(_For The Mirror_.)
I saw a picture not long since, in Edinburgh, copied from an engraving
in Boydell's Shakspeare; subject,--"Lear (and suite) in the storm,"
but coloured according to the imagination and taste of the artist; its
name ought assuredly to have been _Redcap and the blue-devils_, for
the venerable and lamented monarch had fine streaming locks of the
real _carrot hue_, whilst his very hideous companions showed _blue_
faces, and blue armour; and with their strangely contorted bodies
seemed meet representatives of some of the infernal court.--In a
highly adorned prayer book, published in the reign of William
III., the engravings of which are from _silver-plates_, one print
illustrates our Lord's simile of the mote and beam, by a couple of men
aiming at each other's visual organs, ineffectually enough, one having
a great _log of wood_ growing from his eye, and the other being blind
in one eye from a _cataract_; at least, though I think I do not err
in saying, a _moat_ and castle, in it--I have seen an old edition of
Jeremy Taylor's "Life and Death of Christ," illustrated with many
remarkably good engravings. Of one of these the subject is, the
Impotent Man at the Pool of Bethesda; the fore ground is occupied by
our Saviour, the cripple, and other invalids; and in the distance
appears a small _pond_ palisaded by slender pilasters; over it hovers
an angel, who, with _a long pole_, is, to the marvel of the beholders,
dexterously "troubling the waters." In the same volume, some of the
figures are clad in the garb of the time when drawn, and St. Jude is
reading the _New Testament_ in a _pair of spectacles_!--In Holyrood
House, and in one of the rooms added in the days of Charles II., is a
panel-painting of "the Infant Hercules strangling the serpents;" and
leaping up in front of the cradle, appears one of those pretty and
rare spaniels called _King Charles's breed_. In the same palace, and
in one of the chambers, once occupied by the unfortunate Mary, is
a very old painting, intended, as the guide assures visitors, to
represent St. Peter's vision of the great sheet; it may be, but if so,
_one_ archangel in _military sandals_, holding in his hands a _small
towel_, represents (by a _figure_ in _painting_ I presume,) St. Peter,
the sheet, and its innumerable living contents. He must have taken a
hint, from the artist who painted for the passage through the Red Sea
nothing but ocean, assuring his employer, that the Israelites could
not be seen, because they were all gone over, and the Egyptians were
every one drowned!--"I once saw," writes a friend, "a full length
portrait of _Wordsworth_, in a modern painting of 'Christ riding into
Jerusalem;' it was amongst a group of Jews, and next to a likeness
of _Voltaire_. I believe the painter intended to contrast the
countenances of the Christian and infidel poets, and thus pay a
handsome compliment to the former; but the taste that placed the
ancients and moderns together, remind me of a fine old painting of the
Flemish school; a 'David with Goliah's head,' in the fore-ground of
which were a number of fat _Dutchmen_, dressed in _blue coats and
leather breeches_, with _pipes_ in their mouths."--"Raphael," says a
little French work on painting, in my possession, speaking of _unity_
of time, "_A peché contre cette regle, dans son tableau d'Heliodore,
ou il fait intervenir le Pape Jules 2 dans le Temple de Jerusalem
porte sur les epaules, des Gonfalonniers_." The same work notices a
breach of the _unity of design_ in Paul Veronese, "_qui dans la partie
droite d'un de ses tableaux, a represente Jesus Christ benissant
l'eau, dont il va être baptise par St. Jean Baptiste; et dans la
partie gauche notre Seigneur tente par le diable_."--Upon the
celebrated "Transfiguration" of Raphael, I heard an artist remark,
"undoubtedly it is the first picture in the world, yet the painter has
erred in these respects:--the upper portion of the picture is occupied
by the subject, but the lower and fore-ground by the _Healing of
the Demoniac_. Now that event did not happen until after the
transfiguration, and we infringe upon our Saviour's _ubiquity_ by
supposing it to occur (contrary to the sacred story) at the same time.
