Wilson’s historical landscapes, his _Niobe_, _Celadon and Amelia_, &c.

do not, in our estimation, display either true taste or fine

imagination, but are affected and violent exaggerations of clumsy common

nature. They are made up mechanically of the same stock of materials,—an

over-hanging rock, bare shattered trees, black rolling clouds, and

forked lightning. The figures, in the most celebrated of these, are not

like the children of Niobe, punished by the Gods, but like a group of

rustics, crouching from a hail-storm. We agree with Sir Joshua Reynolds,

that Wilson’s mind was not, like N. Poussin’s, sufficiently imbued with

the knowledge of antiquity to transport the imagination three thousand

years back, to give natural objects a sympathy with preternatural

events, and to inform rocks, and trees, and mountains with the presence

of a God. To sum up his general character, we may observe, that, besides

his excellence in aërial perspective, Wilson had great truth, harmony,

and depth of local colouring. He had a fine feeling of the proportions

and conduct of light and shade, and also an eye for graceful form, as

far as regards the bold and varying outlines of indefinite objects; as

may be seen in his foregrounds, &c., where the artist is not tied down

to an imitation of characteristic and articulate forms. In his figures,

trees, cattle, and in everything having a determinate and regular form,

his pencil was not only deficient in accuracy of outline, but even in

perspective and actual relief. His trees, in particular, frequently seem

pasted on the canvass, like botanical specimens. In fine, we cannot

subscribe to the opinion of those who assert, that Wilson was superior

to Claude as a man of genius; nor can we discern any other grounds for

this opinion, than what would lead to the general conclusion,—that the

more slovenly the performance the finer the picture, and that that which

is imperfect is superior to that which is perfect. It might be said, on

the same principle, that the coarsest sign-painting is better than the

reflection of a landscape in a mirror; and the objection that is

sometimes made to the mere imitation of nature, cannot be made to the

landscapes of Claude, for in them the Graces themselves have, with their

own hands, assisted in selecting and disposing every object. Is the

general effect in _his_ pictures injured by the details? Is the truth

inconsistent with the beauty of the imitation? Does the perpetual

profusion of objects and scenery, all perfect in themselves, interfere

with the simple grandeur and comprehensive magnificence of the whole?

Does the precision with which a plant is marked in the fore-ground, take

away from the air-drawn distinctions of the blue glimmering horizon? Is

there any want of that endless airy space, where the eye wanders at

liberty under the open sky, explores distant objects, and returns back

as from a delightful journey? There is no comparison between Claude and

Wilson. Sir Joshua Reynolds used to say, that there would be another

Raphael before there would be another Claude. His landscapes have all

that is exquisite and refined in art and nature. Every thing is moulded

into grace and harmony; and, at the touch of his pencil, shepherds with

their flocks, temples and groves, and winding glades, and scattered

hamlets, rise up in never-ending succession, under the azure sky and the

resplendent sun, while

‘Universal Pan,

Knit with the Graces, and the hours in dance,

Leads on the eternal spring.——’

Michael Angelo has left, in one of his sonnets, a fine apostrophe to the

earliest poet of Italy:

‘Fain would I, to be what our Dante was,

Forego the happiest fortunes of mankind.’

What landscape-painter does not feel this of Claude.[55]

GAINSBOROUGH.—We have heard an anecdote connected with the reputation of

Gainsborough’s pictures, which rests on pretty good authority. Sir

Joshua Reynolds, at one of the Academy dinners, speaking of

Gainsborough, said to a friend,—‘He is undoubtedly the best English

landscape-painter.’ ‘No,’ said Wilson, who overheard the conversation,

‘he is not the best landscape-painter, but he is the best

portrait-painter in England.’ They were both wrong; but the story is

creditable to the versatility of Gainsborough’s talents.

Those of his portraits which we have seen are not in the first rank.

They are in a good measure imitations of Vandyke; and have more an air

of gentility, than of nature. His landscapes are of two classes or

periods; his early and his later pictures. The former are minute

imitations of nature, or of painters who imitated nature, such as

Ruysdael, &c. some of which have great truth and clearness. His later

pictures are flimsy caricatures of Rubens, who himself carried

inattention to the details to the utmost limit that it would bear. Many

of Gainsborough’s latter landscapes may be compared to bad water-colour

drawings, washed in by mechanical movements of the hand, without any

communication with the eye. The truth seems to be, that Gainsborough

found there was something wanting in his _early manner_, that is,

something beyond the literal imitation of the details of natural

objects; and he appears to have concluded rather hastily, that the way

to arrive at that _something more_, was to discard truth and nature

altogether. His fame rests principally, at present, on his fancy-pieces,

cottage-children, shepherd-boys, &c. These have often great truth, great

sweetness, and the subjects are often chosen with great felicity. We too

often find, however, even in his happiest efforts, a consciousness in

the turn of the limbs, and a pensive languor in the expression, which is

not taken from nature. We think the gloss of art is never so ill

bestowed as on such subjects, the essence of which is simplicity. It is

perhaps the general fault of Gainsborough, that he presents us with an

ideal common life, of which we have had a surfeit in poetry and romance.

His subjects are softened, and sentimentalised too much; it is not

simple unaffected nature that we see, but nature sitting for her

picture. Our artist, we suspect, led the way to that masquerade style,

which piques itself on giving the air of an Adonis to the driver of a

hay-cart, and models the features of a milk-maid on the principles of

the antique. His _Woodman’s Head_ is admirable. Nor can too much praise

be given to his _Shepherd Boy in a Storm_; in which the unconscious

simplicity of the boy’s expression, looking up with his hands folded and

with timid wonder,—the noisy chattering of a magpie perched above,—and

the rustling of the coming storm in the branches of the trees, produce a

most delightful and romantic impression on the mind.

Gainsborough was to be considered, perhaps, rather as a man of delicate

taste, and of an elegant and feeling mind, than as a man of genius; as a

lover of the art, rather than an artist. He devoted himself to it, with

a view to amuse and soothe his mind, with the ease of a gentleman, not

with the severity of a professional student. He wished to make his

pictures, like himself, amiable; but a too constant desire to please

almost unavoidably leads to affectation and effeminacy. He wanted that

vigour of intellect, which perceives the beauty of truth; and thought

that painting was to be gained, like other mistresses, by flattery and

smiles. It was an error which we are disposed to forgive in one, around

whose memory, both as an artist and a man, many fond recollections, many

vain regrets, must always linger.[56]

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.—The authority of Sir Joshua Reynolds, both from his

example and instructions, has had, and still continues to have, a

considerable influence on the state of art in this country. That

influence has been on the whole unquestionably beneficial in itself, as

well as highly creditable to the rare talents and elegant mind of Sir

Joshua; for it has raised the art of painting from the lowest state of

degradation,—of dry, meagre, lifeless inanity, to something at least

respectable, and bearing an affinity to the rough strength and bold

spirit of the national character. Whether the same implicit deference to

his authority, which has helped to advance the art thus far, may not,

among other causes, limit and retard its future progress? Whether there

are not certain original errors, both in his principles and practice,

which, the farther they are proceeded in, the farther they will lead us

from the truth? Whether there is not a systematic bias from the right

line by which alone we can arrive at the goal of the highest

perfection?—are questions well worth considering.

We shall begin with Sir Joshua’s merits as an artist. There is one error

which we wish to correct at setting out, because we think it important.

There is not a greater or more unaccountable mistake than the

supposition that Sir Joshua Reynolds owed his success or excellence in

his profession, to his having been the first who introduced into this

country more general principles of the art, and who raised portrait to

the dignity of history from the low drudgery of copying the

peculiarities, meannesses, and details of individual nature, which was

all that had been attempted by his immediate predecessors. This is so

far from being true, that the very reverse is the fact. If Sir Joshua

did not give these details and peculiarities so much as might be wished,

those who went before him did not give them at all. Those pretended

general principles of the art, which, it is said, ‘alone give value and

dignity to it,’ had been pushed to their extremest absurdity before his

time; and it was in getting rid of the mechanical systematic monotony

and _middle forms_, by the help of which Lely, Kneller, Hudson, the

French painters, and others, carried on their manufactories of history

and face painting, and in returning (as far as he did return) to the

truth and force of individual nature, that the secret both of his fame

and fortune lay. The pedantic, servile race of artists, whom Reynolds

superseded, had carried the abstract principle of improving on nature to

such a degree of refinement, that they left it out altogether; and

confounded all the varieties and irregularities of form, feature,

character, expression or attitude, in the same artificial mould of

fancied grace and fashionable insipidity. The portraits of Kneller, for

example, seem all to have been turned in a machine; the eye-brows are

arched as if by a compass; the mouth curled, and the chin dimpled, the

head turned on one side, and the hands placed in the same affected

position. The portraits of this mannerist, therefore, are as like one

another as the dresses which were then in fashion; and have the same

‘dignity and value’ as the full bottomed wigs which graced their

originals. The superiority of Reynolds consisted in his being varied and

natural, instead of being artificial and uniform. The spirit, grace, or

dignity which he added to his portraits, he borrowed from nature, and

not from the ambiguous quackery of rules. His feeling of truth and

nature was too strong to permit him to adopt the unmeaning style of

Kneller and Hudson; but his logical acuteness was not such as to enable

him to detect the verbal fallacies and speculative absurdities which he

had learned from Richardson and Coypel; and, from some defects in his

own practice, he was led to confound negligence with grandeur. But of

this hereafter.

Sir Joseph Reynolds owed his vast superiority over his contemporaries to

incessant practice, and habitual attention to nature, to quick organic

sensibility, to considerable power of observation, and still greater

taste in perceiving and availing himself of those excellences of others,

which lay within his own walk of art. We can by no means look upon Sir

Joshua as having a claim to the first rank of genius. He would hardly

have been a great painter, if other greater painters had not lived

before him. He would not have given a first impulse to the art, nor did

he advance any part of it beyond the point where he found it. He did not

present any new view of nature, nor is he to be placed in the same class

with those who did. Even in colour, his pallet was spread for him by the

old Masters, and his eye imbibed its full perception of depth and

harmony of tone, from the Dutch and Venetian schools, rather than from

nature. His early pictures are poor and flimsy. He indeed learned to see

the finer qualities of nature through the works of art, which he,

perhaps, might never have discovered in nature itself. He became rich by

the accumulation of borrowed wealth, and his genius was the offspring of

taste. He combined and applied the materials of others to his own

purpose, with admirable success; he was an industrious compiler, or

skilful translator, not an original inventor in art. The art would

remain, in all its essential elements, just where it is, if Sir Joshua

had never lived. He has supplied the industry of future plagiarists with

no new materials. But it has been well observed, that the value of every

work of art, as well as the genius of the artist, depends, not more on

the degree of excellence, than on the degree of originality displayed in

it. Sir Joshua, however, was perhaps the most original imitator that

ever appeared in the world; and the reason of this, in a great measure,

was, that he was compelled to combine what he saw in art, with what he

saw in nature, which was constantly before him. The portrait-painter is,

in this respect, much less liable than the historical painter, to

deviate into the extremes of manner and affectation; for he cannot

discard nature altogether, under the excuse that _she only puts him

out_. He must meet her, face to face; and if he is not incorrigible, he

will see something there that cannot fail to be of service to him.

Another circumstance which must have been favourable to Sir Joshua was,

that though not the originator _in point of time_, he was the first

Englishman who transplanted the higher excellences of his profession

into his own country, and had the merit, if not of an inventor, of a

reformer of the art. His mode of painting had the graces of novelty in

the age and country in which he lived; and he had, therefore, all the

stimulus to exertion, which arose from the enthusiastic applause of his

contemporaries, and from a desire to expand and refine the taste of the

public.

To an eye for colour and for effects of light and shade, Sir Joshua

united a strong perception of individual character,—a lively feeling of

the quaint and grotesque in expression, and great mastery of execution.

He had comparatively little knowledge of drawing, either as it regarded

proportion or form. The beauty of some of his female faces and figures

arises almost entirely from their softness and fleshiness. His pencil

wanted firmness and precision. The expression, even of his best

portraits, seldom implies either lofty or impassioned intellect or

delicate sensibility. He also wanted grace, if grace requires

simplicity. The mere negation of stiffness and formality is not grace;

for looseness and distortion are not grace. His favourite attitudes are

not easy and natural, but the affectation of ease and nature. They are

violent deviations from a right line. Many of the figures in his

fancy-pieces are placed in postures in which they could not remain for

an instant without extreme difficulty and awkwardness. We might instance

the _Girl drawing with a Pencil_, and some others. His portraits are his

best pictures, and of these his portraits of men are the best; his

pictures of children are the next in value. He had fine subjects for the

former, from the masculine sense and originality of character of many of

the persons whom he painted; and he had also a great advantage (as far

as practice went) in painting a number of persons of every rank and

description. Some of the finest and most interesting are those of Dr.

Johnson, Goldsmith (which is, however, too much a mere sketch), Baretti,

Dr. Burney, John Hunter, and the inimitable portrait of Bishop Newton.

The elegant simplicity of character, expression, and drawing, preserved

throughout the last picture, even to the attitude and mode of handling,

discover the true genius of a painter. We also remember to have seen a

print of Thomas Warton, than which nothing could be more characteristic

or more natural. These were all Reynolds’s intimate acquaintances, and

it could not be said of them that they were men of ‘no mark or

likelihood.’ Their traits had probably sunk deep into the artist’s mind;

he painted them as pure studies from nature, copying the real image

existing before him, with all its known characteristic peculiarities;

and, with as much wisdom as good-nature, sacrificing the graces on the

altar of friendship. They are downright portraits, and nothing more, and

they are valuable in proportion. In his portraits of women, on the

contrary (with very few exceptions), Sir Joshua appears to have

consulted either the vanity of his employers or his own fanciful theory.

