe it would

be received with a far different feeling even by those very men. If I

were Queen of England I would have it painted in Fresco in my council

chamber. There should be seen the palfrey with its rich housings, and

near it, as preparing to mount, the noble lady should stand, timid, but

resolved: her veil should lie on the ground; the drapery just falling

from her fair limbs and partly sustained by one hand, while with the

other she loosens her golden tresses. A bevy of waiting-maids, with

averted faces, disappear hurriedly beneath the massive porch of the

Saxon palace, which forms the background, with sky and trees seen

through openings in the heavy architecture. This is the picturesque

version of the story; but there are many others. As a single statue, the

figure of Lady Godiva affords an opportunity for the legitimate

treatment of the undraped female form, sanctified by the purest, the

most elevated associations;--by woman's tearful pride and man's respect

and gratitude.

[Illustration]

JOAN OF ARC.

Shakspeare, who is so horribly unjust to Joan of Arc, has put a sublime

speech into her mouth where she answers Burgundy who had accused her of

sorcery,--

"Because you want the grace that others have.

You judge it straight a thing impossible

To compass wonders but by help of devils!"

The whole theory of popular superstition comprised in three lines!

But Joan herself--how at her name the whole heart seems to rise up in

resentment, not so much against her cowardly executioners as against

those who have so wronged her memory! Never was a character,

historically pure, bright, definite, and perfect in every feature and

outline, so abominably treated in poetry and fiction,--perhaps for this

reason, that she was in herself so exquisitely wrought, so complete a

specimen of the heroic, the poetic, the romantic, that she could not be

touched by art or modified by fancy, without being in some degree

profaned. As to art, I never saw yet any representation of "Jeanne la

grande Pastoure," (except, perhaps, the lovely statue by the Princess of

Wurtemburg,) which I could endure to look at--and even that gives us the

contemplative simplicity, but not the power, intellect, and energy,

which must have formed so large a part of the character. Then as to the

poets, what shall be said of them? First Shakspeare, writing for the

English stage, took up the popular idea of the character as it prevailed

in England in his own time. Into the hypothesis that the greater part of

Henry VI. is not by Shakspeare, there is no occasion to enter here; the

original conception of the character of Joan of Arc may not be his, but

he has left it untouched in its principal features. The English hated

the memory of the French Heroine because she had caused the loss of

France and had humiliated us as a nation; and our chroniclers revenged

themselves and healed their wounded self-love by imputing her victories

to witchcraft. Shakspeare, giving her the attributes which the

historians of his time assigned to her, represents her as a warlike,

arrogant sorceress--a "monstrous woman"--attended and assisted by demons.

I pass over the depraved and perverse spirit in which Voltaire profaned

this divine character. A theme which a patriot poet would have

approached as he would have approached an altar, he has made a vehicle

for the most licentious parody that ever disgraced a national

literature. Schiller comes next, and hardly seems to me more excusable.

Not only has he missed the character, he has deliberately falsified both

character and fact. His "Johanna" might have been called by any other

name; and the scene of his tragedy might have been placed anywhere in

the wide world with just the same probability and truth. Schiller and

Goethe held a principle that all considerations were to yield before the

proprieties of art. But Milton speaks somewhere of those "faultless

proprieties of nature" which never can be violated with impunity: and

Art can never move freely but in the domain of nature and of truth. All

the fine writing in Schiller's "Maid of Orleans" can never reconcile me

to its absolute and revolting falsehood. The sublime, simple-hearted

girl who to the last moment regarded herself as set apart by God to do

His work, he makes the victim of an insane passion for a young

Englishman. In the love-sick classical heroines of Corneille and Racine

there is nothing more Frenchified, more absurd, more revolting. Then he

makes her die victorious on the field of battle defending the

oriflamme;--far, far more glorious as well as more pathetic her real

death--but it offended against Schiller's æsthetic conception of the

dignity of tragedy.

Lastly, we have Southey's epic: what shall be said of it?--even what he

said of the Lusiad of Camoens, "that it is read with little emotion, and

remembered with little pleasure." No. I do not wish to see Joan turned

into a heroine of tragedy or tale, because, as it seems to me, the whole

life and death of this martyred girl is too near us, and too

historically distinct, and, I will add, too sacred, to be dressed out in

romantic prose or verse. What Walter Scott might have made of her I do

not know--something marvellously picturesque and life-like, no doubt--and

yet I am glad he did not try his hand on her. But she remains a

legitimate and most admirable subject for representative art; and as yet

nothing has been done in sculpture to fix the ideal and heroic in her

character, nor in painting, worthy of her exploits. There exists no

contemporary portrait of her except in the brief description of her in

the old French Chronicle of the Siege of Orleans, where it is said that

her figure was tall and slender, her bust fine, her hair and eyes black;

that she wore her hair short, and could never be persuaded to put on a

head-piece, and farther (and in this respect both Schiller and Southey

have wronged her), that she had never slain a man, using her consecrated

sword merely to defend herself. I should like to see a fine equestrian

statue of her by one of our best English sculptors, set up in a

conspicuous place among us, as a national expiation.