_He_ may, indeed, as _God_ be _omnipresent_, but as _man_, the
New Testament no where asserts that the Incarnate Presence was in
different places at the same moment." Instances of erroneous judgment
are frequent in those who illustrate holy writ. Some have attempted to
embody _Him_, "whom no man hath seen at any time." Some have filled
their skies with beings as little aerial as possible, or apotheoses of
the Virgin and sundry saints. Angels, as some represent them, even in
whole lengths, are by _anatomists_ regarded as _monsters_; but what
then are the chubby winged heads _without bodies_, with which some
artists etherealize their works. Some err by mingling on the same
canvass the sacred and profane; scripture characters and the
non-descripts of heathen mythology. Nor is poetry free from the latter
error, as is exemplified in the major and minor epics, &c., of many
Christian poets. The drawings of the monks, splendid in colouring and
beautiful in finish, are mostly ludicrous in design, from glaring
anachronisms, erroneous perspective, &c. I saw a print in Montfauçon,
where fish were gamboling like porpusses on the surface of the sea,
and one or two were visible _through the paddles_ of a boat. In the
same volume was a print of the apotheosis of St. Louis, from
an illumination. The holy prince was represented dying in the
fore-ground, but over head were a couple of angels flying away with
his soul, (under the figure of a wretched infant, skinny and naked,
save the glory that covered his head,) in a kind of sheet, or rather
sack.
But to detail all the absurdities and indecencies of these revered
artists, whether limners, or carvers in wood, were endless. Their
anachronisms, however, have been of considerable service to the
antiquary. Sculpture has its monstrosities, architecture its
incongruities, though not so palpable as those of painting, because
the art is less generally understood by the common observer, or rather
pictorial errors are in general easily detected by the eye alone,
and sometimes by the most commonly informed mind; but architectural
defects are only recognisable by those who have studied the principles
of this fine art. Poetry, I am sorry to say, is not exempt from bulls
and blunders, of various kinds and degrees of enormity; many of which
have been, from time to time, exposed in a very amusing manner. I
shall therefore, in conclusion, crave the liberty of producing one
which has lately come under my own cognizance. A modern poet, whose
compositions are fraught with beauty and genius, sings:--
"Then swooped the winds, that hurl the _giant oak_
From _Snowdon's altitude_."
And another, in stanzas of extreme strength and eloquent description,
describes a storm at night "among the mountains of Snowdon," with
these expressions:--
----"The bird of night
Screams from her straw-built nest, as from the womb
Of infant death, and wheels her drowsy flight
Amid _the pine-clad rocks_, with wonder and afright."
----"The night-breeze dies
Faint, on _the mountain-ash leaves that surround
Snowdon's dark peaks_."
Now, a painful pilgrimage of eleven hours, up Snowdon and back again,
enables me to declare that had oaks, pines, and service-trees adorned
that appalling and volcanic chaos, five or six years since, some storm
sufficient to have shattered the universe, must have swept them all
away, ere I looked upon that dreary assemblage of rocks which seems
like the _ruins of a world_. I ascended from the Capel Cerig side of
the mountain, and therefore venture not to say what may be the aspect
of the Llanberries; but the only verdure I beheld, was that of short,
brown heathy grass, a few stunted furze-bushes, and patches of that
vividly green moss, which is spongy and full of water. The only living
inhabitants of these wilds were a few ruffian-like miners, two or
three black slugs, and a scanty flock of straggling half-starved
mountain sheep, with their brown, ropy coats. The guide told me, that
even _eagles_, had for three centuries abandoned the desolate crags
of Snowdon; and as for its being a haunt for _owls_, neither bird nor
mouse could reside there to supply such with subsistence. Snowdon
appeared to me too swampy to be drained for cultivation in many parts,
and in most others its marble, granite and shingles, forbade the idea
of spontaneous vegetation. I am sorry for the poets, having a sincere
regard for the fraternity, but Snowdon is not adorned with pines,
firs, larches, and service-trees, like parts of the Alps; it is _not_
wooded like the romantic Pyrenees, nor luxuriantly fertile in fruits,
flowers, and grain, like the terrible, but sylvan Etna.