They have not the look of individual nature, nor have they, to

compensate the want of this, either peculiar elegance of form,

refinement of expression, delicacy of complexion, or gracefulness of

manner. Vandyke’s attitudes have been complained of as stiff and

confined. Reynolds, to avoid this defect, has fallen into the contrary

extreme of negligence and contortion. His female figures which aim at

gentility, are twisted into that serpentine line, the idea of which he

ridiculed so much in Hogarth. Indeed, Sir Joshua, in his _Discourses_

(see his account of Correggio), speaks of grace as if it were nearly

allied to affectation. Grace signifies that which is pleasing and

natural in the posture and motions of the human form, as Beauty is more

properly applied to the form itself. That which is stiff, inanimate, and

without motion, cannot, therefore, be graceful; but, to suppose that a

figure, to be graceful, need only be put into some languishing or

extravagant posture, is to mistake flutter and affectation for ease and

elegance.

Sir Joshua’s children, as we have said above, are among his _chef

d’œuvres_. The faces of children have in general that want of precision

of outline, that prominence of relief, and strong contrast of colour,

which were peculiarly adapted to his style of painting. The arch

simplicity of expression, and the grotesque character which he has given

to the heads of his children, were, however, borrowed from Correggio.

His Puck is the most masterly of all these; and the colouring,

execution, and character, alike exquisite. The single figure of the

Infant Hercules is also admirable. Many of those to which his friends

have suggested historical titles are mere common portraits or casual

studies. Thus the Infant Samuel is an innocent little child saying its

prayers at the bed’s feet: it has nothing to do with the story of the

Hebrew prophet. The same objection will apply to many of his

fancy-pieces and historical compositions. There is often no connection

between the picture and the subject but the name. Even his celebrated

Iphigenia (beautiful as she is, and prodigal of her charms) does not

answer to the idea of the story. In drawing the naked figure, Sir

Joshua’s want of truth and firmness of outline, became more apparent;

and his mode of laying on his colours, which, in the face and

extremities, was relieved and broken by the abrupt inequalities of

surface and variety of tints in each part, produced a degree of

heaviness and opacity in the larger masses of flesh-colour, which can

indeed only be avoided by extreme delicacy, or extreme lightness of

execution.

Shall we speak the truth at once? In our opinion, Sir Joshua did not

possess either that high imagination, or those strong feelings, without

which no painter can become a poet in his art. His larger historical

compositions have been generally allowed to be most liable to objection,

in a critical point of view. We shall not attempt to judge them by

scientific or technical rules, but make one or two observations on the

character and feeling displayed in them. The highest subject which Sir

Joshua has attempted was the _Count Ugolino_, and it was, as might be

expected from the circumstances, a total failure. He had, it seems,

painted a study of an old beggar-man’s head; and some person, who must

have known as little of painting as of poetry, persuaded the

unsuspecting artist, that it was the exact expression of Dante’s Count

Ugolino, one of the most grand, terrific, and appalling characters in

modern fiction. Reynolds, who knew nothing of the matter but what he was

told, took his good fortune for granted, and only extended his canvass

to admit the rest of the figures. The attitude and expression of Count

Ugolino himself, are what the artist intended them to be, till they were

pampered into something else by the officious vanity of friends—those of

a common mendicant at the corner of a street, waiting patiently for some

charitable donation. The imagination of the painter took refuge in a

parish work-house, instead of ascending the steps of the Tower of

Famine. The hero of Dante is a lofty, high-minded, and unprincipled

Italian nobleman, who had betrayed his country to the enemy, and who, as

a punishment for his crime, is shut up with his four sons in the dungeon

of the citadel, where he shortly finds the doors barred against him, and

food withheld. He in vain watches with eager feverish eye the opening of

the door at the accustomed hour, and his looks turn to stone; his

children one by one drop down dead at his feet; he is seized with

blindness, and, in the agony of his despair, he gropes on his knees

after them,

——‘Calling each by name

For three days after they were dead.’

Even in the other world, he is represented with the same fierce,

dauntless, unrelenting character, ‘gnawing the skull of his adversary,

his fell repast.’ The subject of the _Laocoon_ is scarcely equal to that

described by Dante. The horror _there_ is physical and momentary; in the

other, the imagination fills up the long, obscure, dreary void of

despair, and joins its unutterable pangs to the loud cries of nature.

What is there in the picture to convey the ghastly horrors of the scene,

or the mighty energy of soul with which they are borne?[57] His picture

of _Macbeth_ is full of wild and grotesque images; and the apparatus of

the witches contains a very elaborate and well arranged inventory of

dreadful objects. His Cardinal Beaufort is a fine display of rich mellow

colouring; and there is something gentlemanly and Shakespearian in the

King and the attendant Nobleman. At the same time, we think the

expression of the Cardinal himself is too much one of physical horror, a

canine gnashing of the teeth, like a man strangled. This is not the best

style of history. Mrs. Siddons as the _Tragic Muse_, is neither the

tragic muse nor Mrs. Siddons; and we have still stronger objections to

_Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy_.

There is a striking similarity between Sir Joshua Reynolds’s theory and

his practice; and as each of these has been appealed to in support of

the other, it is necessary that we should examine both. Sir Joshua’s

practice was generally confined to the illustration of that part of his

theory, which relates to the more immediate imitation of nature, and it

is to what he says on this subject, that we shall chiefly direct our

observations at present.

He lays it down as a general and invariable rule, that ‘_the great style

in art, and the most_ PERFECT IMITATION OF NATURE, _consists in avoiding

the details and peculiarities of particular objects_.’ This sweeping

principle he applies almost indiscriminately to _Portrait_, _History_,

and _Landscape_; and he appears to have been led to the conclusion

itself, from supposing the imitation of particulars to be inconsistent

with general truth and effect. It appears to us, that the highest

perfection of the art depends, not on separating but on uniting general

truth and effect with individual distinctness and accuracy.

_First_, it is said, that the great style in painting, as it relates to

the immediate imitation of external nature, consists in avoiding the

details of particular objects. It consists neither in giving nor

avoiding them, but in something quite different from both. Any one may

avoid the details. So far, there is no difference between the

_Cartoons_, and a common sign-painting. Greatness consists in giving the

larger masses and proportions with truth;—this does not prevent giving

the smaller ones too. The utmost grandeur of outline, and the broadest

masses of light and shade, are perfectly compatible with the utmost

minuteness and delicacy of detail, as may be seen in nature. It is not,

indeed, common to see both qualities combined in the imitations of

nature, any more than the combination of other excellences; nor are we

here saying to which the principal attention of the artist should be

directed; but we deny, that, considered in themselves, the absence of

the one quality is necessary or sufficient to the production of the

other.

If, for example, the form of the eye-brow is correctly given, it will be

perfectly indifferent to the truth or grandeur of the design, whether it

consists of one broad mark, or is composed of a number of hair-lines,

arranged in the same order. So, if the lights and shades are disposed in

fine and large masses, the _breadth_ of the picture, as it is called,

cannot possibly be affected by the filling up of those masses with the

details, that is, with the subordinate distinctions which appear in

nature. The anatomical details in Michael Angelo, the ever-varying

outline of Raphael, the perfect execution of the Greek statues, do not

destroy their symmetry or dignity of form; and, in the finest specimens

of the composition of colour, we may observe the largest masses combined

with the greatest variety in the parts of which those masses are

composed.

The _gross_ style consists in giving no details; the _finical_ in giving

nothing else. Nature contains both large and small parts, both masses

and details; and the same may be said of the most perfect works of art.

The union of both kinds of excellence, of strength with delicacy, as far

as the limits of human capacity, and the shortness of human life would

permit, is that which has established the reputation of the most

successful imitators of nature. Farther, their most finished works are

their best. The predominance, indeed, of either excellence in the best

Masters, has varied according to their opinion of the relative value of

these qualities,—the labour they had the time or the patience to bestow

on their works,—the skill of the artist,—or the nature and extent of his

subject. But, if the rule here objected to (that the careful imitation

of the parts injures the effect of the whole), be once admitted,

slovenliness would become another name for genius, and the most

unfinished performance be the best. That such has been the confused

impression left on the mind by the perusal of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s

Discourses, is evident from the practice, as well as conversation, of

many (even eminent) artists. The late Mr. Opie proceeded entirely on

this principle. He left many admirable studies of portraits,

particularly in what relates to the disposition and effect of light and

shade; but he never finished any of the parts, thinking them beneath the

attention of a great artist. He went over the whole head the second day

as he had done the first, and therefore made no progress. The picture at

last, having neither the lightness of a sketch, nor the accuracy of a

finished work, looked coarse, laboured, and heavy. Titian is the most

perfect example of high finishing. In him the details are engrafted on

the most profound knowledge of effect, and attention to the character of

what he represented. His pictures have the exact look of nature, the

very tone and texture of flesh. The variety of his tints is blended into

the greatest simplicity. There is a proper degree both of solidity and

transparency. All the parts hang together; every stroke tells, and adds

to the effect of the rest. Sir Joshua seems to deny that Titian finished

much; and says that he produced, by two or three strokes of his pencil,

effects which the most laborious copyist would in vain attempt to equal.

It is true, he availed himself in some degree of what is called

_execution_, to facilitate his imitation of the details and

peculiarities of nature; but it was to facilitate, not to supersede it.

There can be nothing more distinct than execution and daubing. Titian,

however, made a very moderate, though a very admirable, use of this

power; and those who copy his pictures will find that the simplicity is

in the results, not in the details. To conclude our observations on this

head, we will only add, that, while the artist thinks there is any thing

to be done, either to the whole or to the parts of his picture, which

can give it still more the look of nature, if he is willing to proceed,

we would not advise him to desist. This rule is the more necessary to

the young student, for he will relax in his attention as he grows older.

And again, with respect to the subordinate parts of a picture, there is

no danger that he will bestow a disproportionate degree of labour upon

them, because he will not feel the same interest in copying them, and

because a much less degree of accuracy will serve every purpose of

deception.

_Secondly_, with regard to the imitation of expression, we can hardly

agree with Sir Joshua, that ‘the perfection of portrait-painting

consists in giving the general idea or character without the individual

peculiarities.’ No doubt, if we were to choose between the general

character, and the peculiarities of feature, we ought to prefer the

former. But, they are so far from being incompatible with, that they are

not without some difficulty distinguishable from, each other. There is a

general look of the face, a predominant expression arising from the

correspondence and connection of the different parts, which it is of the

first and last importance to give; and without which, no elaboration of

detached parts, or marking of the peculiarities of single features, is

worth any thing; but which, at the same time, is not destroyed, but

assisted by the careful finishing, and still more by giving the exact

outline of each part.

It is on this point that the modern French and English schools differ,

and (in our opinion) are both wrong. The English seem generally to

suppose, that if they only leave out the subordinate parts, they are

sure of the general result. The French, on the contrary, as erroneously

imagine, that, by attending successively to each separate part, they

must infallibly arrive at a correct whole; not considering that, besides

the parts, there is their relation to each other, and the general

expression stamped upon them by the character of the individual, which

to be seen must be felt; for it is demonstrable, that all character and

expression, to be adequately represented, must be perceived by the mind,

and not by the eye only. The French painters give only lines and precise

differences; the English only general masses, and strong effects. Hence

the two nations reproach one another with the difference of their styles

of art,—the one as dry, hard, and minute,—the other as gross, gothic,

and unfinished; and they will probably remain for ever satisfied with

each other’s defects, as they afford a very tolerable fund of

consolation on either side.

Much has been said of _historical portrait_; and we have no objection to

this phrase, if properly understood. The giving historical truth to a

portrait, means, then, the representing the individual under one

consistent, probable, and striking view; or showing the different

features, muscles, &c. in one action, and modified by one principle. A

portrait thus painted may be said to be _historical_; that is, it

carries internal evidence of truth and propriety with it; and the number

of individual peculiarities, as long as they are true to nature, cannot

lessen, but must add to the strength of the general impression.

