A DISCUSSION CONCERNING THE QUESTION LAST PROPOSED.
_Questo è bene un de' più profondi passi
Che noi habbiamo ancora oggi tentato;
E non è mica da huomini bassi._
AGNOLO FIRENZUOLA.
Good and satisfactory likenesses may, beyond all doubt, be taken of
Mr. Everydayman himself, and indeed of most persons: and were it
otherwise, portrait-painting would be a worse profession than it is,
though too many an unfortunate artist has reason bitterly to regret
that he possessed the talents which tempted him to engage in it. There
are few faces of which even a mediocre painter cannot produce what is
called a staring likeness, and Sir Thomas Lawrence a handsome one; Sir
Thomas is the painter who pleases every body!
But there are some few faces with which no artist can succeed so as to
please himself, (if he has a true feeling for his own art,) or to
content those persons who are best acquainted with the living
countenance. This is the case where the character predominates over
the features, and that character itself is one in which many and
seemingly opposite qualities are compounded. Garrick in Abel Drugger,
Garrick in Sir John Brute and Garrick in King Lear presented three
faces as different as were the parts which he personated; yet the
portraits which have been published of him in those parts, may be
identified by the same marked features, which flexible as they were
rendered by his histrionic power, still under all changes retained
their strength and their peculiarity. But where the same flexibility
exists and the features are not so peculiar or prominent, the
character is then given by what is fleeting, not by what is fixed; and
it is more difficult to hit a likeness of this kind than to paint a
rainbow.
Now I cannot but think that the Doctor's countenance was of this kind.
I can call it to mind as vividly as it appears to me in dreams; but I
could impart no notion of it by description. Words cannot delineate a
single feature of his face,—such words at least as my knowledge
enables me to use. A sculptor, if he had measured it, might have given
you technically the relative proportions of his face in all its parts:
a painter might describe the facial angle, and how the eyes were set,
and if they were well-slit, and how the lips were formed, and whether
the chin was in the just mean between rueful length and spectatorial
brevity; and whether he could have passed over Strasburgh Bridge
without hearing any observations made upon his nose. My own opinion is
that the centinel would have had something to say upon that subject;
and if he had been a Protestant Soldier (which if an Alsacian, he was
likely to be) and accustomed to read the Bible, he might have been
reminded by it of the Tower of Lebanon, looking toward Damascus; for
as an Italian Poet says,
_in prospettiva
Ne mostra un barbacane sforacchiato._[1]
I might venture also to apply to the Doctor's nose that safe
generality by which Alcina's is described in the Orlando Furioso.
“_Quindi il naso, per mezzo il viso scende,
Che non trova l'invidia ove l'emende._”
But farther than this, which amounts to no more than a doubtful
opinion and a faint adumbration, I can say nothing that would assist
any reader to form an idea at once definite and just of any part of
the Doctor's face. I cannot even positively say what was the colour of
his eyes. I only know that mirth sparkled in them, scorn flashed from
them, thought beamed in them, benevolence glistened in them; that they
were easily moved to smiles, easily to tears. No barometer ever
indicated more faithfully the changes of the atmosphere than his
countenance corresponded to the emotions of his mind; but with a mind
which might truly be said to have been
so various, that it seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome,
thus various not in its principles or passions or pursuits, but in its
enquiries and fancies and speculations, and so alert that nothing
seemed to escape its ever watchful and active apprehension,—with such
a mind the countenance that was its faithful index, was perpetually
varying: its likeness therefore at any one moment could but represent
a fraction of the character which identified it, and which left upon
you an indescribable and inimitable impression resulting from its
totality, though in its totality, it never was and never could be
seen.
[Footnote 1: MATTIO FRANZESI.]
Have I made myself understood?
I mean to say that the ideal face of any one to whom we are strongly
and tenderly attached,—that face which is enshrined in our heart of
hearts and which comes to us in dreams long after it has mouldered in
the grave,—that face is not the exact mechanical countenance of the
beloved person, not the countenance that we ever actually behold, but
its abstract, its idealization, or rather its realization; the spirit
of the countenance, its essence and its life. And the finer the
character, and the more various its intellectual powers, the more must
this true εἴδωλον differ from the most faithful likeness that a
painter or a sculptor can produce.
Therefore I conclude that if there had been a portrait of Dr. Daniel
Dove, it could not have been like him, for it was as impossible to
paint the character which constituted the identity of his countenance,
as to paint the flavour of an apple, or the fragrance of a rose.