Southey mentions that in the beginning of the last war, about 1795, when

popular feeling, excited almost to frenzy, raged against France, a

pantomime, or ballet, was performed at Covent Garden, from the story of

Joan of Arc, at the conclusion of which she is carried away by demons,

like a female Don Juan. This denouement caused such a storm of

indignation, that the author--one James Cross--was obliged, after the

first two or three representations, to change the demons into angels,

and send her straight into Heaven:--an anecdote pleasant to record as

illustrating the sure ultimate triumph of truth over falsehood; of all

the better sympathies over prejudice and wrong;--in spite of history,

and, what is more, in spite of Shakspeare!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHARACTERS FROM SHAKSPEARE.

Joan of Arc is not, however, a Shakspearian character; and, in fact,

there are very few of his personages susceptible of sculptural

treatment. They are too dramatic, too profound, too complex in their

essential nature where they are tragic; too many-sided and picturesque

where they are comic.

For instance, the attempt to condense into marble such light,

evanescent, quaint creations as those in "The Midsummer's Night's Dream"

is better avoided; we feel that a marble fairy must be a heavy

absurdity. Oberon and Titania might perhaps float along in a bas-relief;

but we cannot put away the thought that they have reality without

substantiality, and we do not like to see them, or Ariel, or Caliban

fixed in the definite forms of sculpture.

There are, however, a few of Shakspeare's characters which appear to me

beautifully adapted for statuesque treatment: Perdita holding her

flowers; Miranda lingering on the shore; might well replace the

innumerable "Floras" and "Nymphs preparing to bathe," which people the

_atéliers_ of our sculptors. Cordelia has something of marble quietude

about her; and Hermione is a statue ready made. And, by the way, it is

observable that Shakspeare represents Hermione as a _coloured_ statue.

Paulina will not allow it to be touched, because "the colour is not yet

dry." Again,--

"Would you not deem those veins

Did verily bear blood?

"The very life seems warm upon her lips,

The fixture of her eye hath motion in't,

And we are mocked by Art!

The ruddiness upon her lip is wet,

"You'll mar it if you kiss it, stain your own

With oily painting."

I think it possible to model small ornamental statuettes and groups from

some few of the scenes in Shakspeare's plays; but this is quite

different from life-size figures of Hamlet, Othello, Shylock, Macbeth,

which must either have the look of real individual portraiture, or

become mere idealisations of certain qualities; and Shakspeare's

creations are neither the one nor the other.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHARACTERS FROM SPENSER.

Spenser is so essentially a picturesque poet, he depends for his rich

effects so much on the combination of colour and imagery, and multiplied

accessories, that one feels--at least _I_ feel, on laying down a volume

of the "Fairie Queene" dazzled as if I had been walking in a gallery of

pictures. His "Masque of Cupid," for instance, although a procession of

poetical creations, could not be transferred to a bas-relief without

completely losing its Spenserian character--its wondrous glow of colour.

Thus Cupid "uprears himself exulting from the back of the ravenous

lion;" removes the bandage from his eyes, that he may look round on his

victims; "shakes the darts which his right hand doth strain full

dreadfully," and "claps on high his coloured wings twain." This

certainly is not the Greek Cupid, nor the Cupid of sculpture; it is the

Spenserian Cupid. So of his Una, so of his Britomart, and the Red Cross

Knight and Sir Guyon: one might make elegant _statuesque_ impersonations

of the allegories they involve, as of Truth, Chastity, Faith,

Temperance; but then they would lose immediately their Spenserian

character and sentiment, and must become something altogether different.

[Illustration]

THE LADY. COMUS.

It is not so with Milton. The "Lady" in Comus, whether she stands

listening to the echos of her own sweet voice, or motionless as marble

under the spell of the "false enchanter," _looking_ that divine reproof

which in the poem she _speaks_,--

"I hate when vice can bolt her arguments,

And virtue has no tongue to check her pride"--

is a subject perfectly fitted for sculpture, and never, so far as I

know, executed. It would be a far more appropriate ornament for a lady's

_boudoir_ than French statues of MODESTY, which generally have the

effect of making one feel very much ashamed.[5]

Sabrina has been beautifully treated by Marshall.

It is difficult to render Comus without making him too like a Bacchus or

an Apollo. He is neither.