It might be shown (if there were room in this place) that Sir Joshua has

constructed his theory of the _ideal_ in art, upon the same mistaken

principle of the negation or abstraction of _particular nature_. The

_ideal_ is not a negative but a positive thing. The leaving out the

details or peculiarities of an individual face does not make it one jot

more ideal. To paint history, is to paint nature as answering to a

general, predominant, or preconceived idea in the mind, of strength,

beauty, action, passion, thought, &c.; but the way to do this is not to

leave out the details, but to incorporate the general idea with the

details;—that is, to show the same expression actuating and modifying

every movement of the muscles, and the same character preserved

consistently through every part of the body. Grandeur does not consist

in omitting the parts, but in connecting all the parts into a whole, and

in giving their combined and varied action: abstract truth or ideal

perfection does not consist in rejecting the peculiarities of form, but

in rejecting all those which are not consistent with the character

intended to be given; and in following up the same _general idea_ of

softness, voluptuousness, strength, activity, or any combination of

these through every ramification of the frame. But these modifications

of form or expression can only be learnt from nature, and therefore the

perfection of art must always be sought in nature. The ideal properly

applies as much to the _idea_ of ugliness, weakness, folly, meanness,

vice, as of beauty, strength, wisdom, magnanimity, or virtue. The

antique heads of fauns and satyrs, of Pan or Silenus, are quite as ideal

as those of the Apollo or Bacchus; and Hogarth adhered to an idea of

humour in his faces, as Raphael did to an idea of sentiment. But Raphael

found the character of sentiment in nature as much as Hogarth did that

of humour; otherwise neither of them would have given one or the other

with such perfect truth, purity, force, and keeping. Sir Joshua

Reynolds’s _ideal_, as consisting in a mere negation of individuality,

bears just the same relation to real beauty or grandeur as caricature

does to true comic character.[58]

* * * * *

PRESENT STATE OF BRITISH ART.—It is owing either to a mistaken theory of

elevated art, or to the want of models in nature, that the English are

hitherto without any painter of serious historical subjects, who can be

placed in the first rank of genius. Many of the pictures of modern

artists have shown a capacity for correct and happy delineation of

actual objects and domestic incidents, only inferior to the masterpieces

of the Dutch School. We might here mention the names of Wilkie, Collins,

Heaphy, and many others. We have portrait-painters, who have attained to

a very high degree of excellence in all the branches of their art. In

landscape, Turner has shown a knowledge of the effects of air, and of

powerful relief in objects, which was never surpassed. But in the

highest walk of art—in giving the movements of the finer or loftier

passions of the mind, this country has not produced a single painter,

who has made even a faint approach to the excellence of the great

Italian painters. We have, indeed, a good number of specimens of the

clay-figure, the anatomical mechanism, the regular proportions measured

by a two-foot rule;—large canvasses, covered with stiff figures,

arranged in deliberate order, with the characters and story correctly

expressed by uplifted eyes or hands, according to old receipt-books for

the passions;—and with all the hardness and inflexibility of figures

carved in wood, and painted over in good strong body colours, that look

‘as if some of nature’s journeymen had made them, and not made them

well.’ But we still want a Prometheus to give life to the cumbrous mass,

to throw an intellectual light over the opaque image,—to embody the

inmost refinements of thought to the outward eye,—to lay bare the very

soul of passion. That picture is of little comparative value which can

be completely _translated_ into another language,—of which the

description in a common catalogue conveys all that is expressed by the

picture itself; for it is the excellence of every art to give what can

be given by no other, in the same degree. Much less is that picture to

be esteemed, which only injures and defaces the idea already existing in

the mind’s eye,—which does not come up to the conception which the

imagination forms of the subject, and substitutes a dull reality for

high sentiment; for the art is in this case an incumbrance, not an

assistance, and interferes with, instead of adding to, the stock of our

pleasurable sensations. But we should be at a loss to point out (we will

not say any English picture, but certainly) any English painter, who, in

heroic and classical composition, has risen to the height of his

subject, and answered the expectation of the well-informed spectator, or

excited the same impression by visible means, as had been excited by

words, or by reflection.[59] That this inferiority in English art is not

owing to a deficiency of genius, imagination, or passion, is proved

sufficiently by the works of our poets and dramatic writers, which, in

loftiness and force, are not surpassed by those of any other nation. But

whatever may be the depth of internal thought and feeling in the English

character, it seems to be _more internal_; and (whether this is owing to

habit, or physical constitution) to have, comparatively, a less

immediate and powerful communication with the organic expression of

passion,—which exhibits the thoughts and feelings in the countenance,

and furnishes matter for the historic muse of painting. The English

artist is instantly sensible that the flutter, grimace, and extravagance

of the French physiognomy, are incompatible with high history; and we

are at no loss to explain in this way, that is, from the defect of

living models, how it is that the productions of the French school are

marked with all the affectation of national caricature, or sink into

tame and lifeless imitations of the antique. May we not account

satisfactorily for the general defects of our own historic productions,

in a similar way,—from a certain inertness and constitutional phlegm,

which does not habitually impress the workings of the mind in

correspondent traces on the countenance, and which may also render us

less sensible of these outward and visible signs of passion, even when

they are so impressed there? The irregularity of proportion, and want of

symmetry, in the structure of the national features, though it certainly

enhances the difficulty of infusing natural grace and grandeur into the

works of art, rather accounts for our not having been able to attain the

exquisite refinements of Grecian sculpture, than for our not having

rivalled the Italian painters in expression.

Mr. West does not form an exception to, but a confirmation of, these

general observations. His pictures have all that can be required in what

relates to the composition of the subject; to the regular arrangement of

the groups; the anatomical proportions of the human body; and the

technical knowledge of expression,—as far as expression is reducible to

abstract rules, and is merely a vehicle for the telling of a story; so

that anger, wonder, sorrow, pity, &c. have each their appropriate and

well-known designations. These, however, are but the instrumental parts

of the art, the means, not the end; but beyond these, Mr. West’s

pictures do not go. They never ‘snatch a grace beyond the reach of art.’

They exhibit the _mask_, not the _soul_ of expression. We doubt,

whether, in the entire range of Mr. West’s productions, meritorious and

admirable as the design and composition often are, there is to be found

one truly fine head. They display a total want of gusto. In Raphael, the

same divine spirit breathes through every part; it either agitates the

inmost frame, or plays in gentle undulations on the trembling surface.

Whether we see his figures bending with all the blandishments of

maternal love, or standing in the motionless silence of thought, or

hurried into the tumult of action, the whole is under the impulse of

deep passion. But Mr. West sees hardly any thing in the human face but

bones and cartilages; or, if he avails himself of the more flexible

machinery of nerves and muscles, it is only by rule and method. The

effect is not that which the soul of passion impresses on the

countenance, and which the soul of genius alone can seize; but such as

might, in a good measure, be given to wooden puppets or pasteboard

figures, pulled by wires, and taught to open the mouth, or knit the

forehead, or raise the eyes in a very scientific manner. In fact, there

is no want of art or learning in his pictures, but of nature and

feeling.

MEANS OF PROMOTING THE FINE ARTS.—It is not long ago that an opinion was

very general, that all that was wanting to the highest splendour and

perfection of the arts in this country might be supplied by Academies

and public institutions. We believe the most sanguine promoters of this

scheme have at present relaxed in their zeal. There are _three_ ways in

which Academies and public institutions may be supposed to promote the

fine arts; either by furnishing the best models to the student; or by

holding out immediate emolument and patronage; or by improving the

public taste. We shall bestow a short consideration on the influence of

each.

First, a constant reference to the best models of art necessarily tends

to enervate the mind, to intercept our view of nature, and to distract

the attention by a variety of unattainable excellence. An intimate

acquaintance with the works of the celebrated masters may indeed add to

the indolent refinements of taste, but will never produce one work of

original genius, one great artist. In proof of the general truth of this

observation, we might cite the history of the progress and decay of art

in all countries where it has flourished. It is a little extraordinary,

that if the real sources of perfection are to be sought in Schools, in

Models, and Public Institutions, that whereever schools, models, and

public institutions have existed, there the arts should regularly

disappear,—that the effect should never follow from the cause.

The Greek statues remain to this day unrivalled,—the undisputed standard

of the most perfect symmetry of form. In Italy the art of painting has

had the same fate. After its long and painful struggles in the time of

the earlier artists, Cimabue, Ghirlandaio, Massacio, and others, it

burst out with a light almost too dazzling to behold, in the works of

Titian, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Correggio; which was reflected,

with diminished lustre, in the productions of their immediate disciples;

lingered for a while with the school of the Carraccis, and expired with

Guido Reni. From that period, painting sunk to so low a state in Italy

as to excite only pity or contempt. There is not a single name to redeem

its faded glory from utter oblivion. Yet this has not been owing to any

want of Dilettanti and Della Cruscan societies,—of academies of

Florence, of Bologna, of Parma, and Pisa,—of honorary members and

Foreign Correspondents—of pupils and teachers, professors and patrons,

and the whole busy tribe of critics and connoisseurs.

What is become of the successors of Rubens, Rembrandt, and Vandyke? What

have the French Academicians done for the arts; or what will they ever

do, but add intolerable affectation and grimace to centos of heads from

the antique, and caricature Greek forms by putting them into opera

attitudes? Nicholas Poussin is the only example on record in favour of

the contrary theory, and we have already sufficiently noticed his

defects. What extraordinary advances have we made in our own country in

consequence of the establishment of the Royal Academy? What greater

names has the English school to boast than those of Hogarth, Reynolds,

and Wilson, who created it? Even the venerable President of the Royal

Academy was one of its founders.

Again, we might cite, in support of our assertion, the works of Carlo

Maratti, of Raphael Mengs, or of any of the effeminate school of critics

and copyists, who have attempted to blend the borrowed beauties of

others in a perfect whole. What do they contain, but a negation of every

excellence which they pretend to combine? The assiduous imitator, in his

attempts to grasp all, loses his hold of that which was placed within

his reach, and, from aspiring at universal excellence, sinks into

uniform mediocrity. The student who has models of every kind of

excellence constantly before him, is not only diverted from that

particular walk of art, in which, by patient exertion, he might have

obtained ultimate success, but, from having his imagination habitually

raised to an overstrained standard of refinement, by the sight of the

most exquisite examples in art, he becomes impatient and dissatisfied

with his own attempts, determines to reach the same perfection all at

once, or throws down his pencil in despair. Thus the young enthusiast,

whose genius and energy were to rival the great Masters of antiquity, or

create a new æra in the art itself, baffled in his first sanguine

expectations, reposes in indolence on what others have done; wonders how

such perfection could have been achieved,—grows familiar with the

minutest peculiarities of the different schools,—flutters between the

splendour of Rubens, and the grace of Raphael, and ends in nothing. Such

was not Correggio. He saw and felt for himself; he was of no school, but

had his own world of art to create. That image of truth and beauty,

which existed in his mind, he was forced to construct for himself,

without rules or models. As it had arisen in his mind from the

contemplation of nature, so he could only hope to embody it to others,

by the imitation of nature. We can conceive the work growing under his

hands by slow and patient touches, approaching nearer to perfection,

softened into finer grace, gaining strength from delicacy, and at last

reflecting the pure image of nature on the canvass. Such is always the

true progress of art; such are the necessary means by which the greatest

works of every kind have been produced. They have been the effect of

power gathering strength from exercise, and warmth from its own

impulse—stimulated to fresh efforts by conscious success, and by the

surprise and strangeness of a new world of beauty, opening to the

delighted imagination. The triumphs of art were victories over the

difficulties of art; the prodigies of genius, the result of that

strength which had grappled with nature. Titian copied even a plant or a

piece of common drapery from the objects themselves; and Raphael is

known to have made elaborate studies of the principal heads in his

pictures. All the great painters of this period were thoroughly grounded

in the first principles of their art; had learned to copy a face, a

hand, or an eye, and had acquired patience to finish a single figure,

before they undertook to paint extensive compositions. They knew that

though Fame is represented with her head above the clouds, her feet rest

upon the earth. Genius can only have its full scope, where, though much

may have been done, more remains to do; where models exist chiefly to

show the deficiencies of art, and where the perfect idea is left to be

filled up in the painter’s imagination. When once the stimulus of

novelty and of original exertion is wanting, generations repose on what

has been done for them by their predecessors, as individuals, after a

certain period, rest satisfied with the knowledge they have already

acquired.

With regard to the pecuniary advantages arising from the public

patronage of the arts;—the plan unfortunately defeats itself; for it

multiplies its objects faster than it can satisfy their claims; and

raises up a swarm of competitors for the prize of genius from the dregs

of idleness and dulness. The real patron is anxious to reward merit, not

to encourage gratuitous pretensions to it; to see that the man of genius

_takes no detriment_, that another Wilson is not left to perish for

want;—not to propagate the breed of embryo candidates for fame. Offers

of public and promiscuous patronage can in general be little better than

a species of intellectual seduction, administering provocatives to

vanity and avarice, and leading astray the youth of the nation by

fallacious hopes, which can scarcely ever be realized. At the same time,

the good that might be done by private taste and benevolence, is in a

great measure defeated. The moment that a few individuals of discernment

and liberal spirit become members of a public body, they are no longer

anything more than parts of a machine, which is usually wielded at will

by some officious, overweening pretender; their good-sense and

good-nature are lost in a mass of ignorance and presumption; their names

only serve to reflect credit on proceedings in which they have no share,

and which are determined on by a majority of persons who have no

interest in the arts but what arises from the importance attached to

them by regular organization, and no opinions but what are dictated to

them by some self-constituted judge. As far as we have had an

opportunity of observing the conduct of such bodies of men, instead of

taking the lead of public opinion, of giving a firm, manly, and

independent tone to that opinion, they make it their business to watch

all its caprices, and follow it in every casual turning. They dare not

give their sanction to sterling merit, struggling with difficulties, but

take advantage of its success, to reflect credit on their own reputation

for sagacity. Their taste is a servile dependant on their vanity, and

their patronage has an air of pauperism about it. Perhaps the only

public patronage which was ever really useful to the arts, or worthy of

them, was that which they received first in Greece, and afterwards in

Italy, from the religious institutions of the country; when the artist

felt himself, as it were, a servant at the altar; when his hand gave a

visible form to Gods or Heroes, Angels or Apostles; and when the

enthusiasm of genius was exalted by mingling with the flame of national

devotion. The artist was not here degraded, by being made the dependant

on the caprice of wealth or fashion, but felt himself at once the

servant and the benefactor of the public. He had to embody, by the

highest efforts of his art, subjects which were sacred to the

imagination and feelings of the spectators; there was a common link, a

mutual sympathy between them in their common faith. Every other mode of

patronage, but that which arises, either from the general institutions

and manners of a people, or from the real unaffected taste of

individuals, must, we conceive, be illegitimate, corrupted in its

source, and either ineffectual or injurious to its professed object.

