I confess it is what the English call _a bull_, in the expression,
though the sense be manifest enough.--POPE.
We are friends to the exposition of the weak sides of great men, inasmuch
as it reads them a valuable lesson on their own infallibility, and tends
to lower the molehills of conceit that are raised in the world as
stumbling-blocks along every road of petty ambition. It would, however,
be but a sorry toil for the most cynical critic to illustrate these
vagaries otherwise than so many slips and trippings of the tongue and pen,
to which all men are liable in their unguarded moments--from Homer to
Anacreon Moore, or Demosthenes to Mr. Brougham. Our course is rather that
of a good-humoured _exposé_, the worst effect of which will be to raise a
laugh at the expense of poor humanity, or a merited smile at our own
dulness and mistaken sense of the ridiculous.
First, of the ancient Poets, who make departed spirits know things past
and to come, yet ignorant of things present. Agamemnon foretels what
should happen to Ulysses, yet ignorantly inquires what is become of his
own son. The ghosts are afraid of swords in Homer, yet Sibylla tells
Aeneas in Virgil, that the then habit of spirits was beyond the force of
weapons. The spirits put off their malice with their bodies; and Caesar
and Pompey accord in Latin hell; yet Ajax in Homer, endures not a
conference with Ulysses.
In Painting alone we have a rich harvest. Burgoyne in his travels,
notices a painting in Spain, where Abraham is preparing to shoot Isaac
_with a pistol!_
There is a painting at Windsor, of Antonio Verrio, in which, he has
introduced himself, Sir Godfrey Kneller, and Bap. May, surveyor of the
works, in long periwigs, as spectators of Christ healing the sick.
In the Luxembourg is a picture of Reubens, in which are the queen-mother
in council, with two cardinals, and _Mercury!_
There may be, also, a sort of anachronism of the limbs, as in the case of
the painter of Toledo, who painted the story of the three wise men of the
east coming to worship, and bringing their presents to our Lord, upon his
birth, at Bethlehem, whence he presents them as three Arabian, or Indian
kings; two of them are white, and one of them black; but, unhappily, when
he drew the latter part of them kneeling, which, to be sure, was done
after their faces, their legs being necessarily a little intermixed, he
made three black feet for the negro king, and but three white feet for
the two white kings; and yet never discovered the mistake till the piece
was presented to the king, and hung up in the great church.
There was, also, in the Houghton Hall collection, Velvet Brughel's
Adoration of the Magi, in which were a multitude of figures, all finished
with the greatest Dutch exactness; in fact, the ideas are rather a little
too Dutch, for the Ethiopian king is dressed in a surplice, with boots
and spurs, and brings, for a present, a gold model of a modern ship.
The monks of a certain monastery at Messina, exhibited, with great
triumph, a letter written by the Virgin Mary with her own hand. Unluckily
for them, this was not, as it easily might have been, written on the
ancient papyrus, but on paper made of rags. On some occasion, a visiter,
to whom this was shown, observed, with affected solemnity, that the
letter involved also a miracle, for the paper on which it was written was
not in existence till several hundred years after the mother of our Lord
had ascended into heaven.
In the church of St. Zacharia, at Venice, is the picture of a Virgin and
Child, whom an angel is entertaining with an air upon the violin. Jean
Belin was the artist, in 1500. So, also, in the college library of
Aberdeen, to a very neat Dutch missal, are appended elegant paintings on
the margin, of the angels appearing to the shepherds, with one of the men
playing on the bagpipes.
There is a picture in a church at Bruges that puts not only all
chronology, but all else, out of countenance. It is the marriage of Jesus
Christ with Saint Catherine of Sienna. But who marries them? St. Dominic,
the patron of the church. Who joins their hands? Why, the Virgin Mary.
And to crown the anachronism, King David plays the harp at the wedding!
Albert Durer represented an angel in a flounced petticoat, driving Adam
and Eve from Paradise.
Lewis Cigoli painted a picture of the Circumcision of the Holy Child,
Jesus, and drew the high priest, Simeon, with spectacles on his nose;
upon a supposition, probably, that, in respect of his great age, that aid
would be necessary. Spectacles, however, were not known for fourteen
centuries afterwards.
In a picture painted by F. Chello della Puera, the Virgin Mary is placed
on a velvet sofa, playing with a cat and a paroquet, and about to help
herself to coffee from an engraved coffee-pot.
In another, painted by Peter of Cortona, representing the reconciliation
of Jacob and Laban, (now in the French Museum), the painter has
represented a steeple or belfry rising over the trees. A belfry in the
mountains of Mesopotamia, in the time of Jacob!
N. Poussin's celebrated picture, at the same place, of Rebecca at the
Well, has the whole back-ground decorated with Grecian architecture.
Paul Veronese placed Benedictine fathers and _Swiss soldiers_ among his
paintings from the Old Testament.
A painter, intending to describe the miracle of the fishes listening to
the preaching of St. Anthony of Padua, painted the lobsters, who were
stretching out of the water, _red!_ probably having never seen them in
their natural state. Being asked how he could justify this anachronism,
he extricated himself by observing, that the whole affair was a miracle,
and that thus the miracle was made still greater.
In the Notices des MSS. du Roi VI. 120, in the illuminations of a
manuscript Bible at Paris, under the Psalms, are two persons playing at
cards; and under Job and the Prophets are coats of arms and a windmill.
Poussin, in his picture of the Deluge has painted boats, not then
invented. St. Jerome, in another place, with a clock by his side; a thing
unknown in that saint's days.--_Nous revenons._
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