He represents not the beneficent, but the intoxicating and brutifying

power of wine. His joviality should not be that of a God, but with

something mischievous, bestial, Faun-like; and he should have, with the

Dionysian grace, a dash of the cunning and malignity of his Mother

Circe. These characteristics should be in the mind of the artist. The

panther's skin, the coronal of vine leaves, and, instead of the Thyrsus,

the magician's wand, are the proper accessories. It is also worth

notice, that in the antique representations Comus has wings as a

demigod, and in a picture described by Philostratus (a night scene) he

lies crouched in a drunken sleep. Little use, however, is made of him in

the antique myths, and the Miltonic conception is that which should be

embodied by the modern sculptor.

Il Penseroso and L'Allegro, if embodied in sculpture as poetical

abstractions (either masculine or feminine) of Melancholy and Mirth,

would cease to be Miltonic, for the conceptions of the poet are

essentially picturesque, and expressed in both cases by a luxuriant

accumulation of images and accessories, not to be brought within the

limits of plastic art without the most tasteless confusion and

inconsistency.

[Illustration]

SATAN.

The religious idea of a Satan--the impersonation of that mixture of the

bestial, the malignant, the impious, and the hopeless, which constitute

THE FIEND, the enemy of all that is human and divine--I conceive to be

quite unfitted for the purpose of sculpture. Danton's attempt

degenerates into grim caricature. Milton's Satan--"the archangel

ruined,"--is however a strictly poetical creation, and capable of the

most poetical statuesque treatment. But we must remember that, if it be

a gross mistake, religious and artistic, to conceive the Messiah under

the form of a larger, stronger humanity, with a _physique_ like that of

a wrestler, (as M. Angelo has done in the Last Judgement) it is equally

a mistake to conceive the lost angel, our spiritual adversary, under any

such coarse Herculean lineaments. There can be no image of the Miltonic

Satan without the elements of beauty, "though changed by pale ire, envy,

and despair!" Colossal he may be, vast as Mount Athos; but it is not

necessary to express this that he should be hewn out of Mount Athos, or

look like the giant Polypheme! His proportions, his figure, his

features--like his power--are angelic. As the Hero--for he is so--of the

"Paradise Lost," the subject is open to poetic treatment; but I am not

aware that as yet it has been poetically treated.

Of the Italian poetry and history, and all the wondrous and lovely

shapes which come thronging out of that Elysian land,--I can say nothing

now,--or only this,--that after all I am not _quite_ sure that I am right

about Spenser. For, at first view, what poet seems less amenable to

statuesque treatment than Dante? One would have imagined that only a

preternatural fusion of Michal-Angelo and Rembrandt could fitly render

the murky recesses and ghastly and monstrous inhabitants of the Inferno,

or attempt to shadow forth the dazzling mysteries of the Paradiso. Yet

see what Flaxman has achieved! His designs are legitimate bas-reliefs,

not pictures in outline. He has been true to his own art, and all that

could be done within the limitations of his art he has accomplished. It

is a translation of Dante's _ideas_ into sculpture, with every thing

_peculiarly_ Dantesque in the treatment, set aside.

Now as to our more modern poets.--From amid the long array of beautiful

subjects which seem to move in succession before the fancy, there are

two which stand out prominent in their beauty. First, Lord Byron's

"Myrrha," who with her Ionian elegance is susceptible of the purest

classical treatment. She should hold a torch; but not with the air of a

Mænad, nor of a Thais about to fire Persepolis. The sentiment should be

deeper and quieter.

"Dost thou think

A Greek girl dare not do for love that which

An Indian widow does for custom?"

Ion in Talfourd's Tragedy--the boy-hero, in all the tenderness of extreme

youth, already self-devoted and touched with a melancholy grace and an

elevation beyond his years--is so essentially statuesque, that I am

surprised that no sculptor has attempted it; perhaps because, in this

instance, as in that of Myrrha, the popular realisation of both

characters as subjects of formative art has been spoiled by theatrical

trappings and associations.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "_Sancta Simplicitas!_" was the exclamation of Huss to the woman

who, when he was burned at the stake, in her religious zeal brought a

faggot to light the pile.

[2] Canova's bust of Helen is such a counterfeit; whereas the Helen of

Gibson is, for a mere head, singularly characteristic.

[3] There is a fine translation of the German Iphigenia by Miss

Swanwick. (Dramatic Works of Goethe. Bohn, 1850.)

[4] 1848. At the moment I transcribe this (1854), a very charming statue

of the Lady Godiva (suggested, I believe, by Tennyson's poem) stands in

the Exhibition of the Royal Academy.

[5] For example, the statue of Modesty executed for Josephine's boudoir.

LONDON:

A. and G. A. SPOTTISWOODE,

New-street-Square.