Lastly, Academies and Institutions may be supposed to assist the

progress of the fine arts, by promoting a wider taste for them.

In general, it must happen in the first stages of the arts, that as none

but those who had a natural genius for them would attempt to practise

them,—so none but those who had a natural taste for them, would pretend

to judge of or criticise them. This must be an incalculable advantage to

the man of true genius; for it is no other than the privilege of being

tried by his peers. In an age when connoisseurship had not become a

fashion; when religion, war, and intrigue, occupied the time and

thoughts of the great, only those minds of superior refinement would be

led to notice the works of art, who had a real sense of their

excellence; and, in giving way to the powerful bent of his own genius,

the painter was most likely to consult the taste of his judges. He had

not to deal with pretenders to taste, through vanity, affectation, and

idleness. He had to appeal to the higher faculties of the soul,—to that

deep and innate sensibility to truth and beauty, which required only fit

objects to have its enthusiasm excited,—and to that independent strength

of mind, which, in the midst of ignorance and barbarism, hailed and

fostered genius whereever it met with it. Titian was patronised by

Charles V. Count Castiglione was the friend of Raphael. These were true

patrons and true critics; and, as there were no others (for the world,

in general, merely looked on and wondered), there can be little doubt

that such a period of dearth of factitious patronage would be most

favourable to the full developement of the greatest talents, and to the

attainment of the highest excellence.

By means of public institutions, the number of candidates for fame, and

pretenders to criticism, is increased beyond all calculation, while the

quantity of genius and feeling remain much the same as before; with

these disadvantages, that the man of original genius is often lost among

the crowd of competitors who would never have become such, but from

encouragement and example, and that the voice of the few whom nature

intended for judges, is apt to be drowned in the noisy and forward

suffrages of shallow smatterers in Taste.

JAMES BARRY

Barry (James) an eminent painter, was born in Cork, in Ireland, October

11, 1741. His father had been a builder, and at one time of his life, a

coasting trader between the two countries of England and Ireland. To

this business of a trader was James destined, and he actually made, when

a boy, several voyages; but these voyages being forced upon him, he on

one occasion ran away from the ship, and on others discovered such an

aversion to the life and habits of a sailor, as to induce his father to

quit all hopes of him in this line, and to suffer him to pursue his

inclinations, which led him to drawing and study. When on board his

father’s vessel, instead of handling sails and ropes, and climbing the

mast, he was generally occupied with a piece of black chalk, sketching

the coast, or drawing figures, as his fancy directed him. When his

father found that the idea of making a sailor of him must be given up,

he permitted him to acquire as much instruction as the schools of Cork

afforded; but long retained his aversion to the chalk drawings, with

which the floors and walls of the house were covered; the boy being

always engaged in some attempt at large figures, and early catching at

the means of representing action, attitude, and passion. It was at a

very early period of his life that some bookseller in Ireland,

undertaking to reprint a set of fables or emblems, young Barry offered

to furnish the drawings, and, as it is believed, helped to etch the

engravings, such as they were. At the schools in Cork, which he was sent

to, he was distinguished by his parts and industry above his

school-fellows; his habits differed from those of ordinary boys, as he

seldom mixed in their games or amusements, but at those times stole off

to his own room, where he worked at his pencil, or was studying some

book that he had borrowed or bought. He would spend whole nights in this

manner at his studies, to the alarm of his mother, who dreaded his

injuring his health or setting fire to the house, and who often kept up

his sister or the servant to watch him. His allowance of money he spent

in buying books or candles to read by; he sometimes locked himself up in

his room for days, and seldom slept upon his bed, or else made it so

hard as to take away the temptation or luxury of lying long in it.

Perhaps the unsocial and ascetic turn of his temper, which thus early

manifested itself, might be remarked as the source both of the

misfortunes of his life, and the defects of his genius. Common humanity,

a sense of pleasure, and a sympathy with the feelings of those around

us, is not more necessary to success in life, than it probably is to

success in the fine arts. Few things can be more fatal to the artist

than this sort of indifference to the common pleasures and pursuits of

life. If affected, it is bad; if real and constitutional, it is even

worse. It stuck to poor Barry to the last. It is not to be understood

that, at this period of his life, he led the life of an absolute

recluse, for he could and did occasionally join in any feats going on in

the neighbourhood, and was not behind other boys in such pastimes and

mischief as boys are usually fond of. An adventure which happened to him

about this time, and which left a strong impression on his mind, is

worth mentioning here. In one of his rambles in the neighbourhood, he

entered, one winter’s evening, an old, and, as he thought, an

uninhabited house, situate in a narrow bye-lane in the city of Cork. The

house was without doors or windows; but curiosity impelled him to enter,

and, after mounting a rotten staircase, which conducted to empty rooms

on different floors, he arrived at the garret, where he could just

discern, by the glimmering light of a few embers, two old and emaciated

figures, broken by age, disease, and want, sitting beside each other, in

the act, as far as their palsied efforts would permit, of tearing each

other’s faces; not a word being uttered by either, but with the most

horrible grimaces that malice could invent. They took no notice of his

entrance, but went on with their deeds of mutual hate, which made such

an impression on the boy that he ran down stairs, making his own

reflections, which he afterwards found verified through life, that man

and all animals are malicious and cruel in proportion as they are

impotent; and that age and poverty, two of the worst evils in human

life, almost always add to the calamities inherent in them by arts of

their own creating. In general, his great desire to improve his mind led

him to seek the society of educated men; who were not averse to receive

him, seeing his active and inquisitive disposition, and his seriousness

of manner, couched under a garb the plainest and coarsest; for he

adopted this kind of attire from his childhood, not from affectation,

but from an indifference to all dress. Having a retentive memory, he

profited by his own reading, and by the conversation of others, who

directed him also in the choice of books. As his finances were too low

to make many purchases, he borrowed books from his friends, and was in

the practice of making large extracts from such as he particularly

liked, and sometimes even of copying out the whole book, of which

several specimens were found among his papers, written in a stiff

school-boy’s hand. As his industry was excessive, his advances in the

acquisition of knowledge were rapid, and he was regarded as a prodigy by

his school-fellows. His mother being a zealous Catholic, the son could

not avoid mixing at times in the company of priests resident at Cork,

who pointed out to him books of polemical divinity, of which he became a

great reader, and for which he retained a strong bias during his

lifetime. He was said at one time to have been destined for the

priesthood, but for this report there is no authority. He, however,

always continued a Catholic, and in the decline of life manifested

rather a bigoted attachment to the religion of his early choice. For a

short interval he had a little wavering in his belief of revealed

religion in general; but a conversation with Mr. Edmund Burke put an end

to this levity. A book which Mr. Burke lent him, and which settled his

mind on this subject, was Bishop Butler’s _Analogy_; and, as a suitable

reward, he has placed this Prelate in the group of divines, in his

picture of Elysium.

About the age of seventeen he first attempted oil paintings; and between

that and the age of twenty-two, when he first went to Dublin, he

produced several large ones, which decorated his father’s house, and

represented subjects not often handled by young men; such as Æneas

escaping with his family from the flames of Troy; Susanna and the

Elders; Daniel in the Lion’s Den, &c. At this period, he also produced

the picture which first drew him into public notice, launched him on an

ampler theatre than his native town of Cork afforded, and, above all,

gained him the acquaintance and patronage of Mr. Burke. This picture was

founded on an old tradition of the landing of St. Patrick on the

sea-coast of Cashel, and of the conversion and baptism of the king of

that district by the patron saint of Ireland. The priest, in the act of

baptizing his new convert, inadvertently strikes the spear of the

crosier in the foot of the monarch. The holy father, absorbed in the

duties of his office, does not perceive what he has done, and the king,

without interrupting the ceremony, bears the pain with immoveable

fortitude. This incident, together with the gestures and expressions of

the attendants, certainly formed a good subject for an historical

picture; and Mr. Barry’s manner of treating it was such as to insure him

the applause and admiration of the connoisseurs of the metropolis of the

sister kingdom, where it was exhibited in 1762 or 1763. Mr. Barry took

this picture with him to Dublin; and afterwards going to the exhibition

room, being delighted with the encomiums it received from the

spectators, he could not refrain from making himself known as the

painter. His pretensions were treated with great contempt by the

company, and Barry burst into tears of anger and vexation. But the

incredulity of his hearers was a compliment paid to the real or supposed

excellence of his painting. It appears that a Dr. Sleigh, a physician of

Cork, and a sensible and amiable man, was first instrumental in

introducing young Barry to the notice of Mr. Burke. During their early

acquaintance, having fallen into a dispute on the subject of taste,

Barry quoted a passage in support of his opinion from the _Essay on the

Sublime and Beautiful_, which had been just then published anonymously,

and which Barry, in his youthful admiration of it, had, it seems,

transcribed entire. Burke affected to treat this work as a theoretical

romance, of no authority whatever, which threw Barry into such a rage in

its defence, that Mr. Burke thought it necessary to appease him by

owning himself to be the author. The scene ended in Barry’s running to

embrace him, and showing him the copy of the work which he had been at

the pains to transcribe. He passed his time in Dublin in reading,

drawing, and society. While he resided here, an anecdote is preserved of

him, which marks the character of the man. He had been enticed by his

companions several times to carousings at a tavern, and one night, as he

wandered home by himself, a thought struck him of the frivolity and

viciousness of thus mis-spending his time: the fault, he imagined, lay

in his money, and, therefore, without more ado, in order to avoid the

morrow’s temptation, he threw the whole of his wealth, which perhaps

amounted to no great sum, into the Liffey, and locked himself up at his

favourite pursuits. After a residence of seven or eight months in

Dublin, an opportunity offered of accompanying some part of Mr. Burke’s

family to London, which he eagerly embraced. This took place some time

in the year 1764, when he was twenty-three years of age, and with one of

those advantages which do not always fall to the lot of young artists on

their arrival in the British capital, that of being recommended to the

acquaintance of the most eminent men in the profession by the persuasive

eloquence of a man who, to genius in himself, added the rare and noble

quality of encouraging it in others; this was Mr. Burke, who lost no

time, not merely in making Barry known, but in procuring for him the

first of all objects to an inexperienced and destitute young artist,

employment. This employment was chiefly that of copying in oil drawings

by Mr. Stewart, better known by the name of Athenian Stewart; and

whether it suited the ambition of Barry or not, to be at this kind of

labour, yet there can be no doubt that he profited by his connection

with such a man as Stewart, and had full leisure to cast his eye about,

and to improve by the general aspect of art and artists that occupied

the period.

Mr. Burke and his other friends thinking it important that he should be

introduced to a wider and nobler school of art than this country

afforded, now came forward with the means necessary to accomplish this

object; and in the latter end of 1765 Mr. Barry proceeded to the

Continent, where he remained till the beginning of 1771, studying his

art with an enthusiasm which seemed to augur the highest success, and

making observations on the different _chef d’œuvres_ of Italy with equal

independence of judgment and nicety of discrimination. He was supported

during this period by the friendly liberality of the Burke family

(Edmund, William, and Richard), who allowed him forty pounds a-year for

his necessary expenditure, besides occasional remittances for particular

purposes. He proceeded first to Paris, then to Rome, where he remained

upwards of three years, from thence to Florence and Bologna, and home

through Venice. His letters to the Burkes, giving an account of Michael

Angelo, Raphael, Titian, and Leonardo da Vinci, show a complete insight

into the characteristic merits of their works, and would make us wonder

(if the case were at all singular) how he could enter with such force,

delicacy, and feeling, into excellencies of which he never transplanted

an atom into his own works. He saw, felt, and _wrote_; his impressions

were profound and refined, but the expression of them must be

instantaneous, such as gave the results of them with a stroke of the

pen, as they were received by a glance of the eye, and he could not wait

for the slow process of the pencil for embodying his conceptions in the

necessary details of his own art. It was his desire to make the ideas

and language of painting co-instantaneous,—to express abstract results

by abstract mechanical means (a thing impossible),—to stamp the idea in

his mind at once upon the canvass, without knowledge of its parts,

without labour, without patience, without a moment’s time or thought

intervening between what he wished to do and its being done, that was

perhaps the principal obstacle to his ever attaining a degree of

excellence in his profession at all proportioned either to his ambition

or his genius. It is probable, that, as his hand had not the patience to

give the details of objects, his eye, from the same habit of mind, had

not the power to analyze them. It is possible, however, to see the

results without the same laborious process that is necessary to convey

them; for the eye sees faster than the hand can move.

We suspect Mr. Barry did not succeed very well in copying the pictures

he so well describes; because he appears to have copied but few, only

one of Raphael, as far as we can find, and three from Titian, whom he

justly considered as the model of colouring, and as more perfect in that

department of the art than either Raphael or Michael Angelo were in

theirs, expression and form, the highest excellence in which he

conceives to have been possessed only by the ancients. In copying from

the antique, however, he manifested the same aversion to labour, or to

that kind of labour which, by showing us our defects, compels us to make

exertions to remedy them. He made all his drawings from the antique, by

means of a _delineator_, that is, a mechanical instrument, to save the

trouble of acquiring a knowledge both of form and proportion. In this

manner, equally gratifying to his indolence and his self-love, he is

stated to have made numberless sketches of the antique statues, of all

sizes, and in all directions, carefully noting down on his sketch-paper

their several measurements and proportions.

The consequences are before us in his pictures; namely, that all those

of his figures which he took from these memorandums are deficient in

every thing but form, and that all the others are equally deficient in

form and every thing else. If he did not employ his pencil properly, or

enough, in copying from the models he saw, he employed his thoughts and

his pen about them with indefatigable zeal and spirit. He talked well

about them; he wrote well about them; he made researches into all the

collateral branches of art and knowledge, sculpture, architecture,

cameos, seals, and intaglios. There is a long letter of his, addressed

to Mr. Burke, on the origin of the Gothic style of architecture,

written, as it should seem, to convince his friend and patron of his

industry in neglecting his proper business. Soon after his arrival at

Rome, he became embroiled with the whole tribe of connoisseurs,

painters, and patrons there, whether native or foreign, on subjects of

_virtù_; and he continued in this state of hostility with those around

him while he staid there, and, indeed, to the end of his life. One might

be tempted to suppose that Barry chiefly studied his art as a subject to

employ his dialectics upon. On this unfortunate disposition of his to

wrangling and controversy, as it was likely to affect his progress in

his art and his progress in life, he received some most judicious advice

from Sir Joshua Reynolds and Mr. Burke, his answers to which show an

admirable self-ignorance. On his irritable denunciations of the

practices and tricks of the Italian picture-dealers, Mr. Burke makes a

reflection well deserving of attention. ‘In particular, you may be

assured that the traffic in antiquity, and all the enthusiasm, folly,

and fraud, which may be in it, _never did, nor never can, hurt the merit

of living artists_. Quite the contrary, in my opinion: for I have ever

observed, that, whatever it be that turns the minds of men to anything

relative to the arts, even the most remotely so, brings artists more and

more into credit and repute; and though, now and then, the mere broker

and dealer in such things runs away with a great deal of profit, yet, in

the end, ingenious men will find themselves gainers by the dispositions

which are nourished and diffused in the world by such pursuits.’ Mr.

Barry painted two pictures while abroad, his Adam and Eve and his

Philoctetes. The first of these he sent home as a specimen of his

progress in the art. It does not appear to have given much satisfaction.

His Philoctetes he brought home with him. It is a most wretched, coarse,

unclassical performance, the direct opposite of all that he thought it

to be. During his stay at Rome, he made an excursion to Naples, and was

highly delighted with the collections of art there. All the time he was

abroad, Mr. Burke and his brothers not only were punctual in their

remittances to him, but kept up a most friendly and cordial

correspondence. On one occasion, owing to the delay of a letter, a bill

which Barry had presented to a banker was dishonoured. This detained

Barry for some time at the place where he was in very awkward

circumstances, and he had thoughts of getting rid of his chagrin and of

his prospects in life at once, by running away and turning friar. For

some time previous to his return to England, Mr. Hamilton (afterwards

Sir William) appears to have been almost the only person with whom he

kept up any intimacy. It was on his return home through Milan that he

witnessed, and has recorded with due reprobation, the destruction of

Leonardo’s Last Supper, which two bungling artists were employed to

paint over by order of one Count de Firmian, the secretary of state.

In the spring of 1771, Mr. Barry arrived in England, after an absence of

five years. He soon after produced his picture of Venus, which has been

compared to the Galatea of Raphael, the Venus of Titian, and the Venus

of Medicis, without reason. Mr. Barry flattered himself that he had

surpassed the famous statue of that name, by avoiding the appearance of

_maternity_ in it. There is an engraving of it by Mr. Valentine Green.

In 1773, he exhibited his Jupiter and Juno on Mount Ida, which was much

praised by some critics of that day. His Death of General Wolfe was

considered as a falling off from his great style of art, which consisted

in painting Greek subjects, and it accordingly is said to ‘have obtained

no praise.’ His fondness for Greek costume was assigned by his admirers

as the cause of his reluctance to paint portraits; as if the coat was of

more importance than the face. His fastidiousness, in this respect, and

his frequent excuses, or blunt refusals, to go on with a portrait of Mr.

Burke, which he had begun, caused a misunderstanding with that

gentleman, which does not appear to have been ever entirely made up. The

difference between them is said to have been widened by Burke’s growing

intimacy with Sir Joshua, and by Barry’s feeling some little jealousy of

the fame and fortune of his rival _in an humbler walk of the art_. He,

about the same time, painted a pair of classical subjects, Mercury

inventing the Lyre, and Narcissus looking at himself in the water, the

last suggested to him by Mr. Burke. He also painted an historical

picture of Chiron and Achilles, and another of the story of Stratonice,

for which last the Duke of Richmond gave him a hundred guineas. In 1773,

there was a plan in contemplation for our artists to decorate the inside

of St. Paul’s with historical and sacred subjects; but this plan fell to

the ground, from its not meeting with the concurrence of the Bishop of

London and the Archbishop of Canterbury, to the no small mortification

of Barry, who had fixed upon the subject he was to paint,—the rejection

of Christ by the Jews when Pilate proposes his release. In 1775, he

published _An Inquiry into the real and imaginary Obstructions to the

Acquisition of the Arts in England_, vindicating the capacity of the

English for the fine arts, and tracing their slow progress hitherto to

the Reformation; to political and civil dissensions; and, lastly, to the

general turn of the public mind to mechanics, manufactures, and

commerce. In the year 1774, shortly after the failure of the scheme of

decorating St. Paul’s, a proposal was made, through Mr. Valentine Green,

to the same artists, Reynolds, West, Cipriani, Barry, &c. for

ornamenting the great room of the Society for the _Encouragement of

Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce_, in the Adelphi, with historical and

allegorical paintings. This proposal was at the time rejected by the

artists themselves; but, in 1777, Mr. Barry made an offer to paint the

whole himself, on condition of being allowed the choice of his subjects,

and being paid the expense of canvass, paints, and models, by the

Society. This offer was accepted, and he finished the series of pictures

at the end of seven years, instead of two, which he had proposed to

himself, but with entire satisfaction to the members of the Society, for

whom it was intended, and who conducted themselves to him with

liberality throughout. They granted him two exhibitions, and at

different periods voted him 50 guineas, their gold medal, and again 200

guineas, and a seat among them. Dr. Johnson remarked, when he saw the

pictures, that, ‘whatever the hand had done, the head had done its

part.’ There was an excellent anonymous criticism, supposed to be by Mr.

Burke, published on them, in answer to some remarks put forth by Barry,

in his descriptive catalogue, on the _ideal_ style of art, and the

necessity of size to grandeur. His notions on both these subjects are

very ably controverted, and, indeed, they are the rock on which Barry’s

genius split. It would be curious if Mr. Burke were the author of these

strictures; for it is not improbable that Barry was led into the last

error, here deprecated, by that author’s _Essay on the Sublime and

Beautiful_. The series consists of six pictures, showing the progress of

human culture. The first represents Orpheus taming the savages by his

lyre. The figure of Orpheus himself is more like a drunken bacchanal

than an inspired poet or lawgiver. The only part of this picture which

is valuable is the background, in one part of which a lion is seen ready

to dart upon a family group milking near a cave, and, in another, a

tyger is pursuing a horse. There is certainly a scope of thought and

picturesque invention, in thus showing indirectly the protection which

civilization extends, as it were, over both man and animals. The second

picture is a Grecian harvest, which has nothing Grecian in it. But we

cannot apply this censure to the third picture of the Olympic Games,

some of the figures in which, and the principal group, are exceedingly

graceful, classical, and finely conceived. This picture is the only

proof Mr. Barry has left upon canvass that he was not utterly insensible

to the beauties of the art. The figure of the young man on horseback

really reminds the spectator of some of the Elgin marbles; and the

outlines of the two youthful victors at the games, supporting their

father on their shoulders, are excellent. The colouring is, however, as

bald and wretched in this picture as the rest, and there is a great want

of expression. The fourth picture is the triumph of commerce, with Dr.

Burney swimming in the Thames, with his hair powdered, among naked

sea-nymphs. The fifth, the Society of Arts, distributing their annual

prizes. And the sixth represents Elysium. This last picture is a

collection of caricatured portraits of celebrated individuals of all

ages and nations, strangely jumbled together, with a huge allegorical

figure of Retribution driving Heresy, Vice, and Atheism, into the

infernal regions. The moral design of all these pictures is much better

explained in the catalogue than on the canvass; and the artist has added

none of the graces of the pencil to it in any of them, with the

exception above made. Mr. Barry appears, however, to have rested his

pretensions to fame as an artist on this work, for he did little

afterwards but paltry engravings from himself, and the enormous and

totally worthless picture of Pandora in the assembly of the gods. His

self-denial, frugality, and fortitude, in the prosecution of his work at

the Adelphi, cannot be too much applauded. He has been heard to say,

that at the time of his undertaking it, he had only 16s. in his pocket;

and that he had often been obliged, after painting all day, to sit up at

night to sketch or engrave some design for the printsellers, which was

to supply him with his next day’s subsistence. In this manner he did his

prints of Job, dedicated to Mr. Burke, of the birth of Venus, Polemon,

Head of Chatham, King Lear, from the picture painted for the Shakespear

gallery, &c. His prints are caricatures even of his pictures: they seem

engraved on rotten wood.

Soon after Mr. Barry’s return from the Continent, he was chosen a member

of the Royal Academy; and in 1782, was appointed professor of painting,

in the room of Mr. Penny, with a salary of £30 a-year. The lectures

which he delivered from the chair were full of strong sense, and strong

advice, both to the students and academicians. Among other things, he

insisted much on the necessity of purchasing a collection of pictures by

the best masters as models for the students, and proposed several of

those in the Orleans collection. This recommendation was not relished by

the academicians, who, perhaps, thought their own pictures the best

models for their several pupils. Bickerings, jealousies, and quarrels

arose, and at length reached such a height, that, in 1799, Mr. Barry was

expelled from the academy, soon after the appearance of his _Letter to

the Dilettanti Society_; a very amusing, but eccentric publication, full

of the highest enthusiasm for his art, and the lowest contempt for the

living professors of it. In 1800, he undertook a design or drawing to

celebrate the union of the two kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland.

The profits of the two exhibitions of the Adelphi pictures are said to

have amounted to above £500. Lord Romney presented him with 100 guineas

for his portrait, which had been copied into one of the pictures, and he

had twenty guineas for a head of Mr. Hooper. He probably received other

sums for portraits introduced into the work. By extreme frugality he

contrived, not only to live, but to save money. His house was twice

robbed of sums which he kept by him; one of the times (in 1794) of

upwards of £100; a loss which was made up by the munificence of Lord

Radnor, and by that of his friends, the Hollis’s. After the loss of his

salary, a subscription was set on foot by the Earl of Buchan to relieve

him from his difficulties, and to settle him in a larger house to finish

his picture of Pandora. The subscription amounted to £1000, with which

an annuity was bought; but of this he was prevented from enjoying the

benefit; for, on the 6th of February 1806, he was seized with a

pleuritic fever, and as he neglected medical assistance at first, it was

afterwards of no use. After lingering on for a fortnight in considerable

pain, but without losing his fortitude of mind, he died on the 22d of

the same month. On the 13th of March, the body was taken to the great

room of the Society of Arts, and was thence attended, the following day,

by a numerous and respectable train of his friends to the cathedral of

St. Paul’s, where it was deposited.

Mr. Barry, as an artist, a writer, and a man, was distinguished by great

inequality of powers and extreme contradictions in character. He was

gross and refined at the same time; violent and urbane; sociable and

sullen; inflammable and inert; ardent and phlegmatic; relapsing from

enthusiasm into indolence; irritable, headstrong, impatient of

restraint; captious in his intercourse with his friends, wavering and

desultory in his profession. In his personal habits he was careless of

appearances or decency, penurious, slovenly, and squalid. He regarded

nothing but his immediate impulses, confirmed into incorrigible habits.

His pencil was under no control. His eye and his hand seemed to receive

a first rude impulse, to which it gave itself up, and paid no regard to

any thing else. The strength of the original impetus only drove him

farther from his object. His genius constantly flew off in tangents, and

came in contact with nature only at salient points. There are two

drawings of his from statues of a lion and a lioness at Rome; the nose

of the lioness is two straight lines; the ears of the lion two curves,

which might be mistaken for horns; as if, after it had taken its first

direction, he lost the use of his hand, and his tools worked

mechanically and monotonously without his will. His enthusiasm and

vigour were exhausted in the conception; the execution was crude and

abortive. His writings are a greater acquisition to the art than his

paintings. The powers of conversation were what he most excelled in; and

the influence which he exercised in this way over all companies where he

came, in spite of the coarseness of his dress, and the frequent rudeness

of his manner, was great. Take him for all in all, he was a man of whose

memory it is impossible to think without admiration as well as regret.

ORIGINALITY

Originality is any conception of things, taken immediately from nature,

and neither borrowed from, nor common to, others. To deserve this

appellation, the copy must be both true and new. But herein lies the

difficulty of reconciling a seeming contradiction in the terms of the

explanation. For as any thing to be _natural_ must be referable to a

consistent principle, and as the face of things is open and familiar to

all, how can any imitation be new and striking, without being liable to

the charge of extravagance, distortion, and singularity? And, on the

other hand, if it has no such peculiar and distinguishing characteristic

to set it off, it cannot possibly rise above the level of the trite and

common-place. This objection would indeed hold good and be unanswerable,

if nature were one thing, or if the eye or mind comprehended the whole

of it at a single glance; in which case, if an object had been once seen

and copied in the most cursory and mechanical way, there could be no

farther addition to, or variation from, this idea, without obliquity and

affectation; but nature presents an endless variety of aspects, of which

the mind seldom takes in more than a part or than one view at a time;

and it is in seizing on this unexplored variety, and giving some one of

these new but easily recognised features, in its characteristic essence,

and according to the peculiar bent and force of the artist’s genius,

that true originality consists. ROMNEY, when he was first introduced

into Sir JOSHUA’S gallery, said, ‘there was something in his portraits

which had been never seen in the art before, but which every one must be

struck with as true and natural the moment he saw it.’ This could not

happen if the human face did not admit of being contemplated in several

points of view, or if the hand were necessarily faithful to the

suggestions of sense. Two things serve to perplex this question; first,

the construction of language, from which, as one object is represented

by one word, we imagine that it is one thing, and that we can no more

conceive differently of the same object than we can pronounce the same

word in different ways, without being wrong in all but one of them;

secondly, the very nature of our individual impressions puts a deception

upon us; for, as we know no more of any given object than we see, we

very pardonably conclude that we see the whole of it, and have exhausted

inquiry at the first view, since we can never suspect the existence of

that which, from our ignorance and incapacity, gives us no intimation of

itself. Thus, if we are shown an exact likeness of a face, we give the

artist credit chiefly for dexterity of hand; we think that any one who

has eyes can _see a face_; that one person sees it just like another,

that there can be no mistake about it (as the object and the image are

in our notion the same)—and that if there is any departure from our

version of it, it must be purely fantastical and arbitrary. _Multum

abludit imago._ We do not look beyond the surface; or rather we do not

see into the surface, which contains a labyrinth of difficulties and

distinctions, that not all the effects of art, of time, patience, and

study, can master and unfold. But let us take this _self-evident

proposition_, the human face, and examine it a little; and we shall soon

be convinced what a _Proteus_, what an inexplicable riddle it is! Ask

any one who thinks he has a perfect idea of the face of his friend, what

the shape of his nose or any other feature is, and he will presently

find his mistake;—ask a lover to draw his ‘mistress’ eyebrow,’ it is not

merely that his hand will fail him, but his memory is at fault both for

the form and colour; he may, indeed, dream, and tell you with the poet,

that

‘Grace is in all her steps, heaven in her eye,

In every gesture, dignity and love’:—

but if he wishes to embody his favourite conceit, and to convince any

one else of all this by proof positive, he must borrow the painter’s

aid. When a young artist first begins to make a study from a head, it is

well known that he has soon done, because after he has got in a certain

general outline and rude masses, as the forehead, the nose, the mouth,

the eyes in a general way, he sees no farther, and is obliged to stop;

he feels in truth that he has made a very indifferent copy, but is quite

at a loss how to supply the defect—after a few months’ or a year or

two’s practice, if he has a real eye for nature and a turn for his art,

he can spend whole days in working up the smallest details, in

correcting the proportions, in softening the gradations; and does not

know when to leave off, till night closes in upon him, and then he sits

musing and gazing in the twilight at what remains for his next day’s

work. Sir JOSHUA REYNOLDS used to say, that if he did not finish any one

of his pictures till he saw nothing more to be done to it, he should

never leave off. TITIAN wrote on his pictures, _faciebat_—as much as to

say that he was about them, but that it was an endless task. As the mind

advances in the knowledge of nature, the horizon of art enlarges and the

air refines. Then, in addition to an infinity of details, even in the

most common object, there is the variety of form and colour, of light

and shade, of character and expression, of the voluptuous, the

thoughtful, the grand, the graceful, the grave, the gay, the _I know not

what_; which are all to be found (separate or combined) in nature, which

sufficiently account for the diversity of art, and to detect and carry

off the _spolia opima_ of any one of which is the highest praise of

human genius and skill—

‘Whate’er Lorrain light-touch’d with softening hue,

Or savage Rosa dash’d, or learned Poussin drew.’

All that we meet with in the master-pieces of taste and genius is to be

found in the previous capacity of nature; and man, instead of adding to

the store, or _creating_ any thing either as to matter or manner, can

only draw out a feeble and imperfect transcript, bit by bit, and one

appearance after another, according to the peculiar aptitude and

affinity that subsists between his mind and some one part. The mind

resembles a prism, which untwists the various rays of truth, and

displays them by different modes and in several parcels. Enough has been

said to vindicate both conditions of originality, which distinguish it

from singularity on the one hand and from vulgarity on the other; or to

show how a thing may at the same time be both true and new. This novel

truth is brought out when it meets with a strong congenial mind—that is,

with a mind in the highest degree susceptible of a certain class of

impressions, or of a certain kind of beauty or power; and this peculiar

strength, congeniality, truth of imagination, or command over a certain

part of nature, is, in other words, what is meant by _genius_. This will

serve to show why original inventors have in general (and except in what

is mechanical), left so little for their followers to improve upon; for

as the original invention implies the utmost stretch and felicity of

thought, or the greatest strength and sagacity to discover and dig the

ore from the mine of truth, so it is hardly to be expected that a

greater degree of capacity should ever arise (than the highest), that a

greater mastery should be afterwards obtained in shaping and fashioning

the precious materials, than in the first heat and eagerness of

discovery; or that, if the capacity were equal, the same scope and

opportunity would be left for its exercise in the same field. If the

genius were different, it would then seek different objects and a

different vent, and open new paths to fame and excellence, instead of

treading in old ones. Hence the well-known observation, that in each

particular style or class of art, the greatest works of genius are the

earliest. Hence, also, the first productions of men of genius are often

their best. What was that _something_ that ROMNEY spoke of in REYNOLDS’S

pictures that the world had never seen before, but with which they were

enchanted the moment they beheld it, and which both HOPPNER and JACKSON,

with all their merit, have but faintly imitated since? It was a

reflection of the artist’s mind—an emanation from his character,

transferred to the canvass. It was an ease, an amenity, an indolent but

anxious satisfaction, a graceful playfulness, belonging to his

disposition, and spreading its charm on all around it, attracting what

harmonized with, and softening and moulding what repelled it, avoiding

every thing hard, stiff, and formal, shrinking from details, reposing on

effect, imparting motion to _still life_, viewing all things in their

‘gayest, happiest attitudes,’ and infusing his own spirit into nature as

the leaven is kneaded into the dough; but, though the original bias

existed in himself, and was thence stamped upon his works, yet the

character could neither have been formed without the constant recurrence

and pursuit of proper nourishment, nor could it have expressed itself

without a reference to those objects, looks, and attitudes in nature,

which soothed and assimilated with it. What made HOGARTH original and

inimitable, but the wonderful redundance, and, as it were,

_supererogation_ of his genius, which poured the oil of humanity into

the wounds and bruises of human nature, redeemed, while it exposed, vice

and folly, made deformity pleasing, and turned misfortune into a jest?

But could he have done so if there were no enjoyment or wit in a

night-cellar, or if the cripple could not dance and sing? No, the

_moral_ was in nature; but let no one dare to insist upon it after him,

in the same language and with the same pretensions! There was

REMBRANDT—did he invent the extremes of light and shade, or was he only

the first that embodied them? He was so only because his eye drank in

light and shade more deeply than any one before or since; and,

therefore, the sunshine hung in liquid drops from his pencil, and the

dungeon’s gloom hovered over his canvass. Who can think of CORREGGIO

without a swimming of the head—the undulating line, the melting grace,

the objects advancing and retiring as in a measured dance or solemn

harmony! But all this fulness, roundness, and delicacy, existed before

in nature, and only found a fit sanctuary in his mind. The breadth and

masses of MICHAEL ANGELO were studies from nature, which he selected and

cast in the mould of his own manly and comprehensive genius. The

landscapes of CLAUDE are in a fixed repose, as if nothing could be moved

from its place without a violence to harmony and just proportion: in

those of RUBENS every thing is fluttering and in motion, light and

indifferent, as the winds blow where they list. All this is

characteristic, original, a different mode of nature, which the artist

had the happiness to find out and carry to the utmost point of

perfection. It has been laid down that no one paints any thing but his

own character, and almost features; and the workman is always to be

traced in the work. Mr. FUSELI’S figures, if they were like nothing

else, were like himself, or resembled the contortions of a dream;

WILKIE’S have a parochial air; HAYDON’S are heroical; Sir THOMAS’S

genteel. What Englishman could bear to sit to a French artist? What

English artist could hope to succeed in a French coquet? There is not

only an individual but a national bias, which is observable in the

different schools and productions of art. _Mannerism_ is the bane

(though it is the occasional vice) of genius, and is the worst kind of

imitation, for it is a man’s imitating himself. Many artists go on

repeating and caricaturing themselves, till they complain that nature

puts them out. Gross plagiarism may consist with great originality.

STERNE was a notorious plagiarist, but a true genius. His _Corporal

Trim_, his _Uncle Toby_, and _Mr. Shandy_, are to be found no where

else. If RAPHAEL had done nothing but borrow the two figures from

MASACCIO, it would have been impossible to say a word in his defence: no

one has a right to steal, who is not rich enough to be robbed by others.

So MILTON has borrowed more than almost any other writer; but he has

uniformly stamped a character of his own upon it. In what relates to the

immediate imitation of nature, people find it difficult to conceive of

an opening for originality, inasmuch as they think that they themselves

see the whole of nature, and that every other view of it is wrong:—in

what relates to the productions of imagination or the discoveries of

science, as they themselves are totally in the dark, they fancy the

whole to be a fabrication, and give the inventor credit for a sort of

dealing with the Devil, or some preternatural kind of talent. Poets lay

a popular and prescriptive claim to inspiration: the astronomer of old

was thought able to conjure with the stars; and the skilful leech, who

performed unexpected cures was condemned for a sorcerer. This is as

great an error the other way. The vulgar think there is nothing in what

lies on the surface; though the learned only see beyond it by stripping

off incumbrances and coming to another surface beneath the first. The

difference between art and science is only the difference between the

_clothed_ and _naked_ figure: but the veil of truth must be drawn aside

before we can distinctly see the face. The physician is qualified to

prescribe remedies because he is acquainted with the internal structure

of the body, and has studied the symptoms of disorders: the

mathematician arrives at his most surprising conclusions by slow and

sure steps; and where he can add discovery to discovery by the very

certainty of the hold he has of all the previous links. There is no

witchcraft in either case. The invention of the poet is little more than

the fertility of a teeming brain—that is, than the number and quantity

of associations present to his mind, and the various shapes in which he

can turn them without being distracted or losing a ‘semblable coherence’

of the parts; as the man of observation and reflection strikes out just

and unforeseen remarks by taking off the mask of custom and appearances;

or by judging for himself of men and things, without taking it for

granted that they are what he has hitherto supposed them, or waiting to

be told by others what they are. If there were no foundation for an

unusual remark in our own consciousness or experience, it would not

strike us as a discovery: it would sound like a _jeu-d’esprit_, a whim

or oddity, or as flat nonsense. The mere mob, ‘the great vulgar and the

small,’ are not therefore capable of distinguishing between originality

and singularity, for they have no idea beyond the _commonplace_ of

fashion or custom. Prejudice has no ears either for or against itself;

it is alike averse to objections and proofs, for both equally disturb

its blind implicit notions of things. Originality is, then, ‘the strong

conception’ of truth and nature ‘that the mind groans withal,’ and of

which it cannot stay to be delivered by authority or example. It is

feeling the ground sufficiently firm under one’s feet to be able to go

alone. Truth is its essence; it is the strongest possible feeling of

truth; for it is a secret and instinctive yearning after, and

approximation towards it, before it is acknowledged by others, and

almost before the mind itself knows what it is. Paradox and

eccentricity, on the other hand, show a dearth of originality, as

bombast and hyperbole show a dearth of imagination; they are the

desperate resources of affectation and want of power. Originality is

necessary to genius; for when that which, in the first instance,

conferred the character, is afterwards done by rule and routine, it

ceases to be genius. To conclude, the value of any work of art or

science depends chiefly on the quantity of originality contained in it,

and which constitutes either the charm of works of fiction or the

improvement to be derived from those of progressive information. But it

is not so in matters of opinion, where every individual thinks he can

judge for himself, and does not wish to be set right. There is,

consequently, nothing that the world like better than originality of

invention, and nothing that they hate worse than originality of thought.

Advances in science were formerly regarded with like jealousy, and

stigmatised as dangerous by the friends of religion and the state:

GALILEO was imprisoned in the same town of Florence, where they now

preserve his finger pointing to the skies!

THE IDEAL

The _ideal_ is the abstraction of any thing from all the circumstances

that weaken its effect, or lessen our admiration of it. Or it is filling

up the outline of truth or beauty existing in the mind, so as to leave

nothing wanting or to desire farther. The principle of the _ideal_ is

the satisfaction we have in the contemplation of any quality or object,

which makes us seek to heighten, to prolong, or extend that satisfaction

to the utmost; and beyond this we cannot go, for we cannot get beyond

the highest conceivable degree of any quality or excellence diffused

over the whole of an object. Any notion of perfection beyond is is a

word without meaning—a thing in the clouds. Another name for the _ideal_

is the _divine_; for, what we imagine of the Gods is pleasure without

pain—power without effort. The _ideal_ is the impassive and immortal: it

is that which exists in and for itself; or is begot by the intense

_idea_ and innate love of it. Hence it has been argued by some, as if it

were brought from another sphere, as RAPHAEL was said to have fetched

his _Galatea_ from the skies; but it was the Gods, ‘the children of

HOMER,’ who peopled ‘the cloud-capt Olympus.’ The statue of _Venus_ was

not beautiful because it represented a goddess; but it was supposed to

represent a goddess, because it was in the highest degree (that the art

or wit of man could make it so) and in every part beautiful. Goddesses

also walk the earth in the shape of women; the height of nature

surpasses the utmost stretch of the imagination; the human form is alone

the image of the divinity. It has been usual to represent the _ideal_ as

an abstraction of general nature, or as a _mean_ or average proportion

between different qualities and faculties, which, instead of carrying

any one to the highest point of perfection or satisfaction, would only

neutralise and damp the impression. We take our notions on this subject

chiefly from the _antique_; but what higher conception do we form of the

_Jupiter_ of PHIDIAS than that of power frowning in awful majesty? or of

the _Minerva_ of the same hand, than that of wisdom, ‘severe in youthful

beauty?’ We shall do well not to refine in our theories beyond these

examples, that have been left us—

‘Inimitable on earth by model,

Or by shading pencil shown.’

What is the _Venus_, the _Apollo_, the _Hercules_, but the

personification of beauty, grace, and strength, or the displaying these

several properties in every part of the attitude, face, and figure, and

in the utmost conceivable degree, but without confounding the particular

kinds of form or expression in an intermediate something, pretended to

be more perfect than either? A thing is not more perfect by becoming

something else, but by _being more itself_. If the face of the _Venus_

had been soft and feminine, but the figure had not corresponded, then

this would have been a defect of the _ideal_, which subdues the

discordances of Nature in the mould of passion, and so far from

destroying character, imparts the same character to all, according to a

certain established idea or preconception in the mind. The following up

the contrary principle would lead to the inevitable result, that the

most perfect, that is, the most abstract, representation of the human

form could contain neither age nor sex, neither character nor

expression, neither the attributes of motion nor rest, but a mere

unmeaning negation or doubtful balance of all positive qualities—in

fact, to propose to _embody an abstraction_ is a contradiction in terms.

The attempt to carry such a scheme into execution would not merely

supersede all the varieties and accidents of nature, but would

effectually put a stop to the productions of art, or reduce them to one

vague and undefined abstraction, answering to the word _man_. That

amalgamation, then, of a number of different impressions into one, which

in some sense is felt to constitute the _ideal_, is not to be sought in

the dry and desert spaces or the endless void of metaphysical

abstraction, or by taking a number of things and _muddling_ them all

together, but by singling out some one thing or leading quality of an

object, and making it the pervading and regulating principle of all the

rest, so as to produce the greatest strength and harmony of effect. This

is the natural progress of things, and accords with the ceaseless

tendency of the human mind from the _Finite_ to the _Infinite_. If I see

beauty, I do not want to change it for power; if I am struck with power,

I am no longer in love with beauty; but I wish to make beauty still more

beautiful, power still more powerful, and to pamper and exalt the

prevailing impression, whatever it be, till it ends in a dream and a

vision of glory. This view of the subject has been often dwelt upon: I

shall endeavour to supply some inferences from it. The _ideal_, it

appears then by this account of it, is the enhancing and expanding an

idea from the satisfaction we take in it; or it is taking away whatever

divides, and adding whatever increases our sympathy with pleasure and

power ‘till our content is absolute,’ or at the height. Hence that

_repose_ which has been remarked as one striking condition of the

_ideal_; for as it is nothing but the continued approximation of the

mind to the _great_ and the _good_, so in the attainment of this object

it rejects as much as possible not only the petty, the mean, and

disagreeable, but also the agony and violence of passion, the force of

contrast, and the extravagance of imagination. It is a law to itself. It

relies on its own aspirations after pure enjoyment and lofty

contemplation alone, self-moved and self-sustained, without the grosser

stimulus of the irritation of the will, privation, or suffering—unless

when it is inured and reconciled to the last (as an element of its

being) by heroic fortitude, and when ‘strong patience conquers deep

despair.’ In this sense, MILTON’s _Satan_ is _ideal_, though tragic: for

it is permanent tragedy, or one fixed idea without vicissitude or

frailty, and where all the pride of intellect and power is brought to

bear in confronting and enduring pain. Mr. WORDSWORTH has expressed this

feeling of stoical indifference (proof against outward impressions)

admirably in the poem of _Laodamia_:—

‘Know, virtue were not virtue, if the joys

Of sense were able to return as fast

And surely as they vanish. Earth destroys

Those raptures duly: _Erebus disdains—

Calm pleasures there abide, majestic pains_.’

These lines are a noble description and example of the _ideal_ in

poetry. But the _ideal_ is not in general the stronghold of poetry. For

description in words (to produce any vivid impression) requires a

translation of the object into some other form, which is the language of

metaphor and imagination; as narrative can only interest by a succession

of events and a conflict of hopes and fears. Therefore, the sphere of

the _ideal_ is in a manner limited to Sculpture and Painting, where the

object itself is given entire without any possible change of

circumstances, and where, though the impression is momentary, it lasts

for ever. Hence we may see the failure in _Sir Charles Grandison_, which

is an attempt to embody this perfect or _ideal_ character in a

succession of actions without passion, and in a variety of situations

where he is still the same everlasting coxcomb, and where we are tired

to death of the monotony, affectation, and self-conceit. The story of

‘Patient Grizzle,’ however fine the sentiment, is far from dramatic: for

the _ideal_ character, which is the self-sufficient, the immovable, and

the one, precludes change, or at least all motive for, or interest in,

the alternation of events, to which it constantly rises superior.

SHAKSPEARE’S characters are interesting and dramatic, in proportion as

they are not above passion and outward circumstances, that is, as they

are men and not angels. The Greek tragedies may serve to explain how far

the _ideal_ and the _dramatic_ are consistent; for the characters there

are almost as ideal as their statues, and almost as impassive; and

perhaps their extreme decorum and self-possession is only rendered

palatable to us by the story which nearly always represents a conflict

between Gods and men. The _ideal_ part is, however, necessary at all

times to the grandeur of tragedy, since it is the superiority of

character to fortune and circumstances, or the larger scope of thought

and feeling thrown into it, that redeems it from the charge of vulgar

grossness or physical horrors. Mrs. SIDDONS’S acting had this character;

that is to say, she kept her state in the midst of the tempest of

passion, and her eye surveyed, not merely the present suffering, but the

causes and consequences; there was inherent power and dignity of manner.

In a word, as there is a sanguine temperament, and a health of body and

mind which floats us over daily annoyances and hindrances (instead of

fastening upon petty and disagreeable details), and turns every thing to

advantage, so it is in art and works of the imagination, the principle

of the _ideal_ being neither more nor less than that fulness of

satisfaction and enlargement of comprehension in the mind itself that

assists and expands all that accords with it, and throws aside and

triumphs over whatever is adverse. Grace in movement is either that

which is continuous and consistent, from having no obstacles opposed to

it, or that which perseveres in this continuous and equable movement

from a _delight_ in it, in spite of interruption or uneven ground; this

last is the _ideal_, or a persisting in, and giving effect to, our

choice of the good, notwithstanding the unfavourableness of the actual

or outward circumstances. We may in like manner trace the origin of

dancing, music, and poetry, which is the march of words. Self-possession

is the _ideal_ in ordinary behaviour. A low or vulgar character seizes

on every trifling or painful circumstance that occurs, from

_irritability_ and want of imagination to look beyond the moment; while

a person of more refinement and capacity, or with a stronger

predisposition of the mind to good, and a greater fund of good sense and

pleasurable feeling to second it, despises these idle provocations, and

preserves an unruffled composure and serenity of temper. This internal

character, being permanent, communicates itself to the outward

expression in proportionable sweetness, delicacy, and unity of effect,

which it requires all the same characteristics of the mind to feel and

convey to others; and hence the superiority of RAPHAEL’S _Madonnas_ over

HOGARTH’S faces. _Keeping_ is not the _ideal_, for there may be

_keeping_ in the little, the mean, and the disjointed, without strength,

softness or expansion. The Fauns and Satyrs of antiquity belong (like

other fabulous creations) rather to the grotesque than the _ideal_. They

may be considered, however, as a bastard species of the _ideal_, for

they stamp one prominent character of vice and deformity on the whole

face, instead of going into the minute, uncertain, and shuffling

details. As to the rest, the _ideal_ abhors monsters and incongruity. If

the horses in the Elgin marbles, or the boar of MELEAGER, are ranked

with the human figures, it is from their being perfect representations

of the forms and actions of the animals designed, not caricatures

half-way between the human and the brute.

The ideal, then, is the highest point of purity and perfection to which

we can carry the idea of any object or quality. The natural differs from

the ideal style, inasmuch as what anything is differs from what we wish

and can conceive it to be. Many people would substitute the phrase, from

what it ought to be, to express the latter part of the alternative, and

would explain what a thing ought to be by that which is best. But for

myself, I do not understand, or at least it does not appear to me, a

self-evident proposition, either what a thing ought to be, or what it is

best that it should be; it is only shifting the difficulty a remove

farther, and begging the question a second time. I may know what is

good; I can tell what is better: but that which is best is beyond me—it

is a thing in the clouds. There is perhaps also a species of cant—the

making up for a want of clearness of ideas by insinuating a pleasing

moral inference—in the words purity and perfection used above; but I

would be understood as meaning by purity nothing more than a freedom

from alloy or any incongruous mixture in a given quality or character of

an object, and by perfection completeness, or the extending that quality

to all the parts and circumstances of an object, so that it shall be as

nearly as possible of a piece. The imagination does not ordinarily

bestow any pains on that which is mean and indifferent in itself, but

having conceived an interest in any thing, and the passions being once

excited, we endeavour to give them food and scope by making that which

is beautiful still more beautiful, that which is striking still more

grand, that which is hateful still more deformed, through the positive,

comparative, and superlative degrees, till the mind can go no farther in

this progression of fancy and passion without losing the original idea,

or quitting its hold of nature, which is the ground on which it still

rests with fluttering pinions. The ideal does not transform any object

into something else, or neutralize its character, but, by removing what

is irrelevant and supplying what was defective, makes it more itself

than it was before. I have included above the Fauns and Satyrs, as well

as the Heroes and Deities of antique art, or the perfection of deformity

as well as of beauty and strength, but any one who pleases may draw the

line, and leave out the exceptionable part; it will make no difference

in the principle.

Venus is painted fair, with golden locks, but she must not be fair

beyond the fairness of woman—for the beauty we desire is that of

woman—nor must the hair be actually of the colour of gold, but only

approaching to it, for then it would no longer look like hair, but like

something else, and in striving to enhance the effect we should weaken

it. Habit, as well as passion, knowledge as well as desire, is one part

of the human mind; nor, in aiming at imaginary perfection, are we to

confound the understood boundaries and distinct classes of things, or

‘to o’erstep the modesty of nature.’ We may rise the superstructure of

fancy as high as we please; the basis is custom. We talk in words of an

ivory skin, of golden tresses; but these are but figures of speech, and

a poetical licence. Richardson acknowledges that Clarissa’s neck was not

so white as the lace on it, whatever the poets might say if they had

been called upon to describe it.

ROYAL ACADEMY

The choice of a President for this Society is one of some nicety. Where

there is not any individual taking a decided and indisputable lead in

art, it requires a combination and balance of qualities not always

easily to be met with. The President of the great body of art in this

country ought not merely to be eminent in his profession, but a man of

gentlemanly manners, of good person, of respectable character, and

standing well in the opinion of his brother artists. He should be a

person free from peculiarity of temper, from party spirit, and able to

represent the elegant arts (of which he stands at the head) as the last

ostensible link connecting scientific pursuit with the enlightened taste

and aristocratic refinements of their immediate patrons. The choice has

fallen upon Mr. SHEE, and his honours will sit well upon him. This

artist has been long a favourite with the public in the most popular

branch of his art, and is scarcely less distinguished by his occasional

brilliant effusions as a poet and his accomplishments as a man. The

characteristics of Mr. SHEE’S style of portrait painting are vivacity of

expression, facility of execution, and clearness of colouring. He has

attempted history with some success. Perhaps if he had done more in this

way, it might have been to his own detriment; and the habits and studies

of the historical painter, immersed in a world of retirement and

abstraction, are such as hardly serve for an introduction to situations

of ornament and distinction in social life. Mr. WILKIE’S merits as a

painter of familiar subjects have procured him the deserved honour of

being appointed ‘historical painter to the King’—the admirable busts of

Mr. CHANTREY might also have been thrown into the opposite scale; but,

upon the whole, the judgment of the public will not take the laurel from

the head where the hands of the Academy have placed it. If we might hint

a fault where so much praise is due, it would be by expressing a wish

that Mr. SHEE could more boldly say with Rembrandt, ‘_Je suis peintre,

non pas teinturier_.’ His tones are too pure, approaching too nearly to

virgin tints. For one department of his office the new President is

happily qualified—we mean the delivery of lectures from the Chair of the

Royal Academy. The art of painting is dumb but Mr. SHEE can borrow the

aid of a sister muse.

-----

Footnote 12:

One would think that a people so devoted to perfumes, who deal in

essences and scents, and have fifty different sorts of snuffs, would

be equally nice, and offended at the approach of every disagreeable

odour. Not so. They seem to have no sense of the disagreeable in

smells or tastes, as if their heads were stuffed with a cold, and hang

over a dunghill, as if it were a bed of roses, or swallow the most

detestable dishes with the greatest relish. The nerve of their

sensibility is bound up at the point of pain. A Frenchman (as far as I

can find) has no idea answering to the word _nasty_; or if he has,

feels a predilection for, instead of an aversion to, it. So in morals

they bid fair to be the _Sybarites_ of the modern world. They make the

best of every thing (which is a virtue)—and treat the worst with

levity or complaisance (which is a vice). They harbour no antipathies.

They would swallow Gil Blas’s supper as a luxury, and boast of it

afterwards as a feat. Their moral system is not sustained by the two

opposite principles of attraction and repulsion, for they are shocked

at nothing: what excites horror or disgust in other minds, they

consider as a _bagatelle_; it is resolved into an abstraction of

agreeable sensations, a source of amusement. There is an oil of

self-complacency in their constitutions, which takes the sting out of

evil, and neutralizes the poison of corruption. They, therefore, can

commit atrocities with impunity, and wallow in disgrace without a

blush, as no other people can. There is Monsieur Chateaubriand, for

instance. Who would not suppose that the very echo of his own name

would hoot him out of the world? So far from it, his pamphlet _On the

Censorship_ has just come to a third edition, and is stuck all over

Paris!

Footnote 13:

This is not correct; there is no foot-path in France, but there is a

side-path, claiming, I presume, the same privileges.

Footnote 14:

‘There is nothing which an Englishman enjoys so much as the pleasure

of sulkiness.’—_Edinburgh Review_, No. 80.

Footnote 15:

We may trace something of their national origin in both their minds.

In Claude there is the French _finicalness_, and love of minute

details; but there is a _fusion_ of all these into the most perfect

harmony from the influence of a southern sky, and he has none of the

flimsiness or littleness of effect, to which his countrymen are prone.

Again, it cannot be denied that there is a certain setness and

formality, a _didactic_ or prosing vein in Nicolas Poussin’s

compositions. He proceeds on system, has a deliberate purpose to make

out, and is often laboured, monotonous, and extravagant. His pictures

are the finest subjects in the world for French criticism—to point the

moral, or detach an episode. He is somewhat pedantic and

over-significant, in the manner of French orators and poets. He had,

like his countrymen, no great eye for nature or truth of expression;

but he had what they chiefly want—_imagination_, or the power of

placing himself in the circumstances of others. Poussin, in fact, held

a middle place between Raphael and other painters of the Italian

school, who have embodied the highest poetry of expression, and the

common run of French artists, whose utmost stretch of invention

reaches no farther than correctness in the costume and chronology of

their subject.

Footnote 16:

It is at Florence.

Footnote 17:

Is not a monkey grave when it is doing nothing, or when it is not

employed in mischief?

Footnote 18:

The French phrase for _being present at a play_ is, to _assist at it_.

It must be owned that there is some appearance of truth in the

expression.

Footnote 19:

Inventor of the Diorama.

Footnote 20:

It is the same idle, inveterate self-complacency, the same limited

comprehension, that has been their ruin in every thing. Parisian

_exquisites_ could not conceive that it snowed in Russia, nor how it

was possible for barbarians to _bivouac_ in the Champs Elysées. But

they have forgotten the circumstance altogether. Why should I remind

them of it?

Footnote 21:

French pictures, to be thoroughly and unexceptionably good, ought to

be _translated_ back again into sculpture, from which they are

originally taken.

Footnote 22:

Yet they tax Shakspeare with grossness and barbarity. There is nothing

like this scene in all his plays, except Titus Andronicus, which is

full of the same tragic exaggeration and tautology. I was walking out

(this 1st of October—a clear grey autumnal morning) in the gardens of

the Tuileries, and seeing the long, tall avenue of trees before me

that leads up to the barrier of Neuilly, it put me in mind of former

times, of prints and pictures of the scenery and roads in foreign

countries which I had been used to from a child, with the

old-fashioned look of every thing around Paris, as if it were the year

1724, instead of 1824, till the view before me seemed to become part

of a dream, or to transport me into past time, or to raise itself up

in my imagination, like a picture in the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’ I

wondered whether Buonaparte sometimes thought of this view when he was

at St. Helena. I checked myself in this strain of speculation as

overcharged and disproportioned to the occasion, according to the

correct and elegant taste of the people where I was, when on a post

opposite, I saw stuck up in large letters, ‘_Pension de l’Univers_,’

meaning a tenpenny ordinary. These are the people that are continually

crying out against the extravagance and bombast of their neighbours.

Their imagination runs to the ends of the universe, when it has

nothing but words to carry—no people so magnificent, so prodigal of

professions, so hyperbolical as they—add but meaning or a weight of

feeling to them, and they complain bitterly of the load, and throw it

off as barbarous, intolerable, Gothic, and uncouth. It is not the

extravagance of the style, then, with which they quarrel, but the

palpableness of the imagery which gives a blow to their slender

intellectual _stamina_, or the accumulation of feeling about it with

which they have not firmness or comprehension to grapple. ‘Dip it in

the ocean, and it will stand’—says Sterne’s barber of the buckle of

his wig. They magnify trifles, _con amore_; it is only when a poor

struggling attempt is to be made to gain relief from the ‘perilous

stuff that weighs upon the heart,’ or to embody the swelling

conceptions of the soul in remote and lofty images, that they shrink

back with the timidity of women and the formality of pedants.

Footnote 23:

The _Orpheus and Eurydice_ of Drölling is a performance of great

merit. The females, floating in the air before Orpheus, are pale as

lilies, and beautiful in death. But he need hardly despair, or run

wild as he does. He may easily overtake them; and as to vanishing,

they have no appearance of it. Their figures are quite solid and

determined in their outline.

Footnote 24:

See the admirably-drawn, but painful scene in Evelina between Captain

Mervin and Monsieur Dubois.

Footnote 25:

A French dwarf, exhibited in London some years ago, and who had the

misfortune to be born a mere trunk, grew enraged at the mention of

another dwarf as a rival in bodily imperfection, and after insisting

that the other had both hands and feet, exclaimed emphatically, ‘Mais

moi, je suis unique.’ My old acquaintance (Dr. Stoddart) used formerly

to recount this trait of French character very triumphantly, but then

it was in war-time. He may think it indecent to have here hinted any

such thing of an individual of a nation with whom we are at peace. At

present, he seems to have become a sort of portent and by-word himself

among English politicians; and without head or heart may

exclaim—‘_Mais moi, je suis unique!_‘—See his late articles on the

Spanish Refugees, &c. Would such a man have been any better, had he

never turned renegade, or had he become (his first ambition) a

revolutionary leader? Would he not have been as blood-thirsty, as

bigoted, as perverse and ridiculous on the side of the question he

left, as on the one he has come over to? It imports little what men

are, so long as they are _themselves_. The great misfortune of a

certain class of persons (both for their own sake and that of others)

is ever to have been born or heard of!

Footnote 26:

I remember being once much amused with meeting, in a hot dusty day,

between Blenheim and Oxford, some strolling Italians with a troop of

dancing dogs, and a monkey in _costume_ mounted on the back of one of

them. He rode _en cavalier_, and kept his countenance with great

gravity and decorum, and turned round with a certain look of surprise

and resentment, that I, a foot-passenger, should seem to question his

right to go on horseback. This seemed to me a fine piece of practical

satire in the manner of Swift.

Footnote 27:

Mr. Wordsworth, in some fine lines, reproaches the French with having

‘no single volume paramount, no master-spirit’—

‘But equally a want of books and men.’

I wish he would shew any single author that exercises such a

‘paramount’ influence over the minds of the English, as four or five

‘master-spirits’ do on those of the French. The merit is not here the

question, but the effect produced. He himself is not a very striking

example of the sanguine enthusiasm with which his countrymen identify

themselves with works of great and original genius!

Footnote 28:

The same circumstance literally happened to Gibbon, though from a

different cause. He fell on his knees before a Swiss lady (I think a

Mademoiselle d’Ivernois,) and was so fat he could not rise. She left

him in this posture, and sent in a servant to help him up.

Footnote 29:

The fronts of the houses and of many of the finest buildings seem (so

to speak) to have been composed in mud, and translated into stone—so

little projection, relief, or airiness have they. They have a look of

being _stuck_ together.

Footnote 30:

They are as different as Mr. Moore’s verses and an epic poem.

Footnote 31:

The French physiognomy is like a telegraphic machine, ready to shift

and form new combinations every moment. It is commonly too light and

variable for repose; it is careless, indifferent, but not sunk in

indolence, nor wedded to ease: as on the other hand, it is restless,

rapid, extravagant, without depth or force. Is it not the same with

their feelings, which are alike incapable of a habit of quiescence, or

of persevering action or passion? It seems so to me. Their freedom

from any tendency to drunkenness, to indulge in its dreamy stupor, or

give way to its incorrigible excesses, confirms by analogy the general

view of their character. I do not bring this as an accusation against

them, I ask if it is not the fact; and if it will not account for many

things observable in them, good, bad, and indifferent? In a word,

mobility without _momentum_ solves the whole riddle of the French

character.

Footnote 32:

Lord Byron has merely taken up the common cant of connoisseurship,

inflating it with hyperbolical and far-fetched eulogies of his own—not

perceiving that the Apollo was somewhat of a coxcomb, the Venus

somewhat insipid, and that the expression in the Laocoon is more of

physical than of mental agony. The faces of the boys are, however,

superlatively fine. They are convulsed with pain, yet fraught with

feeling. He has made a better hit in interpreting the downcast look of

the _Dying Gladiator_, as denoting his insensibility to the noise and

bustle around him:—

‘He heard it, but he heeded not—his eyes

Were with his heart, and that was far away;

He reck’d not of the life he lost, nor prize,

But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,

_There_ were his young barbarians all at play,

_There_ was their Dacian mother—he, their sire,

Butcher’d to make a Roman holyday—

All this rush’d with his blood—shall he expire

And unaveng’d?—Arise! ye Goths and glut your ire!’

Footnote 33:

Why do the French confound the words _exhibition_ and _exposure_? One

of which expresses what is creditable, and the other what is

disgraceful. Is it that the sense of vanity absorbs every other

consideration, turning the sense of shame, in case of exposure, into a

source of triumph, and the conscious tingling feeling of ostentation

in a display of talent into a flagrant impropriety? I do not lay much

stress on this word-catching, which is a favourite mode of German

criticism. We say, for instance, indiscriminately, that ‘a thing

_redounds_ to our credit or our disgrace.’

Footnote 34:

It were to be wished that the French sculptors would come over and

look at the Elgin Marbles, as they are arranged with great care and

some pomp in the British Museum. They may smile to see that we are

willing to remove works of art from their original places of abode,

though we will not allow others to do so. These noble fragments of

antiquity might startle our fastidious neighbours a little at first

from their rude state and their simplicity, but I think they would

gain upon them by degrees, and convince their understandings, if they

did not subdue their affections. They are indeed an equally

instructive lesson and unanswerable rebuke to them and to us—to them

for thinking that finishing every part _alike_ is perfection, and to

us who imagine that to leave every part alike unfinished is grandeur.

They are as remote from finicalness as grossness, and combine the

parts with the whole in the manner that nature does. Every part is

given, but not ostentatiously, and only as it would appear in the

circumstances. There is an alternate action and repose. If one muscle

is strained, another is proportionably relaxed. If one limb is in

action and another at rest, they come under a different law, and the

muscles are not brought out nor the skin tightened in the one as in

the other. There is a flexibility and sway of the limbs and of the

whole body. The flesh has the softness and texture of flesh, not the

smoothness or stiffness of stone. There is an undulation and a liquid

flow on the surface, as the breath of genius moved the mighty mass:

they are the finest forms in the most striking attitudes, and with

every thing in its place, proportion, and degree, uniting the ease,

truth, force, and delicacy of Nature. They shew nothing but the

artist’s thorough comprehension of, and entire docility to that great

teacher. There is no _petit-maitreship_, no pedantry, no attempt at a

display of science, or at forcing the parts into an artificial

symmetry, but it is like cutting a human body out of a block of

marble, and leaving it to act for itself with all the same springs,

levers, and internal machinery. It was said of Shakspeare’s dramas,

that they were the _logic of passion_; and it may be affirmed of the

Elgin Marbles, that they are the _logic of form_.—One part being

given, another cannot be otherwise than it is. There is a mutual

understanding and re-action throughout the whole frame. The Apollo and

other antiques are not equally simple and severe. The limbs have too

much an appearance of being cased in marble, of making a display of

every recondite beauty, and of balancing and answering to one another,

like the rhymes in verse. The Elgin Marbles are harmonious, flowing,

varied prose. In a word, they are like casts after the finest nature.

Any cast from nature, however inferior, is in the same style. Let the

French and English sculptors make casts continually. The one will see

in them the parts everywhere given—the other will see them everywhere

given in subordination to, and as forming materials for a whole.

Footnote 35:

For some account of Madame Pasta’s acting in _Nina_, I take the

liberty to refer to a volume of TABLE-TALK, just published.

Footnote 36: