_Simplex munditiis._ Horace, _Odes_ I. 5.
PAGE
283. _The pauper lad._ See vol. VII. _The Plain Speaker_, pp. 366–7.
_Fables for the Holy Alliance._ Published 1823.
_Secretary to the Venetian Ambassador._ Rousseau was Secretary to the
French Ambassador to Venice, M. de Montaign, from August 1743 to August
1744.
_Milton’s house._ See _ante_, note to p. 232.
_Mr. Washington Irvine._ See vol. VII. _The Plain Speaker_, p. 311 and
note.
284. _Mr. Hobhouse ... Westminster._ John Cam Hobhouse was elected M.P.
for Westminster in 1820.
285. _Upland swells._ ‘The grassy uplands’ gentle swells.’ Coleridge,
_Ode to the Departing Year_, 125.
_The peasant’s nest._ Cowper, _The Task_, I. 227 and 247.
287. _Oh! for a lodge in some vast wilderness._ Cowper, _The Task_, II.
2: [contiguity].
_And disappointed still._
Cf. ‘And still they dream that they shall still succeed,
And still are disappointed.’
Cowper, _The Task_, III. 127.
_But the season’s difference._ _As You Like It_, Act II. Sc. 1.
_Apparent queen_ [of night]. _Paradise Lost_, IV. 608.
CHAPTER XXVI
November 14. Numbered XXIX
From ‘We had an excellent supper,’ p. 293, formed No. XXX., November 15,
together with the first part of Chapter XXVII. to ‘detached points and
places,’ on p. 298.
291. _Nor Alps nor Apennines._ John Dennis, _Ode on the Battle of
Aghrim_, St. 3. See vol. VI. _Table Talk_, note to p. 66.
292. _Built a fortress for itself._ _King Richard II._, Act II. Sc. 1.
294. _All silver white._ _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, Act V. Sc. 2.
_With kindliest interchange._ Cf. ‘with kindliest change.’ _Paradise
Lost_, V. 336, and ‘sweet interchange.’ _Ibid._, IX. 115.
_Live a man forbid._ _Macbeth_, Act I. Sc. 3.
CHAPTER XXVII
See _ante_, note to p. 288. From ‘Basle’ on p. 298 to the end is the
article for November 16, headed ‘Concluded.’
296. _In shape and station_ [gesture] _proudly eminent_. _Paradise
Lost_, I. 590.
_Torrents of delight._ _La Nouvelle Héloïse_, Quatrième Partie, Lettre
VI.
297. _Reveries of a Solitary Walker._ Written after October 1776.
299. _Cologne ... Rubens._ Rubens was born at Siegen in Westphalia. His
parents came to Cologne when he was a year old.
_Striking fat its thick rotundity._ _King Lear_, Act III. Sc. 2.
301. _Paul Potter._ See _ante_, p. 63 and note.
302. _With eyes of youth._ _Merry Wives of Windsor_, Act III. Sc. 2.
303. _An English Minister handing the keys._ Perhaps Hazlitt refers to
John Fane, eleventh Earl of Westmorland (1784–1859), known as Lord
Burghersh until 1841, who signed the Convention of Caza Lanza by which
Naples was restored to the Bourbons. He was sent on a mission to Naples,
1825, to congratulate Francis I. on succeeding his father to the throne
of the Two Sicilies, the Constitution of which country had been
abrogated by Ferdinand I. in 1821, and a reign of despotism substituted
for it.
MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS ON THE FINE ARTS
ON HAYDON’S SOLOMON
From The _Morning Chronicle_, May 4 and 5, 1814. See _Memoirs of W.
Hazlitt_, vol. I. p. 211, for an account of the circumstances under
which this article was written.
PAGE
309. _Glover._ John Glover, landscape painter in water-colours
(1767–1849). He was President of the Society of Painters in
Water-Colours in 1815, and was one of the founders of the Society of
British Artists in 1824.
_Cristall._ Joshua Cristall (1767–1847), china-dealer’s apprentice in
Rotherhithe, later President of the Society of Painters in
Water-Colours.
_De Wint._ Peter de Wint (1784–1849), of Dutch extraction and
Staffordshire birth, a pupil of John Raphael Smith. His subjects are
chiefly from the flat lands of Lincolnshire.
_Mr. Richter._ Henry James Richter (1772–1857), an exhibitor at the
Water-Colour Society from 1813 onwards.
_Disjecta_ [disjecti] _membra poetæ_. Horace, Sat. I. 4.
THE CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ OF THE BRITISH INSTITUTION
From _The Examiner_, November 3, 1816. See vol. I. _The Round Table_,
pp. 140 _et seq._ and notes thereto. The article here reprinted is the
first of the series of three ‘Literary Notices’ dealing with the
Catalogue. Instead of reprinting the second and third of these papers
entirely as promised in vol. I., it has been deemed sufficient to insert
here the passages omitted from the two articles as given in their _Round
Table_ form.
PAGE
_Damned in a fair face._ Cf. ‘damned in a fair wife.’ _Othello_, Act I.
Sc. 1.
_Madame de ——._ Staël.
_Lived in the rainbow._ _Comus_, 298.
312. _In the presence of these divine guests._ An _erratum_ in the
following number of _The Examiner_ (Nov. 10, 1816), states that these
words should precede ‘the nauseous tricks,’ instead of preceding ‘like a
blackguard.’
313. _Sent to their account._ _Hamlet_, Act I. Sc. 5.
314. _To the Jews a stumbling-block._ _1 Cor._ i. 23.
_A quantity of barren spectators._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 2.
_Hold the mirror up to nature._ _Ibid._, Act III. Sc. 2.
_The glass of fashion._ _Ibid._, Act III. Sc. 1.
_Numbers without number._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 346.
315. _Lavater._ Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801), the student of
physiognomy. Holcroft translated his _Physiognomische Fragmente zur
Beförderung der Menschen-Kenntniss und Menschenliebe_ (1775–1778) into
English (1793). See vol. II. _The Life of Thomas Holcroft_, p. 115.
_Spurzheim._ See vol. VII. _The Plain Speaker_, pp. 17 _et seq._, and
137 _et seq._
_Mr. Perry of the Chronicle._ James Perry (1756–1821), proprietor and
editor of _The Morning Chronicle_. See vol. II. _The Life of Thomas
Holcroft_, p. 89, etc.
_With most admired disorder._ _Macbeth_, Act III. Sc. 4.
PAGE
316. _To let I dare not._ _Macbeth_, Act I. Sc. 7.
_Service sweat for duty._ _As You Like It_, Act II. Sc. 3.
317. _This, this is the unkindest blow_ [most unkindest cut] _of all_.
_Julius Caesar_, Act III. Sc. 2.
_Own gained knowledge._ _Othello_, Act I. Sc. 3.
_Turner._ Joseph Mallard William Turner (1775–1851).
_That’s a feeling disputation._ _1 King Henry IV._, Act III. Sc. 1.
318. _To some men their graces serve them but as enemies._ _As You Like
It_, Act. II. Sc. 3.
The Second of the _Catalogue Raisonné_ papers was published in _The
Examiner_, November 10, 1816, and proceeds as in _The Round Table_ to
‘the marring of Art is the making of the Academy’ (vol. I. p. 142); then
add: ‘He would have the Directors keep the old Masters under, by playing
off upon them the same tricks of background, situation, &c. which they
play off upon one another’s pictures so successfully at the Academy
Great Room. [Note.] The Academicians having out-done nature at home,
wait till their pictures are hung up at the Academy to outdo one
another. When they know their exact situation in the Great Room, they
set to work with double diligence to paint up to their next neighbours,
or to keep them under. Sometimes they leave nearly the whole unfinished,
that they may have a more _ad libitum_ opportunity of annoying their
friends, and of shining at their expense.—had placed a landscape,
consisting of one enormous sheet of white lead, like the clean white
napkin depending from the chin to the knees of the Saturday night’s
customers in a barber’s shop, under a whole length of a lady by ——, in a
white chalk dress, which made his Cleopatra look like a dowdy. Our
little lively knight of the brush goes me round the room, crying out,
“Who has any vermilion, who has any Indian yellow?” and presently
returns, and by making his whole length one red and yellow daub, like
the drop-curtain at Covent-Garden, makes the poor Academician’s
landscape look “pale as his shirt.”[62] Such is the history of modern
Art. It is no wonder that “these fellows, who thus o’er-do
Termagant,”[63] should look with horror at the sobriety of ancient Art.
It is no wonder that they carry their contempt, hatred, and jealousy of
one another, into the Art itself.’
After the end of the first _Round Table_ paper (‘British Growth and
Manufacture’) add: ‘To what absurdities may we be reduced by the malice
of folly! The light of Art, like that of nature, shines on all alike;
and its benefit, like that of the sun, is in being seen and felt. Our
Catalogue-makers, like the puffers to the Gas-light Company, consider it
only as a matter of trade, or what they can get by the sale and monopoly
of it; they would extinguish all of it that does not come through the
miserable chinks and crannies of their patriotic sympathy, or would
confine it in the hard unfeeling sides of some body corporate, as Ariel
was shut up in a cloven pine by the foul witch Sycorax. The cabal of Art
in this country would keep it on the other side of the Channel. They
would keep up a perpetual quarantine against it as infectious. They
would subject it to new custom-house duties. They would create a right
of search after all works of genuine Art as contraband. They would
establish an alien-office[64] under the Royal Academy, to send all the
finest pictures out of the country, to prevent unfair and invidious
competition. The genius of modern Art does not bathe in the dews of
Castalie, but rises like the dirty goddess of Gay’s _Trivia_ out of the
Thames, just opposite Somerset-House, and armed with a Grub-street pen
in one hand, and a sign-post brush in the other, frightens the Arts from
advancing any farther. They would thus effectually suppress the works of
ancient genius and the progress of modern taste at one and the same
time; and if they did not sell their pictures, would find ease to their
tortured minds by not seeing others admired.’
The Second of the _Examiner_ articles includes the first paragraph of
the second of the _Round Table_ articles and ends with ‘encouragement of
the Fine Arts?’ (vol. I. p. 147). A letter follows, signed H. R.,
protesting against being pointed out as the author of the _Catalogue
Raisonné_, to which the following paragraph is added in square
brackets:—
‘We insert the above letter as in duty bound; for it is a sad thing to
labour under the imputation of being the author of the Catalogue—“that
deed without a name.”[65] But we hardly know how to reply to our
Correspondent, unless by repeating what Mr. Brumell said of the
Regent—“Who is our fat friend?” We do not know his person or address, or
by what marks he identifies himself with our description of him—Whether
he answers to his name as a cheese-curd, or a piece of whitleather, or
as a Shrewsbury Cake; or as a stocking, or a joint-stool; or as a little
round man, or as a fair squab man? If he claims any or all of these
marks as his property, he is welcome to them. We shall believe him. We
shall also believe him, when he says he is not the anonymous author of
the _Catalogue Raisonné_; and in that case, we can have no farther fault
to find with him, even though he were the beautiful Albiness.’
The Third of the _Catalogue Raisonné_ articles was published in _The
Examiner_, Nov. 17, 1816, and proceeds as in _The Round Table_ with the
following additions.
The quotation from Burke to Barry (vol. I. p. 148) has the following
footnote:—
‘Yet Mr. Burke knew something of Art and of the world. He thought the
Art should be encouraged for the sake of Artists. They think it should
be destroyed for their sakes. They would cut it up at once, as the boy
did the goose with golden eggs.’
After _such heavy drollery_ (vol. I. p. 150) add: ‘with the stupid,
knowing air of a horse-jockey or farrier, and in the right _slang_ of
the veterinary art.’
After _will speak more_ (Ibid.) add: ‘We concluded our last with some
remarks on Claude’s landscapes. We shall return to them here; and we
would ask those who have seen them at the British Institution, “Is the
general effect,”’ etc. [here Hazlitt inserted the criticism on Claude he
used later in the article on _Fine Arts for the Encyclopædia
Britannica_, see p. 394 of the present volume, ending with ‘What
landscape-painter does not feel this of Claude?’]
‘It seems the author of the _Catalogue Raisonné_ does not; for he thus
speaks of him:—
“_David Encamped._—_Claude._ _Rev. W. H. Carr_:—If it were not for the
horrible composition of this landscape—the tasteless hole in the
wall—the tents and daddy-long-legs, whom Mr. Carr has christened King
David, we should be greatly offended by its present obtrusion on the
public; as it is, we are bound to suppose the possessor sees deeper into
the mill-stone than ourselves; and if it were politic, could thoroughly
explain the matter to our satisfaction. _Be this as it may, we cannot
resist expressing our regret at the absence of Claude Gillee’s
Muses.—The Public in general merely know, by tradition, that this
painter was a pastry-cook: had this delectable composition to which we
now allude been brought forward, they would have had the evidence of his
practice to confirm it. It is said to represent Mount Parnassus; and no
one, who for a moment has seen the picture, can entertain the smallest
doubt of its having been taken from one of his own Plateaux. The figures
have all the character and drawing which they might be expected to
derive from a species of twelfth-cake casts. The swans are of the truest
wax-shapes, while the water bears every mark of being done from
something as right-earnest as that at Sadler’s Wells, and the Prince’s
Fete of 1814._”
‘This is the way in which the Catalogue-writer aids and abets the Royal
Academy in the promotion and encouragement of the Fine Arts in this
country. Now, what if we were to imitate him, and to say of the “ablest
landscape-painter now living,” that.... No, we will not; we have blotted
out the passage after we had written it—Because it would be bad wit, bad
manners, and bad reasoning. Yet we dare be sworn it is as good wit, as
good manners, and as good reasoning, as the wittiest, the most
gentlemanly, and the most rational passage, in the _Catalogue Raisonné_.
Suppose we were to put forth voluntarily such a criticism on one of Mr.
Turner’s landscapes? What then? we should do a great injustice to an
able and ingenious man, and disgrace ourselves: but we should not hurt a
sentiment, we should not mar a principle, we should not invade the
sanctuary of Art. Mr. Turner’s pictures have not, like Claude’s, become
a sentiment in the heart of Europe; his fame has not been stamped and
rendered sacred by the hand of time. Perhaps it never will.[66]
‘We have only another word to add on this very lowest of all subjects.
The writer calls in the cant of morality to his aid. He was quite
shocked to find himself in the company of some female relations,
vis-à-vis with a naked figure of Annibal Caracci’s. Yet he thinks the
Elgin Marbles likely to raise the morals of the country to a high pitch
of refinement. Good. The fellow is a hypocrite too.’
Instead of ‘_return? nothing_‘, the paper ends thus:—‘return; the low
buffoonery of a mechanic scribbler, a Bart’lemy-fair puppet-shew, Mrs.
Salmon’s Royal Wax-work, or the exhibition of the Royal Academy, King
George the Third on horseback, or his son treading in his steps on foot,
or Prince Blucher, or the Hetman Platoff,[67] or the Duke with the
foolish face, or the great Plenipotentiary[68]? God save the mark!’
WEST’S PICTURE OF DEATH ON THE PALE HORSE
From _The Edinburgh Magazine_, December 1817.
The full title was—_Remarks on Mr. West’s Picture of Death on the Pale
Horse and on his Descriptive Catalogue which accompanies it_.
PAGE
318. _It sets on a quantity of barren spectators._ _Hamlet_, Act III.
Sc. 2.
_High endeavour and the glad success._ Cowper, _The Task_, V. 901.
319. _So shall my anticipation._ _Hamlet_, Act II. Sc. 2.
319. _Like Bayes in the ‘Rehearsal.’_ A farce by George Villiers, second
Duke of Buckingham, 1671.
320. _Spoken with authority and not as the scribes._ _S. Mark_ i. 22.
321. _Another enemy of the human race._ The phrase is applied to
Buonaparte. See vol. VIII. _A View of the English Stage_, p. 284.
_Grin horrible a ghastly smile._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 146.
_Monarch of the universal world._ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act III. Sc. 2.
322. _Multum abludit imago._ Horace, _Sat._ II. 3. 320.
ON WILLIAMS’S VIEWS IN GREECE
From _The London Magazine_, May 1822.
324. _Mr. Hugh Williams._ Hugh William Williams (1773–1829), of a Welsh
family, but Scotland was his adopted country. His various sketches
gained him the name of Grecian Williams.
325. _Close to the gate._ Pope, _Odyssey_, Book VII., 142 _et seq._
326. The last paragraph of the essay is a ‘N.B.,’ following the initials
W. H.
ON THE ELGIN MARBLES
Two papers from _The London Magazine_, February and May 1822. The second
article began with the paragraph at the foot of p. 331. On p. 344, l. 9
from foot, the following sentence in the _Magazine_ is inserted after
the words ‘The Ilissus or River-god’:—‘(of which we have given a print
in a former number).’ The frontispiece to the February number was an
engraving of the Ilissus by J. Shury.
In 1816 Hazlitt contributed two ‘Literary Notices’ to _The Examiner_
(June 16 and 30), on the _Report from the Select Committee of the House
of Commons on the Elgin Marbles_.—Murray. The second of these two
‘notices’ formed the basis of the _London Magazine_ article. Certain
paragraphs not given in the later _London Magazine_ form (the text
adopted here) are given below. The first of _The Examiner_ ‘notices’
will be found in the Appendix to the present volume.
_The Examiner_ article, June 30, begins with the quotation from Cowley
and then adds, before the paragraph beginning ‘The true lesson,’ etc.,
the following: ‘According to the account of Pliny, it does not appear
certain that Phidias ever worked in marble. He mentions indeed a marble
Venus at Rome, conjectured to be his; and another at Athens, without the
walls, done by his scholar Alcamenes, to which Phidias was said to have
put the last hand. His chief works, according to this historian, were
the Olympian Jupiter, and the Minerva in the Parthenon, both in ivory:
he executed other known works in brass. The words of Pliny, in speaking
of Phidias, are remarkable:—[“That the name of Phidias is
illustrious ... magnificence even in small things.”—_Natural History_,
Book xxxvi.].
‘It appears, by the above description, that Phidias did not make choice
of the colossal height of this statue with a view to make size a
substitute for grandeur; but in order that he might be able, among other
things, to finish, fill up, and enrich every part as much as possible.
Size assists grandeur in genuine art only by enabling the Artist to give
a more perfect developement to the parts of which the whole is composed.
A miniature is inferior to a full-sized picture, not because it does not
give the large and general outline, but because it does not give the
smaller varieties and finer elements of nature. As a proof of this (if
the thing were not self-evident), the copy of a good portrait will
always make a highly-finished miniature, but the copy of a good
miniature, if enlarged to the size of life, will make but a very vapid
portrait. Some of our own Artists, who are fond of painting large
figures, either misunderstand or misapply this principle. They make the
whole figure gigantic, not that they may have room for nature, but for
the motion of their brush, regarding the quantity of canvas they have to
cover as an excuse for the slovenly and hasty manner in which they cover
it; and thus in fact leave their pictures nothing at last but monstrous
miniatures.
‘We should hardly have ventured to mention this figure of five and
thirty feet high, which might give an inordinate expansion to the ideas
of our contemporaries, but that the labour and pains bestowed upon every
part of it,—the thirty Gods carved on the pedestal, the battle of the
Centaurs and Lapithæ on the sandals, would at once make their
magnificent projects shrink into a nutshell, or bring them within the
compass of reason.—We had another inducement for extracting Pliny’s
account of the Minerva of Phidias, which was, to check any inclination
on the part of our students to infer from the Elgin Marbles, that the
perfection of ancient Grecian art consisted in the imperfect state in
which its earliest remains have come down to us; or to think that
fragments are better than whole works, that the trunk is more valuable
without the head, and that the grandeur of the antique consists in the
ruin and decay into which it has fallen through time.’
PAGE
326. _Who to the life._ Cowley, _To the Royal Society_.
_To learn her manner._
‘Acknowledges with joy
His manner, and with rapture tastes His style.’
Cowper, _The Task_, III. 227–8.
327. _Alternate action and repose._ Cf.
‘And bid alternate passions fall and rise.’
Pope, _Essay on Criticism_, 375.
328. After ‘_is to us a mystery_,’ add, from _The Examiner_: ‘Further,
we are ready (for the benefit of the Fine Arts in this kingdom) to
produce two casts from actual nature, which if they do not furnish
practical proof of all that we have here advanced, we are willing to
forfeit all that we are worth—a theory’ [see p. 331, present volume].
The article then ends with the ten principles and the following note:
‘We shall conclude with expressing a hope, that the Elgin Marbles may
not be made another national stop-gap between nature and art.
‘In answer to some objections to what was said in a former article on
the comparative propriety of removing these statues, we beg leave to put
one question. It appears from the Report of the Committee, that the
French Government were, in the year 1811, anxious to purchase the
collection of Lord Elgin, who was then a prisoner in France. We ask
then, supposing this to have been done, what would have become of it?
Would not the Theseus and the Neptune have been solemnly sent back, like
malefactors, “to the place from whence they came?”—Yes, to be sure.—The
Rev. Dr. Philip Hunt, in the service of Lord Elgin, declares, in his
evidence before the Committee, that no objection was made nor regret
expressed by the inhabitants at the removal of the Marbles. In the notes
to _Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage_,[69] we find the following extract of a
letter from Dr. Clarke to Lord Byron:—“When the last of the Metopes was
taken from the Parthenon, and in moving it, great part of the
superstructure, with one of triglyphs, was thrown down by the workmen
whom Lord Elgin employed, the Disdar, who beheld the mischief done to
the building, took his pipe from His mouth, dropped a tear, and in a
supplicating tone of voice, said to Lusieri, ‘_Telos_! I was
present.’”—It appears that Dr. Philip Hunt was not.’
330. _Image and superscription._ _S. Matthew_ xxii. 20.
332. _So from the ground_ [root]. _Paradise Lost_, v. 481.
_Laborious foolery._ See _ante_, note to p. 121.
333. _Fair varieties._ ‘And all the fair variety of things.’ Akenside,
_Pleasures of Imagination_, I.
_Mr. Westall._ Richard Westall (1765–1836), chiefly remembered by his
book-illustrations.
_Angelica Kauffman._ Maria Anna Angelica Kauffmann (1741–1807), a Swiss
painter, chiefly of female characters.
334. _Torrigiano._ Pietro Torrigiano (1472–1528), Italian sculptor. The
bronze tombs of Henry VII. and Queen Elizabeth at Westminster are his.
He was imprisoned for heresy and died of hunger.
335. _Gay creatures of the element._ _Comus_, 299.
336. _Mr. Martin._ John Martin, landscape and historical painter
(1789–1854), one of the founders of the Society of British Artists.
338. _Sir Joshua tells us ... the Idler._ Nos. 76 and 82. Cf. vol. VI.
_Table Talk_, p. 131 and note.
Note. _Sedet in æternumque sedebit._ Virgil, _Æneid_, VI. 617–18.
339. _Villainous low._ _The Tempest_, Act IV. Sc. 1.
340. _To o’erstep the modesty of nature._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 2.
_All we hate._ Pope, _Moral Essays_, II. 52.
342. _Thrills in each nerve._
Cf. ‘A sudden horror chill
Ran through each nerve, and thrilled in ev’ry vein.’
Addison, _Milton’s Style Imitated_, 123–4.
347. _Mr. Kean._ Edmund Kean (1787–1833).
_Mr. Kemble._ John Philip Kemble (1757–1823).
FONTHILL ABBEY
From _The London Magazine_, November 1822
348. _Omne ignotum._ Tacitus, _Agricola_, XXX.
_Ships of pearl and seas of amber._ An unacknowledged recollection of
‘seas of milk, and ships of amber.’ Otway, _Venice Preserved_, v. 2.
349. _Breughel._ Jan Brueghel (1568–1625), of Brussels, a landscape
painter greatly admired by Rubens, in some of whose pictures Brueghel
painted the landscapes.
_Rottenhammer._ Johann Rottenhammer (1564–1623), of Munich, historical
painter. Brueghel painted some of his landscape back-grounds also.
_Which like a trumpet._
‘That like a trumpet made young pulses dance.’
Leigh Hunt, _The Story of Rimini_, Canto III.
_Cumberland._ Richard Cumberland (1732–1811), the dramatist, who was
sent to Spain on a diplomatic mission in 1780. See his _Memoirs_, 1807,
vol. II. p. 78.
_While groves of Eden._ Pope, _Windsor Forest_, 7.
_Mr. Ritchie._ Joseph Ritchie (1788?-1819), who went out on a government
expedition to Africa about 1818.
_Bruce._ James Bruce (1730–1794), who explored Abyssinia in 1769–1771.
_Beckford._ See _ante_, note to p. 56.
351. _Whose price is above rubies._ ‘The price of wisdom is above
rubies.’ _Job_ xxviii. 18.
351. _The showman in Goldsmith’s comedy._ _She Stoops to Conquer_, I.
352. _In our mind’s eye._ _Hamlet_, Act I. Sc. 2.
_Mr. Christie._ James Christie, the elder (1730–1803), the London
auctioneer. His son, James the younger (1773–1831), was both antiquary
and auctioneer.
354. _Della Cruscan._ See vol. V. _Lectures on the English Poets_, note
to p. 148.
_Nugæ Canoræ._ Horace, _Ars Poet._ 322.
_Stella._ A family of French painters of various years from 1525 to
1697.
_Franks._ Frans Francken, the younger, otherwise Don Francisco, of
Antwerp (1581–1642), one of a numerous family of painters.
_Lucas Cranach._ Luther’s friend, the painter whose name is always
associated with the Reformation (1472–1553).
_Netecher._ Caspar Netcher (1639–1684), of Heidelberg, painter of
domestic scenes and small portraits. His two sons Constantine and
Theodor were also painters.
355. _Cosway._ Richard Cosway (d. 1821), the miniaturist. This passage
about Cosway is substantially repeated in vol. VII. _The Plain Speaker_,
pp. 95–6.
_Mr. Cipriani._ Giambattista Cipriani, of Florentine birth (1727–1785).
_We scarce shall_ [shall not] _look upon his like again_. _Hamlet_, Act
I. Sc. 2.
_G. Douw._ See _ante_, note to p. 35.
_Bassan._ See _ante_, note to p. 35.
JUDGING OF PICTURES
From _The Literary Examiner_, August 2, 1823
357. _Dr. Kitchener._ William Kitchiner (1775?-1827), M.D., author of
_Apicius Redivivus, or the Cook’s Oracle_, 1817, a book which passed
through many editions.
_Mr. Ude._ Louis-Eustache Ude, whose book, _The French Cook; or the Art
of Cookery developed in all its branches_, was published in 1813.
_As ‘Squire Western would say._ See _Tom Jones_, Book IV. chap, X., etc.
THE VATICAN
From _The New Monthly Magazine_, November 1827. It was published later
in the volume of Hazlitt’s _Literary Remains_, 1836.
359. _L._ Landor [W. C. Hazlitt].
360. _With hideous ruin._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 46.
361. _Divinæ particula_ [particulam] _auræ_. Horace, Sat. II. 2.
_The rapt soul._ _Il Penseroso_, 40.
_Seer blest._ _Paradise Lost_, XII. 553.
_As a book where one may read strange matters._ _Macbeth_, Act I. Sc. 5.
_Neither the cloud by day nor the pillar of fire._ _Exodus_ xiii. 21.
362. _His bodies thought._
‘——so distinctly wrought
That one might almost say, her body thought.’
John Donne: _An Anatomy of the World_, Second Anniversary, 245–6.
363. _A fiery soul._ Dryden, _Absalom and Achitophel_, I. 156.
365. _Hope elevates, and joy brightens their every feature_ [his crest].
_Paradise Lost_, IX. 633.
366. _On his front engraven thought_ [deliberation sat]. _Ibid._, II.
302.
_Scattered like stray-gifts._ Wordsworth, _Stray Pleasures_.
366. _Stately height though bare._ Cf. _Paradise Lost_, I. 723:
‘The ascending pile
Stood fixed her stately highth.’
367. _Cosmo Comyne Bradwardine._ _Waverley_, vol. II. chap. 28.
_Fergus MacIvor._ _Ibid._ vol. II. chap. 40.
ENGLISH STUDENTS AT ROME
From _The New Monthly Magazine_, October 1827
369. _The vast, the unbounded._ _Paradise Lost_, X. 471.
371. _Petrific mace._ _Paradise Lost_, X. 294.
372. _Pan is a god._ Lyly’s _Midas_, IV. 1.
_The colouring of Titian._ _Tristram Shandy_, III. 12.
373. _The high endeavour._ Cowper, _The Task_, V. 901.
374. _Hobbes said well._ Leviathan, Part IV., _Of the Kingdome of
Darknesse_, chap. 47.
375. _Vox faucibus hæsit._ Virgil, _Æneid_, II. 774.
_Sedet infelix Theseus._ _Ibid._, VI. 617.
_His tediousness._ Cf. the scene between Leonato and Dogberry, etc.
_Much Ado About Nothing_, Act III. Sc. 5.
376. _Tearing_ [wipe away] _from his memory_. _Hamlet_, Act I. Sc. 5.
_Her_ [my] _commandment all alone_. _Ibid._
FINE ARTS
An article contributed to the supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth
editions of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_: 6 vols., 4to, 1824. Signed Z.
This essay was based upon articles which appeared in _The Champion_ on
August 28, September 11, and October 2, 1814, entitled—_Fine Arts_.
_Whether they are promoted by academies and public institutions_, and on
October 30 and November 6 entitled _Character of Sir Joshua Reynolds_.
Passages omitted from the later publication will be found below. The
article is a characteristic example of Hazlitt’s method of using his
previous work when writing on a similar subject.
The text here printed is that of the supplementary volumes of 1824,
published during Hazlitt’s lifetime, and incorporated later in the
uniform issue of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ (the 7th) the
title-pages of which were dated 1842.
Hazlitt’s article on _The Fine Arts_ and the one on _Painting_ by
Haydon, ‘being the articles under those heads contributed to the seventh
edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_,’ were published in one volume
by Messrs. Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh, in 1838. Hazlitt’s article
was also published in the volume of _Literary Remains_ published in
1836.
The Essays in _Table Talk_, Nos. XIII. and XIV., ‘On certain
Inconsistencies in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses,’ may be mentioned
in connection with the subject-matter of the present article (see vol.
VI. pp. 122 _et seq._), and also four papers contributed to _The
Champion_ on Reynolds as critic, November 27, December 4 and 25, 1814,
and January 8, 1815. See the final volumes of the present edition, where
they are reprinted for the first time.
PAGE
382. _The Mistress or the saint._ Goldsmith’s _Traveller_, 152.
388. _Bright with excessive darkness._
Cf. ‘dark with excessive bright.’
_Paradise Lost_, III. 380.
389. _They are of the earth, earthy._ _1 Cor._ XV. 47.
_Vangoyen._ See _ante_, note to p. 36.
_Ruysdael._ See _ante_, note to p. 22.
_Vanderneer._ Probably Eglon Hendrik Van der Neer (1643–1703), of
Amsterdam, is meant, since his pictures are characterised by their
elaborate finish. His father, Aert Van der Neer (1603–1677), painted
moonlight and winter scenes.
390. _To hold the mirror._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 2.
_To show vice_ [virtue] _her own feature, scorn her own image_. _Ibid._,
Act III. Sc. 2.
391. _Die of a rose in aromatic pain._ Pope, _Essay on Man_, Ep. I. 200.
_Of the great vulgar and the small._ Cowley, _Horace_, _Odes_, III. 1.
392. After _Marriage à la Mode_ the article in its original issue adds:
‘exhibited lately at the British Institution.’
394. _Universal Pan._ _Paradise Lost_, IV. 266.
396. _The authority of Sir Joshua Reynolds._ From the article in _The
Champion_, Oct. 30, 1814, entitled _Character of Sir Joshua Reynolds_.
After _worth considering_ add: ‘From the great and substantial merits of
the late President, we have as little the inclination as the power to
detract. But we certainly think that they have been sometimes over-rated
from the partiality of friends and from the influence of fashion.
However necessary and useful the ebullitions of public or private
enthusiasm may be to counteract the common prejudices against new claims
to reputation, and to lift rising genius to its just rank, there is a
time when, having accomplished its end, our zeal may be suffered to
subside into discretion, and when it becomes as proper to restrain our
admiration as it was before to give a loose to it. It is only by having
undergone this double ordeal that reputation can ever be established on
a solid basis—that popularity becomes fame.’
397. _Alone give value and dignity to it._ Cf. Lamb’s _Essay on the
Genius and Character of Hogarth_ (ed. E. V. Lucas, I. 80), where the
words are quoted from Barry’s _Account of a Series of Pictures ... at
the Adelphi_.
_Hudson._ Thomas Hudson (1701–1779), one of the most fashionable
portrait painters of his day, the master of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
After _affected position_ add: ‘He thought that beauty and perfection
were _one_ and he very consistently reduced this principle to practice.’
_Richardson._ Jonathan Richardson (1665–1745), portrait painter and
writer on art.
_Coypel._ A family of French painters of various years from 1628 to
1752.
398. After _proportion or form_ add: ‘This distinction has not been
sufficiently attended to. Mr. West, for example, has considerable
knowledge of drawing, as it relates to proportion, to the anatomical
measurements of the human body. He has not the least conception of
elegance or grandeur of form. The one is matter of mechanical knowledge,
the other of taste and feeling. Rubens was deficient in the anatomical
measurements, as well as in the marking of the muscles: but he had as
fine an eye as possible for what may be called _the picturesque_ in
form, both in the composition of his figures and in the particular
parts. In all that relates to the expression of motion, that is, to
ease, freedom, and elasticity of form, he was unrivalled. He was as
superior to Mr. West in his power of drawing, as in his power of
colouring.—Correggio’s proportions are said to have been often
incorrect: but his feeling of beauty, and grace of outline, was of the
most exquisite kind.’
399. After _and some others_ add the following footnote: ‘Our references
are generally made to pictures in the late exhibition of Sir Joshua’s
works in the British Gallery.’
_No mark or likelihood._ _1 King Henry IV._, Act III. Sc. 2.
After _downright portraits and nothing more_, add: ‘What if he had
painted them on the theory of middle forms, or pounded their features
together in the same metaphysical mortar? Mr. Westall might just as well
have painted them. They would have been of no more value than his own
pictures of Mr. Tomkins,[70] the penman, or Mrs. Robinson,[71] who is
painted with a hat and feather, or Mrs. Billington,[72] who is painted
as St. Cecilia, or than the Prince of Wales and Duke of York, or the
portraits of Sir George and Lady Beaumont. Would the artist in this case
have conferred the same benefit on the public, or have added as much to
the stock of our ideas, as by giving us _fac-similes_ of the most
interesting characters of the time, with whom we seem, from his
representations of them, to be almost as well acquainted as if we had
known them, and to remember their persons as well as their writings? Yet
we would rather have seen Johnson, or Goldsmith, or Burke, than their
portraits. This shows that the effect of the pictures would not have
been the worse, if they had been the more finished, and more detailed:
for there is nothing so true, either to the details or to the general
effect, as nature. The only celebrated person of this period whom we
have seen is Mr. Sheridan, whose face, we have no hesitation in saying,
contains a great deal more, and is better worth seeing, than Sir
Joshua’s picture of him.’
After _stiff and confined_ add: ‘But there is a medium between primness
and hoydening.’
400. After _ease and elegance_ add: ‘Sir Joshua seems more than once
(both theoretically and practically) to have borrowed his idea of
positive excellence from a negation of the opposite defect. His tastes
led him to reject the faults, which he had observed in others; but he
had not always power to realize his own idea of perfection, or to
ascertain precisely in what it consisted. His colouring also wanted that
purity, delicacy, and transparent smoothness, which gives such an
exquisite charm to Vandyke’s women. Vandyke’s portraits (mostly of
English women) in the Louvre, have a cool, refreshing air about them, a
look of simplicity and modesty even in the very tone, which forms a fine
contrast to the voluptuous glow and mellow golden lustre of Titian’s
Italian women. There is a quality of flesh-colour in Vandyke, which is
to be found in no other painter, neither in Titian, Rubens, nor
Rembrandt; nor is it in Reynolds, for he had nothing which was not taken
from those three. It exactly conveys the idea of the soft, smooth,
sliding, continuous, delicately varied surface of the skin. Correggio
approached nearer to it, though his principle of light and shade was
totally different. The objects in Vandyke have the least possible
difference of light and shade, and are presented to the eye without
being reflected through any other medium. It is this extreme purity and
clearness of tone, together with the elegance and precision of his
particular forms,[73] that places Vandyke in the first rank of
portrait-painters. As Reynolds had not his defects, he had not his
excellences. We accidentally saw the late Lady Mount-Joy at the
exhibition of Sir Joshua’s works in Pall-mall: nor could we help
contrasting the dazzling clearness of complexion, the delicacy and
distinctness of the form of the features, with the half made-up and
faded beauties which hung on the walls, and which comparatively
resembled paste figures, smeared over with paint. We doubt whether the
same effect would have been produced in a fine collection of Vandyke’s.
In the gallery of Blenheim, there is a family picture of the Duchess of
Buckingham with her children, which is a pure mirrour of fashion. The
picture produces the same sort of respect and silence as if the
spectator had been introduced into a family circle of the highest rank,
at a period when rank was a greater distinction than it is at present.
The delicate attention and mild solicitude of the mother are admirable,
but two of the children surpass description. The one is a young girl of
nine or ten, who looks as if “the winds of heaven had not been permitted
to visit her face too roughly”;[74] she stands before her mother in all
the pride of childish self-importance, and studied display of artificial
prettinesses, with a consciousness that the least departure from strict
propriety or decorum will be instantly detected; the other is a little
round-faced chubby boy, who stands quite at his ease behind his mother’s
chair, with a fine rosy glow of health in his cheeks, through which the
blood is seen circulating. It was like seeing the objects reflected in a
glass. The picture of the late Duke and Duchess of Marlborough and their
children, in the same room, painted by Sir Joshua, appear coarse and
tawdry when compared with “the soft precision of the clear
Vandyke.”’[75]
400. After _borrowed from Correggio_ add: ‘Sir Joshua has only repeated
the same idea _ad infinitum_, and has, besides, caricatured it. It has
been said that his children were unrivalled. Titian’s, Raphael’s, and
Correggio’s were much superior. Those of Rubens and Poussin were at
least equal. If any one should hesitate as to the last painter in
particular, we would refer them to the picture (at Lord Grosvenor’s) of
the children paying adoration to the infant Christ, or to the children
drinking in the picture of Moses striking the rock. Our making these
comparisons or giving these preferences is not, we conceive, any
disparagement to Sir Joshua. Did we not think highly of him, we might
well blush to make them.’
_Infant Samuel._ The passage in _The Champion_ is slightly different,
and quotes a few lines from Mr. Sotheby’s poetical Epistle to Sir G.
Beaumont describing the infant Jupiter and the infant Samuel. William
Sotheby (1757–1833) was horse-soldier, friend of Sir Walter Scott, and
poet.
After _but the name_ add: ‘Sir Joshua himself (as it appears from his
biographers) had no idea of a subject in painting them, till some
ignorant and officious admirer undertook to supply the deficiency. What
can be more trifling than giving the portrait of Kitty Fisher[76] the
mock-heroic title of Cleopatra?’
401. _Count Ugolino._ The story will be found in _The Inferno_, Canto
XXXIII.
After _rest of the figures_ add: ‘who look very much like apprentices
hired to sit for the occasion from some neighbouring workshop. There is
one pleasing and natural figure of a little boy kneeling at his father’s
feet, but it has no relation to the supposed story.’
401. After _charitable donation_ add: ‘There is all the difference
between what the picture is and what it ought to be, that there is
between Crabbe and Dante.’
After _which they are borne?_ add: ‘Nothing! Yet Dr. Warton,[77] who has
related this story so well; Burke, who wrote that fine description of
the effects of famine;[78] Goldsmith, and all his other friends, were
satisfied with his success. Why then should not Sir Joshua be so
too?—Because he was bound to understand the language which he used, as
well as that which was given him to translate.’
After _dreadful objects_ add: ‘The idea of Macbeth seems to be taken
from the passage in Shakespear—“Why stands Macbeth thus amazedly?”[79]
The poet has in this taunting question of the witches laid open the
inmost movements of his mind. Why has the painter turned his face from
us?’ Then, the Cardinal Beaufort passage having been given before
instead of after that about Macbeth, the _Champion_ article ends thus:—
‘“Garrick between tragedy and comedy” is, to say the best, a very
indifferent performance. He appears to be “grinning for a wager.” We
cannot conceive how any two ladies should contend for such a prize, nor
how he should be divided between them. The muse of comedy is as childish
and insipid as the muse of tragedy is cold and repulsive. The whole is
mere affectation without an idea. Mrs. Siddons, as the tragic muse, is
an improvement on the same false style. It is not Mrs. Siddons, nor is
it the tragic muse, but something between both, and neither. We would
ask those who pretend to admire this composition, whether they think it
would convey to any one who had never seen the original, the least idea
of the power of that wonderful actress in any one of her characters, and
as it relates to the expression of countenance alone? That it gives an
idea of any thing finer, is what we cannot readily make up our minds to.
We ought perhaps in fairness to close these remarks with a confession of
our weakness.—There was one picture which affected us more than all the
rest, because it seemed to convey the true feeling of the story, and
that was the picture of the Children in the Wood.
‘To return once more to Sir Joshua’s general character as a painter. He
has been compared to Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Vandyke, Rembrandt, and
Correggio, and said to unite all their excellences. It will be well to
qualify this praise. He had little congeniality of mind, except with the
two last, more particularly Rembrandt. Of Raphael, it is needless to say
any thing. He had very little of Titian’s manner, except perhaps a
greater breadth and uniform richness of colour than he would have
acquired from Rembrandt. He had none of the dignity or animation of
Titian’s portraits. It is not speaking too highly of the portraits of
Titian to say, that they have as much expression, that is, convey as
fine an idea of intellect and feeling, as the historical heads of
Raphael. The difference seems to be only, that the expression in Raphael
is more contemplative and philosophical, and in Titian more personal and
constitutional. In the portraits of the latter, the Italian character
always predominates: there is a look of piercing sagacity, of commanding
intellect, of acute sensibility, which it would be in vain to expect to
find in English portraits. The daring spirit and irritable passions of
the age and country are as distinctly stamped upon the countenances, and
can be as little mistaken as the costume which they wear. Many of them
look as if it would be hardly safe to be left in the room with them, so
completely do they convey the idea of superiority.[80] The portraits of
Raphael, though full of profound thought and character, have more of
common humanity about them.—Of Vandyke, as we have observed before, Sir
Joshua had neither the excellences nor defects. Some years ago, we saw
his picture of the Marquis of Granby, and Vandyke’s picture of Charles
I. (engraved by Strange[81]) standing by one another, in the Louvre. The
difference was striking. The portrait of the nobleman looked heavy and
muddled, from the mode of heaping on the colours, and the determination
to produce effect alone without attention to the subordinate details
defeated itself. The portrait of the unfortunate monarch, on the
contrary, displayed the utmost delicacy and facility of execution. Every
part would bear the nicest inspection, and yet the whole composition,
the monarch, the figure of the horse, and the attendants, had all the
distinctness, lightness, and transparency of objects seen in the open
air. There are some persons who will still prefer the former mode of
execution as more bold and dashing. For the same reason, we might prefer
the copies of the head of the Marquis of Granby, which we so often see
in conspicuous situations in the vicinity of the metropolis, to the
original.
‘Of Rubens our admired countryman had neither the facility nor
brilliancy. He was crude and heavy both in drawing and colour, compared
with the Flemish painter. Rembrandt was the painter of all others whom
Sir Joshua most resembled, and from whom he borrowed most. Strong masses
of light and shade, harmony and clearness of tone, the production of
effect by masterly, broad, and rapid execution were in general the
_forte_ of both these painters. Rembrandt had the priority in the order
of time, and also in power of hand and eye. There are no pictures of
Reynolds’ which will stand against the best of Rembrandt’s for striking
effect and an intense feeling of nature. They are faint, slovenly,
dingy, and commonplace in comparison. Rembrandt had even greater
versatility of genius. He had an eye for all objects as far as he had
seen them. His history and landscapes are equally fine in their way. He
might be said to have created a style of his own, which he also
perfected. In fact, he is one of the great founders and legislators of
art. Of Correggio, Reynolds borrowed little but the air of some of his
female heads, and the models of his children, which he injudiciously
overloaded with the massy light and shade of Rembrandt, instead of the
tender _chiaro-scuro_ of Correggio, the only colouring proper for that
kind of soft, undulating, retiring line of beauty. We shall sum up our
opinion by saying, that we do not find in the works of Sir Joshua either
the majesty and power, the delicacy and refinement, the luxurious
splendour, and dazzling invention, neither the same originality of
conception, nor perfect execution, which are to be found in the greatest
painters. Nevertheless, his works did honour to his art and to his
country.
W. H.’
406. _Collins._ William Collins (1788–1847), painter of rustic life, and
father of Wilkie Collins, the novelist, and a friend of Wilkie, the
painter.
_Heaphy._ Thomas Heaphy (1775–1835). He was the first President of the
Society of British Artists, 1824.
_As if some of nature’s journeymen._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 2.
Note. _This subject of the Ideal._ Cf. the article contributed to the
_Atlas_ under this heading, pp. 429 _et seq._
408. _Snatch a grace._ Pope, _Essay on Criticism_, I. 154.
_It has flourished._ The remainder of the essay is based on the two
_Champion_ articles of August 28 and September 11, 1814. The first one
begins:—
‘The Directors of the British Institution conclude the preface to their
catalogue of the works of Hogarth, Wilson, &c. in the following
words....
‘“The present exhibition, while it gratifies the taste and feeling of
the lover of art, may tend to excite animating reflections in the mind
of the artist: _if at a time when the art received little comparative
support such works were produced, a reasonable hope may be entertained
that we shall see productions of still higher attainment, under more
encouraging circumstances_.”
‘It should seem that a contrary conclusion might more naturally have
suggested itself from a contemplation of the collection, with which the
Directors of the Institution have so highly gratified the public taste
and feeling. When the real lover of art looks round, and sees the works
of Hogarth and of Wilson,—works which were produced in obscurity and
poverty,—and recollects the pomp and pride of patronage under which
these works are at present recommended to public notice, the obvious
inference which strikes him is, how little the production of such works
depends on “the most encouraging circumstances.” The visits of the gods
of old did not always add to the felicity of those whose guests they
were; nor do we know that the countenance and favours of the great will
lift the arts to that height of excellence, or will confer all those
advantages which are expected from the proffered boon. The arts are of
humble growth and station; they are the product of labour and
self-denial; they have their seat in the heart of man, and in his
imagination; it is there they labour, have their triumphs there, and
unseen and unthought of, perform their ceaseless task.—Indeed,
patronage, and works of art deserving patronage, rarely exist together;
for it is only when the arts have attracted public esteem, and reflect
credit on the patron, that they receive this flattering support, and
then it generally proves fatal to them. We really do not see how the man
of genius should be improved by being transplanted from his closet to
the anti-chambers of the great, or to a fashionable rout. He has no
business there—but to bow, to flatter, to smile, to submit to the
caprice of taste, to adjust his dress, to think of nothing but his own
person and his own interest, to talk of the antique, and furnish designs
for the lids of snuffboxes, and ladies’ fans!
‘The passage above alluded to evidently proceeds on the common mistaken
notion, that the progress of the arts depends entirely on the
cultivation and encouragement bestowed on them; as if taste and genius
were perfectly mechanical, arbitrary things,—as if they could be bought
and sold, and regularly contracted for at a given price. It confounds
the fine arts with the mechanic arts,—art with science. It supposes that
feeling, imagination, invention, are the creatures of positive
institution; that the temples of the muses may be raised and supported
by voluntary contribution; that we can enshrine the soul of art in a
stately pile, of royal patronage, inspire corporate bodies with taste,
and carve out the direction to fame in letters of stone on the front of
public buildings. That the arts in any country may be at so low an ebb
as to be capable of great improvement by positive means, so as to reach
the common level to which such means can carry them, there is no doubt
or question: but after they have in any particular instance by native
genius and industry reached their highest eminence, to say that they
will, by mere artificial props and officious encouragement, arrive at a
point of “still higher attainment,” is assuming a good deal too much.
Are we to understand that the laudable efforts of the British
Institution are likely, by the mere operation of natural causes, to
produce a greater comic painter, a more profound describer of manners
than Hogarth? Or even that the lights and expectations held out in the
preface to the British catalogue, will enable some one speedily to
surpass the general excellence of Wilson’s landscapes? Is there anything
in the history of art to warrant such a conclusion—to support this
theory of progressive perfectibility under the auspices of patrons and
vice-patrons, presidents and select committees?
‘On the contrary, as far as the general theory is concerned the traces
of youth, manhood, and old age, are almost as distinctly marked in the
history of the art as of the individual. The arts have in general risen
rapidly from their first obscure dawn to their meridian height and
greatest lustre, and have no sooner reached this proud eminence than
they have as rapidly hastened to decay and desolation.’
409. After _symmetry of form_ add: ‘What then has the Genius of
progressive improvement been doing all this time? Has he been reposing
after his labours? How is it that the moderns are still so far behind,
notwithstanding all that was done ready to their hands by the
ancients,—when they possess a double advantage over them, and have not
nature only to form themselves upon, but nature and the antique?’
After _Guido Reni_ add:
‘For with him disappeared the last of those bright clouds,
That on the unsteady breeze of honour sailed
In long procession, calm and beautiful.’[84]
After _critics and connoisseurs_ add: ‘Art will not be constrained by
mastery, but at sight of the formidable array prepared to receive it,
“Spreads its light wings, and in a moment flies.”[85]
The genius of painting lies buried under the Vatican, or skulks behind
some old portrait of Titian from which it stole out lately to paint a
miniature of Lady Montagu!’
_Into opera attitudes?_ The _Champion_ reads ‘with the flighty French
attitudes?’ and proceeds: ‘Were Claude Lorraine, or Nicolas Poussin,
formed by the rules of De Piles[86] or Du Fresnoy?[87] There are no
general tickets of admission to the temple of Fame, transferable to
large societies, or organized bodies,—the paths leading to it are steep
and narrow, for by the time they are worn plain and easy, the niches are
full. 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 owed nothing to it? Even the venerable president of the
Royal Academy was one of its founders.[88]
‘It is plain then that the sanguine anticipation of the preface-writer,
however amiable and patriotic in its motive, has little foundation in
fact. It has even less in the true theory and principles of excellence
in the art.
‘“It has been often made a subject of complaint,” says a cotemporary
critic’ [Here Hazlitt quotes from an article of his used to makeup the
‘Fragment’ _Why the Arts are not Progressive?_ See vol. I. _The Round
Table_, p. 160. He ends with the words ‘mother earth’ and proceeds]:
‘We intend to offer a few general observations in illustration of this
view of the subject, which appears to us to be just. There are three
ways in which institutions for the promotion of the fine arts may be
supposed to favour the object in view; either by furnishing the best
models to the student,—or by holding out the prospect of immediate
patronage and reward,—or by diffusing a more general taste for the arts.
All of these so far from answering the end proposed, will be found on
examination, to have a contrary tendency.’
[The second paper in _The Champion_ begins here, with the motto: ‘It was
ever the trick of our English nation, if they had a good thing, to make
it too common.’]
‘We observed in the conclusion of our last article on this subject, that
there were three ways in which academies or public institutions might 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 consider each of these in order.
‘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.’
409. _Cimabue._ Giovanni Cimabue, of Florence (1240-?1302), the ‘Father
of Modern Painting,’ or more accurately, whose work marks the close of
the old school before the opening of the new by his pupil Giotto and
others.
_Massacio._ Tommaso Guidi, or Masaccio (Slovenly Tommy, for his careless
manners), Florentine painter (1401–1428).
_Carlo Maratti._ See _ante_, note to p. 19.
_Raphael Mengs._ See _ante_, note to p. 203.
After _pretend to combine_ add: ‘Inoffensive insipidity is the utmost
that can ever be expected, because it is the utmost that ever was
attained, from the desire to produce a balance of good qualities, and to
animate lifeless compositions by the transfusion of a spirit of
originality.’
After _uniform mediocrity_ add: ‘There is a certain pedantry, a given
division of labour, an almost exclusive attention to some one object,
which is necessary in Art, as in all the works of man. Without this, the
unavoidable consequence is a gradual dissipation and prostitution of
intellect, which leaves the mind without energy to devote to any pursuit
the pains necessary to excel in it, and suspends every purpose in
irritable imbecility. But the modern painter is bound not only to run
the circle of his own art, but of all others. He must be “statesman,
chemist, fiddler, and buffoon.”[89] He must have too many
accomplishments to excel in his profession. When every one is bound to
know every thing, there is no time to do any thing. Besides, the
student,’ etc.
410. After _grace of Raphael_ instead of ‘and ends in nothing’
substitute: ‘finds it easier to copy pictures than to paint them, and
easier to _see_ than to copy them, takes infinite pains to gain
admission to all the great collections, lounges from one auction room to
another, and writes newspaper criticisms on the Fine Arts——.’
411. After _ever he realized_ add: ‘It is beating up for raw dependents,
sending out into the highways for the halt, the lame, and the blind, and
making a scramble among a set of idle boys for prizes of the first,
second, and third class, like those we make among children for
gingerbread toys. True patronage does not consist in ostentatious
professions of high keeping, and promiscuous intercourse with the arts.’
After _self-constituted judge_ add: ‘Whenever vanity and self importance
are (as in general they must be) the governing principles of systems of
public patronage, there is an end at once of all candour and directness
of conduct. Their decisions are before the public: and the individuals
who take the lead in these decisions are responsible for them.’
After _pauperism about it_ add: ‘They neglect or treat with insult the
favourite whom they suspect of having fallen off in the opinion of the
public; but, if he is able to recover his ground without their
assistance, are ready to heap their mercenary bounties upon those of
others, greet him with friendly congratulations, and share his triumph
with him.’
After _common faith_ add the following footnote: ‘Of the effect of the
_authority_ of the subject of a composition, in suspending the exercise
of personal taste and feeling in the spectators, we have a striking
instance in our own country, where this cause must, from collateral
circumstances, operate less forcibly. Mr. West’s pictures would not be
tolerated but from the respect inspired by the subjects of which he
treats. When a young lady and her mother, the wife and daughter of a
clergyman, are told, that a gawky ill-favoured youth is the beloved
disciple of Christ, and that a tall, starched figure of a woman visible
near him is the Virgin Mary, whatever they might have thought before,
they can no more refrain from shedding tears than if they had seen the
very persons recorded in sacred history. It is not the picture, but the
associations connected with it, that produce the effect. Just as if the
same young lady and her mother had been told, “that is the Emperor
Alexander,” they would say, “_what a handsome man!_” or if they were
shown the Prince Regent, would exclaim, “_how elegant!_”’
412. After _professed objects_ add: ‘Positive encouragements and rewards
will not make an honest man, or a great artist. The assumed familiarity,
and condescending goodness of patrons and vice-patrons will serve to
intoxicate rather than to sober the mind, and a card to dinner in
Cleveland-row or Portland-place, will have a tendency to divert the
student’s thoughts from his morning’s work, rather than to rivet them
upon it. The device by which a celebrated painter has represented the
Virgin teaching the infant Christ to read by pointing with a butterfly
to the letters of the alphabet, has not been thought a very wise one.
Correggio is the most melancholy instance on record of the want of a
proper encouragement of the arts: but a golden shower of patronage,
tempting as that which fell into the lap of his own Danae, and dropping
prize medals and epic mottoes, would not produce another Correggio!’
412. _In general._ This paragraph, and parts of those which follow, were
‘lifted’ from _The Champion_ article into _The Round Table_, as well as
here. See vol. I. p. 163, and notes thereto.
After _highest excellence_ add: ‘The diffusion of taste is not, then,
the same thing as the improvement of taste; but it is only the former of
these objects that is promoted by public institutions and other
artificial means.’
After _smatterers in taste_ add: ‘The principle of universal suffrage,
however applicable to matters of government, which concern the common
feelings and common interests of society, is by no means applicable to
matters of taste, which can only be decided upon by the most refined
understandings. It is throwing down the barriers which separate
knowledge and feeling from ignorance and vulgarity, and proclaiming a
Bartholomew-fair-show of the fine arts—
“And fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”[90]
‘The public taste is, therefore, necessarily vitiated, in proportion as
it is public; it is lowered with every infusion it receives of common
opinion. The greater the number of judges, the less capable must they be
of judging, for the addition to the number of good ones will always be
small, while the multitude of bad ones is endless, and thus the decay of
art may be said to be the necessary consequence of its progress.
‘Can there be a greater confirmation of these remarks than to look at
the texture of that assemblage of select critics, who every year visit
the exhibition at Somerset-house from all parts of the metropolis of
this united kingdom? Is it at all wonderful that for such a succession
of connoisseurs, such a collection of works of art should be provided;
where the eye in vain seeks relief from the glitter of the frames in the
glare of the pictures; where vermillion cheeks make vermillion lips look
pale; where the merciless splendour of the painter’s pallet puts nature
out of countenance; and where the unmeaning grimace of fashion and folly
is almost the only variety in the wide dazzling waste of colour. Indeed,
the great error of British art has hitherto been a desire to produce
popular effect by the cheapest and most obvious means, and at the
expence of every thing else;—to lose all the delicacy and variety of
nature in one undistinguished bloom of florid health, and all precision,
truth, and refinement of character in the same harmless mould of
smiling, self-complacent insipidity,
“Pleased with itself, that all the world can please.”[91]
‘It is probable that in all that stream of idleness and curiosity which
flows in, hour after hour, and day after day, to the richly hung
apartments of Somerset-house, there are not fifty persons to be found
who can really distinguish “a Guido from a Daub,” or who would recognise
a work of the most refined genius from the most common and every-day
performance. Come, then, ye banks of Wapping, and classic haunts of
Ratcliffe-highway, and join thy fields, blithe Tothill—let the
postchaises, gay with oaken boughs, be put in requisition for
school-boys from Eton and Harrow, and school-girls from Hackney and
Mile-end,—and let a jury be empannelled to decide on the merits of
Raphael, and——. The verdict will be infallible. We remember having been
formerly a good deal amused with seeing a smart, handsome-looking Quaker
lad, standing before a picture of Christ as the saviour of the world,
with a circle of young female friends around him, and a newspaper in his
hand, out of which he read to his admiring auditors a criticism on the
picture ascribing to it every perfection, human and divine.—Now, in
truth, the colouring was any thing but solemn, the drawing any thing but
grand, the expression any thing but sublime. The friendly critic had,
however, bedaubed it so with praise, that it was not easy to gainsay its
wondrous excellence. In fact, one of the worst consequences of the
establishment of academies, &c. is, that the rank and station of the
painter throw a lustre round his pictures, which imposes completely on
the herd of spectators, and makes it a kind of treason against the art,
for any one to speak his mind freely, or detect the imposture. If,
indeed, the election to title and academic honours went by merit, this
might form a kind of clue or standard for the public to decide justly
upon:—but we have heard that genius and taste determine precedence
there, almost as little as at court; and that modesty and talent stand
very little chance indeed with interest, cabal, impudence, and cunning.
The purity or liberality of professional decisions cannot, therefore, in
such cases be expected to counteract the tendency which an appeal to the
public has to lower the standard of taste. The artist, to succeed, must
let himself down to the level of his judges, for he cannot raise them up
to his own. The highest efforts of genius, in every walk of art, can
never be properly understood by mankind in general: there are numberless
beauties and truths which lie far beyond their comprehension. It is only
as refinement or sublimity are blended with other qualities of a more
obvious and common nature, that they pass current with the world. Common
sense, which has been sometimes appealed to as the criterion of taste,
is nothing but the common capacity, applied to common facts and
feelings; but it neither is, nor pretends to be, the judge of any thing
else.—To suppose that it can really appreciate the excellence of works
of high art, is as absurd as to suppose that it could produce them.’
[The article in _The Champion_ ends with the paragraph ‘Taste is the
highest.... Falcon is forgotten,’ which forms the conclusion of _The
Round Table_ article also. See vol. I. p. 164. What follows is in the
form of a Letter to the Editor of _The Champion_, October 2, 1814.]
‘SIR,—I beg to offer one or two explanations with respect to the article
on the subject of public institutions for the promotion of the Fine
Arts, which does not appear to me to have been exactly understood by “A
STUDENT OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY.”[92] The whole drift of that article is to
explode the visionary theory, that art may go on in an infinite series
of imitation and improvement. This theory has not a single fact or
argument to support it. All the highest efforts of art originate in the
imitation of nature, and end there. No imitation of others can carry us
beyond this point, or ever enable us to reach it. The imitation of the
works of genius facilitates the acquisition of a certain degree of
excellence, but weakens and distracts while it facilitates, and renders
the acquisition of the highest degree of excellence impossible. Wherever
the greatest individual genius has been exerted upon the finest models
of nature, there the greatest works of art have been produced,—the Greek
statues and the Italian pictures. There is no substitute in art for
nature; in proportion as we remove from this original source, we dwindle
into mediocrity and flimsiness, and whenever the artificial and
systematic assistance afforded to genius becomes extreme, it overlays it
altogether. We cannot make use of other men’s minds, any more than of
their limbs.[93] Art is not science, nor is the progress made in the one
ever like the progress made in the other. The one is retrograde for the
very same reason that the other is progressive; because science is
mechanical, and art is not, and in proportion as we rely on mechanical
means, we lose the essence. Is there a single exception to this rule?
The worst artists in the world are the modern Italians, who lived in the
midst of the finest works of art:—the persons least like the Greek
sculptors are the modern French painters, who copy nothing but the
antique. Velasquez might be improved by a pilgrimage to the Vatican, but
if it had been his morning’s lounge, it would have ruined him. Michael
Angelo, the cartoons of Leonardi da Vinci, and the antique, your
correspondent tells us, produced Raphael. Why have they produced no
second Raphael? What produced Michael Angelo, Leonardi da Vinci, and the
antique? Surely not Michael Angelo, Leonardi da Vinci, and the antique!
If Sir Joshua Reynolds would never have observed a certain expression in
nature, if he had not seen it in Correggio, it is tolerably certain that
he would never execute it so well; and in fact, though Sir Joshua was
largely indebted to Correggio, yet his imitations are not equal to the
originals. The two little boys in Correggio’s _Danae_ are worth all the
children Sir Joshua ever painted: and the Hymen in the same picture,
(with leave be it spoken,) is worth all his works put together.—But the
student of the Royal Academy thinks that Carlo Maratti, and Raphael
Mengs are only exceptions to the common rule of progressive improvement
in the art. If these are the exceptions, where are the examples? If we
are to credit him, and it would be uncivil not to do it, they are to be
found in the present students of the Royal Academy, whom, he says, it
would be unreasonable to confound with such minds as those of Carlo
Maratti, and Raphael Mengs. Be it so. This is a point to be decided by
time.
‘The whole question was at once decided by the person who said that “_to
imitate the Iliad, was not to imitate Homer_.” After this has once been
stated, it is quite in vain to argue the point farther. The idea of
piling art on art, and heaping excellence on excellence, is a mere
fable; and we may very safely say, that the frontispiece of all such
pretended institutions and academies for the promotion of the fine arts,
founded on this principle, and “pointing to the skies,” should be—
“Like a tall bully, lifts the head, and lies.”[94]
‘Absurd as this theory is, it flatters our vanity and our indolence, and
these are two great points gained. It is gratifying to suppose that art
may have gone on from the beginning, reposing upon art, like the Indian
elephant and the tortoise, that it has improved, and will still go on
improving, without the trouble of going back to nature. By these
theorists, nature is always kept in the back-ground, or does not even
terminate the vista in their prospects. She is a mistress too
importunate, and who requires too great sacrifices from the effeminacy
of modern amateurs. They will only see her in company, or by proxy, and
are as much afraid of being reduced to their shifts with her in private,
as _Tattle in Love for Love_,[95] was afraid of being left alone with a
pretty girl.
‘I can only recollect one other thing to reply to. Your correspondent
objects to my having said, “All the great painters of this period were
thoroughly grounded in the first principles of their art; had learned to
copy a head, a hand, or an eye,” &c. All this knowledge of detail he
attributes to academical instruction, and quotes Sir Joshua Reynolds,
who says of himself—“Not having had the advantage of an early academical
education, I never had that facility in drawing the naked figure, which
an artist ought to have.” First, I might answer, that the drawing from
casts can never assist the student in copying the face, the eye, or the
extremities; and that it was only of service in the knowledge of the
trunk, and the general proportions, which are comparatively lost in the
style of English art, which is not naked, but clothed. Secondly, I would
say, with respect to Sir Joshua, that his inability to draw the naked
figure arose from his not having been accustomed to draw it; and that
drawing from the antique would not have enabled either him or any one
else to draw from the naked figure. The difficulty of copying from
nature, or in other words of doing any thing that has not been done
before, or that is worth doing, is that of combining many ideas at once,
or of reconciling things in motion: whereas in copying from the antique,
you have only to copy still life, and in proportion as you get a knack
at the one, you disqualify yourself for the other.
‘As to what your correspondent adds of painting and poetry being the
same thing, it is an old story which I do not believe. But who would
ever think of setting up a school of poetry? Byshe’s[96] Art of Poetry
and the _Gradus ad Parnassum_, are a jest. Royal Academies and British
Institutions are to painting, what Byshe’s Art of Poetry and the _Gradus
ad Parnassum_, are to the “sister art.” Poetry, as it becomes
artificial, becomes bad, instead of good—the poetry of words, instead of
things. Milton is the only poet who gave to borrowed materials the force
of originality. I am, Sir, Your humble Servant,
W. H.’
[A note indicates that articles on Sir J. Reynolds’s merits as an artist
and a writer will follow: the first two of these articles were those
which appeared on October 30 and November 6, 1814. The remaining
articles, dealing mainly with Sir Joshua Reynolds as a writer will be
found in the final volumes of the present edition.]
JAMES BARRY
413. Contributed to the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, under the signature
Z. In the seventh edition of the _Encyclopædia_ the signature was
printed DD. In addition to the criticism on Barry here reprinted five
further notices are credited to Hazlitt by means of the same signature.
They are J. B. Basedaw, J. Beckmann, Xavier Bettinelli, G. B. Bilfinger,
and G. A. Burger. These notices are purely compilations of the usual
Biographical Dictionary order; they are far removed from the scope of
Hazlitt’s work, and they do not bear internal evidence of being by him.
It has been thought best therefore not to reprint them as his but to
mention the names of the subjects as above.
416. _Mr. Stuart._ James Stuart (1713–1788), painter and architect. His
work, _The Antiquities of Athens_ (1762), is largely responsible for the
imitations of Greek architecture in London.
419. _Mr. Hamilton._ Sir William Hamilton (1730–1803), archæologist and
diplomatist. His wife was Emma Hart, the celebrated ‘Nelson’ Lady
Hamilton.
419. _Count de Firmian._ Joseph, Count de Firmian (1716–1782), Austrian
diplomatist. He was appointed to Lombardy in 1759 and was practically
ruler there. He has the reputation of having been a patron of art.
_Mr. Valentine Green_ (1739–1813). Engraver, writer, and keeper of the
British Institution from 1805 until his death.
420. _Whatever the hand had done._ Boswell’s _Johnson_ (ed. G. B. Hill,
vol. IV. p. 224).
421. _Dr. Burney swimming in the Thames._ See vol. I. _The Round Table_,
p. 35 and note.
ORIGINALITY
An article under the general heading of _Specimens of a Dictionary of
Definitions_. From _The Atlas_, January 3, 1830.
424. _Multum abludit imago._ Horace, _Sat._ II. 3. 320.
_Mistress’ eyebrow._ _As You Like It_, Act II. Sc. 7.
_Grace is in all her steps._ _Paradise Lost_, VIII. 488.
_Whate’er Lorrain light-touch’d._ Thomson, _The Castle of Indolence_, I.
38.
426. _Hoppner._ John Hoppner (1758–1810), portrait painter. See vol. VI.
_Mr. Northcote’s Conversations_, p. 334 and note.
_Jackson._ John Jackson (1778–1831), portrait painter, the son of a
village tailor in Yorkshire. His finest portrait is one of Flaxman, also
a Yorkshireman.
_Gayest, happiest attitudes._ Akenside, _Pleasures of the Imagination_,
I. 30.
428. _Semblable coherence._ _2 King Henry IV._, Act V. Sc. 1.
_The great vulgar and the small._ Cowley, _Horace_, _Odes_, III. 1.
_The strong conception._ _Othello_, Act V. Sc. 2.
_That the mind groans withal._ _Ibid._, Act V. Sc. 2.
THE IDEAL
Another of the _Specimens of a Dictionary of Definitions_, from _The
Atlas_, January 10, 1830.
429. In Hazlitt’s _Criticisms on Art_, edited by his son, the following
passages are inserted in the reprint of _The Atlas_ article, presumably
from Hazlitt’s MS.:
After _power without effort_, add: ‘It is the most exalted idea we can
form of humanity. Some persons have hence raised it quite above
humanity, and made its essence to consist specifically in the
representation of gods and goddesses, just as if, on the same principle
that there are court painters, there were certain artists who had the
privilege of being admitted into the mythological heaven, and brought
away casts and fac-similes of the mouth of Venus or the beard of
Jupiter.’
After _in every part, beautiful_, add: ‘The Venus is only the idea of
the most perfect female beauty, and the statue will be none the worse
for bearing the more modern name of Musidora. The ideal is only making
the best of what is natural and subject to the sense.’
430. _Severe in youthful beauty._ _Paradise Lost_, IV. 845.
_Inimitable on earth._ _Ibid._, III. 508.
After _contradiction in terms_, add: ‘Besides, it might be objected
captiously that what is strictly common to all is necessarily to be
found exemplified in each individual.’
431. _Till our content is absolute._ _Othello_, Act II. Sc. 1.
_Know, virtue were not virtue._
‘Nor should the change be mourned, even if the joys
Of sense were able to return as fast,’ etc.
_Laodamia._
432. _Patient Grizzle._ _The Clerke’s Tale._
433. _The human and the brute._ The two paragraphs that follow do not
appear in _The Atlas_, but have been added to the Essay from the source
mentioned above.
434. _To o’erstep the modesty of nature._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 2.
ROYAL ACADEMY
The following note occurs in the edition of Hazlitt’s _Essays on the
Fine Arts_, edited by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt (1873). ‘The following note is
written at the foot of the [autograph MS.] by Mr. C. Cowden Clarke: “An
article written for me in the _Atlas_ newspaper, by William Hazlitt. The
autograph is his, and I was at his elbow while he wrote it, which
occupied him about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour.”’
435. _Mr. Shee._ Sir Martin Archer Shee (1770–1850), portrait painter
from the age of sixteen onwards. He was knighted upon being made
President of the Royal Academy in 1830.
-----
Footnote 60:
See vol. VI., _Mr. Northcote’s Conversations_, note to p. 422.
Footnote 61:
The conspirator in _Peveril of the Peak._ See B. Dobell’s _Sidelights
on Charles Lamb_, pp. 203 _et seq._, for the story of this ‘trouble,’
and also a later volume of the present edition.
Footnote 62:
_Hamlet_, Act II. Sc. 1.
Footnote 63:
_Ibid._, Act III. Sc. 2.
Footnote 64:
Cf. _ante_, note to p. 214.
Footnote 65:
_Macbeth_, Act IV. Sc. 1.
Footnote 66:
In fact, Mr. T.’s landscapes are nothing but stained water-colour
drawings, loaded with oil-colour. [W. H.]
Footnote 67:
Matvei Ivanovitch Count Platoff, the Cossack (1757–1818), who harried
the French in the retreat from Moscow and later. He visited London
with Blücher and was given a sword of honour.
Footnote 68:
Viscount Castlereagh was senior British plenipotentiary at the
Congress of Vienna, 1814–1815.
Footnote 69:
Canto II.
Footnote 70:
Thomas Tomkins (1743–1816), author of the _Beauties of Writing_
(1777). He wrote elaborate ornamental titles for books and taught
handwriting.
Footnote 71:
Mary Robinson (1758–1800), actress, and mistress of George, Prince of
Wales, later George IV.
Footnote 72:
Elizabeth Billington (1768–1818), one of the greatest of English
singers, of Saxon birth, English by marriage and training.
Footnote 73:
Mengs speaks feelingly of ‘the little varieties of form in the details
of the portraits of Vandyke.’ [W. H.]
Footnote 74:
_Hamlet_, Act I. Sc. 2.
Footnote 75:
‘The large picture of the Pembroke family at Wilton, is a finer
commentary on the age of chivalry than Mr. Burke’s Reflections.’ [W.
H.]
Footnote 76:
Catherine Maria Fisher (d. 1767), the courtesan.
Footnote 77:
See Warton’s _The History of English Poetry_, 1781, vol. II., pp.
249–251.
Footnote 78:
The Speech on the Nabob of Arcot’s debts.
Footnote 79:
_Macbeth_, Act IV. Sc. 1.
Footnote 80:
‘A young artist of the name of Day,[82] in company with Mr. Northcote
and another student, taking leave of some pictures of Titian in a
gallery at Naples said, with tears in his eyes,—“Ah! he was a fine old
mouser!” This contains more true feeling than volumes of poetical
criticism. Mr. Northcote has himself given a striking description of
Titian, in his elegant allegory called the Painter’s Dream, at the end
of his life of Sir Joshua.[83] It is worth remarking, that
notwithstanding the delicacy and ingenuity with which he has contrived
to vary the characters of all the other painters, yet when he comes to
his favourite modern, he can only repeat the same images which he has
before applied to Correggio and others, of wanton Cupids and attendant
Graces.’ [W. H.]
Footnote 81:
Sir Robert Strange (1721–1792), who fought for the Stuarts at Culloden
and elsewhere, one of the greatest of line engravers.
Footnote 82:
Alexander Day (1773–1841). See vol. VI., _Mr. Northcote’s
Conversations_, p. 347 and note.
Footnote 83:
See _ante_, p. 66 and note.
Footnote 84:
Wordsworth’s _Excursion_, Book VII., 1014–16.
Footnote 85:
Pope: Eloisa to Abelard, l. 74.
Footnote 86:
Roger de Piles (1635–1709), painter and voluminous writer on art.
Footnote 87:
Charles Alphonse Du Fresnoy (1611–1665), French painter and writer of
a poem on the art of painting.
Footnote 88:
Benjamin West (1738–1820) succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1792 as
President.
Footnote 89:
Dryden, _Absalom and Achitophel_, I. 550.
Footnote 90:
_Essay on Criticism_, III. 66.
Footnote 91:
Goldsmith, _The Traveller_, 42.
Footnote 92:
See a letter in _The Champion_, September 25, 1814. [W. H.]
Footnote 93:
Occasional assistance may be derived from both, but, in general, we
must trust to our own strength. We cannot hope to become rich by
living upon alms. Constant assistance is the worst incumbrance. The
accumulation of models, and erection of universal schools for art,
improved the genius of the student much in the same way that the
encouragement of night-cellars and gin-shops improves the health and
morals of the people. [W. H.]
Footnote 94:
Pope, _Moral Essays_, III. 338.
Footnote 95:
Congreve’s Comedy, 1695.
Footnote 96:
Edward Bysshe (fl. 1712), whose _Art of English Poetry_ was published
in 1702.
APPENDIX
I
FRAGMENTS ON ART (_continued_)
WHY THE ARTS ARE NOT PROGRESSIVE?
[Under the above heading appeared the second of two articles in the
_Morning Chronicle_ (Jan. 11 and 15, 1814). See vol. I. _The Round
Table_, note to p. 160. The following passages were not used in _The
Round Table_ paper.]
Science and the mechanic arts depend not on the force with which the
mind itself is endued, or with which it contemplates given things (for
this is naturally much the same) but on the number of things,
successively perceived by the same or different persons, and formally
arranged and registered in books or memory, which admits of being varied
and augmented indefinitely. The number of objects to which the
understanding may be directed is endless, and the results, so far as
they are positive, tangible things, may be set down and added one to
another, and made use of as occasion requires, without creating any
confusion, and so as to produce a perpetual accumulation of useful
knowledge. What is once gained is never lost, and may be multiplied
daily, because this increase of knowledge does not depend upon
increasing the force of the mind, but on directing the same force to
different things, all of them in their nature definite, demonstrable,
existing to the mind outwardly and by signs, less as the power than as
the form of truth, and in which all the difficulty lies in the first
invention, not in the subsequent communication. In like manner the
mechanic parts of painting for instance, such as the mode of preparing
colours, the laws of perspective, etc., which may be taught by rule and
method, so that the principle being once known, every one may avail
himself of it, these subordinate and instrumental parts of the art admit
of uniform excellence, though from accidental causes it has happened
otherwise. But it is not so in art itself, in its higher and nobler
essence. ‘There is no shuffling,’ but ‘we ourselves compelled to give in
evidence even to the teeth and forehead of our faults.’[97] There is no
room for the division of labour—for the accumulation of borrowed
advantages; no artificial scale by which _to heaven we may ascend_;
because here excellence does not depend on the quantity of
representative knowledge, abstracted from a variety of subjects, but on
the original force of capacity, and degree of attention, applied to the
same given subject, natural feelings and images. To use the distinction
of a technical philosophy, science depends on the discursive or
_extensive_—art on the intuitive and _intensive_ power of the mind. One
chemical or mathematical discovery may be added to another, because the
degree and sort of faculty required to apprehend and retain them, are in
both cases the same; but no one can voluntarily add the colouring of
Rubens to the expression of Raphael, till he has the same eye for colour
as Rubens, and for expression as Raphael—that is, the most
thorough feeling of what is profound in the one, or splendid in the
other—of what no rules can teach, nor words convey—and of what the mind
must possess within itself, and by a kind of participation with nature,
or remain for ever destitute of it. Titian and Correggio are the only
painters who united to perfect colouring a degree of expression, the one
in his portraits, and the other in his histories, all but equal, if not
equal, to the highest. But this union of different qualities they had
from nature, and not by method. In fact, we judge of science by the
number of effects produced—of art by the energy which produces them. The
one is knowledge—the other power.
[The arts of painting and ... ‘I also was an Arcadian!’]
What have we left to console us for all this? Why, we have Mr. Rogers’s
‘Pleasures of Memory,’ and Mr. Campbell’s ‘Pleasures of Hope’; Mr.
Westall’s pictures, and all West’s; Miss Burney’s new novel (which is,
however, some comfort), Miss Edgeworth’s Fashionable Tales, Madame de
Staël’s next work, whatever it may be, and the praise of it in the
_Edinburgh Review_, and Sir James Macintosh’s _History_.
II
[See Note to page 326.]
Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Elgin
Marbles.—MURRAY.
The Elgin Marbles are the best answer to Sir Joshua Reynolds’s
_Discourses_. Considered in that point of view, they are invaluable: in
any other, they are not worth so much as has been said. Nothing remains
of them but their style; but that is everything, for it is the style of
nature. Art is the imitation of nature; and the Elgin Marbles are in
their essence and their perfection casts from nature,—from fine nature,
it is true, but from real, living, moving nature; from objects in
nature, answering to an idea in the artist’s mind, not from an idea in
the artist’s mind abstracted from all objects in nature. Already these
Marbles have produced a revolution in our artists’ minds, and Mr. West
says, in his practice: The venerable President makes an express
distinction in their favour between _dignified_ art and _systematic_
art. Mr. Chauntry considers simplicity and grandeur so nearly united in
them, that it is almost impossible to separate them. Sir Thomas Laurence
in returning from the Elgin Marbles to his own house, where he has casts
of the finest antiques, was struck with the greater degree of ease and
nature in the former. Mr. Flaxman alone holds out for the _ideal_. The
whole of his evidence on this subject is, indeed, quite ideal: Mr. Payne
Knight’s evidence is _learned_ evidence.—It is to be hoped, however,
that these Marbles with the name of Phidias thrown into the scale of
common sense, may lift the Fine Arts out of the Limbo of vanity and
affectation into which they were conjured in this country about fifty
years ago, and in which they have lain sprawling and fluttering, gasping
for breath, wasting away, vapid and abortive ever since,—the shadow of a
shade. The benefit of high examples of Art, is to prevent the
mischievous effect of bad ones. A true theory of Art does not advance
the student one step in practice, one hair’s-breadth nearer the goal of
excellence: but it takes the fetters from off his feet, and loosens the
bandages from his eyes. We lay somewhat more stress on the value of the
Fine Arts than Mr. Payne Knight, who considers them (we know not for
what reason) as an elegant antithesis to morality. We think they are
nearly related to it. All morality seems to be little more than keeping
people out of mischief, as we send children to school; and the Fine Arts
are in that respect a school of morality. They bribe the senses into the
service of the understanding: they kill Time, the great enemy of man;
they employ the mind usefully—about nothing; and by preventing _ennui_,
promote the chief ends of virtue. A taste for the Fine Arts also, in
periods of luxury and refinement, not ill supplies the place of
religious enthusiasm. It feeds our love and admiration of the grand, the
good, the beautiful. What is the respect which is felt for the names of
Raphael, of Michael Angelo, of Phidias, of Homer and of Milton, but a
sort of hero worship, only with this difference, that in the one case we
pay an indistinct homage to the powers of the mind, whereas the
worshippers of Theseus and Hercules deified the powers and virtues of
the body?
With respect to the tendency of the works here collected to promote the
Fine Arts in this country, though not so sanguine as some persons, or
even as the Committee of the House of Commons, we are not without our
hopes.—The only possible way to improve the taste for art in a country,
is by a collection of standing works of established reputation, and
which are capable by the sanctity of their name of overawing the
petulance of public opinion. This result can never be produced by the
encouragement given to the works of contemporary artists. The public
ignorance will much sooner debauch them than they will reform the want
of taste in the public. But where works of the highest character and
excellence are brought forward in a manner due to their merits, and
rendered accessible to the public, though they may do little for the
national genius, it is hard if they do not add something to the public
taste. In this way also they may react upon the production of original
excellence. It was in this point of view that the Gallery of the Louvre
was of the greatest importance not only to France, but to Europe. It was
a means to civilise the world. There Art lifted up her head and was
seated on her throne, and said, All eyes shall see me, and all knees
shall bow to me. Honour was done to her and all hers. There was her
treasure, and there the inventory of all she had. There she had gathered
together all her pomp, and there was her shrine, and there her votaries
came and worshipped as in a temple. The crown she wore was brighter than
that of kings. Where the triumphs of human liberty had been, there were
the triumphs of human genius. For there, in the Louvre, were the
precious monuments of art;—there ‘stood the statue that enchants the
world’;[98] there was the _Apollo_, the _Laocoon_, the _Dying
Gladiator_, the _Head of the Antinous_, _Diana_ with her _Fawn_, the
_Muses_ and the _Graces_ in a ring, and all the glories of the antique
world:—
‘There was old Proteus coming from the sea,
And wreathed Triton blew his winding horn.’[99]
There, too, were the two _St. Jeromes_, Correggio’s and Domenichino’s;
there was Raphael’s _Transfiguration_, the _St. Mark_ of Tintoret, Paul
Veronese’s _Marriage of Cana_, the _Deluge_ of Nicholas Poussin, and
Titian’s _St. Peter Martyr_;—all these and more than these, of which the
world was not worthy. The worshippers of hereditary power and native
imbecility wanted at first to destroy these monuments of human genius,
which give the eternal lie to their creed; they did not dare to do that,
they have dispersed them, and they have done well. They were an insult
to the assembled majesty of hereditary power and native imbecility, both
in the genius that had produced them, and that had acquired them; and
_it was fit that they should be removed_. They were an obstacle in the
way, in case the great Duke should have to teach the great nation
another great moral lesson by the burning of Paris, which has been a
favourite object with some persons since the year 1792, and with others
later; and _it was fit that they should be removed_. The French
themselves did not think proper to defend what they had dearly bought
with their blood, shed for their country, and _it was fit that they
should be removed_. Besides these reasons, there were no others for
their removal. The reason assigned in the Duke of Wellington’s letter,
that the works of art should be sacred to conquerors, and an heir-loom
of the soil that gives them birth, is quite apocryphal. Half of the
works brought from Italy had been originally brought there from Greece.
If works of art are to be a sort of fixtures in every country, why are
the Elgin Marbles brought here, for our artists to strut and fret over
this acquisition to our ‘glorious country’? If the French were not to
retain their collection of perfect works of art, why should we be
allowed to make one of still higher pretensions under pretence of
carrying off only fragments and rubbish? The Earl of Elgin brought away
the Theseus and the Neptune as bits of architecture, as loose pieces of
stone; but no sooner do they get into the possession of our glorious
country, than they are discovered to be infinitely superior to the
_Apollo_, the _Venus_, and the _Laocoon_, and all the rest of that
class, which are found out to be no better than _modern antiques_. All
this may be true, but it is truth with a suspicious appearance. If works
of art are contemplated with peculiar interest on the spot which gave
them birth, surely Athens has charms for the eyes of learning and taste
as well as Rome. If there is something classical in the very air of
Venice, of Antwerp, and of Rotterdam, surely there is an air at Athens
which is breathed nowhere else.
If this reasoning would apply to such works in their perfect state, it
does so still more in their approaches to decay and ruin, for then the
local interest belonging to them becomes the principal impression. Lord
Elgin appears not to have had the slightest authority for bringing away
these statues, except a _fermaun_ or permission from the Turkish
Government to bring away pieces of stone from the ruins of the
Parthenon, which he paid 21,000 piastres to the Governor of Athens for
permission to interpret as he pleased. That it was not meant to apply to
the statues, and only to fragments of the buildings, is also evident
from this, that Lord Elgin had originally, and at the time the _fermaun_
was granted, no intention, as he himself says, of bringing away the
statues. Lord Aberdeen approves of bringing them away, because otherwise
the French might have got them. In what we have said, we do not blame
Lord Elgin for what he has done; all our feelings run the contrary way.
We only blame cant and hypocrisy: we only blame those who blame others,
and yet would do the very same things themselves. There does not appear
to be any evidence that these statues were done by Phidias. It seems
extremely probable, however, that they were done by persons under his
direction, and in a style that he approved. What that style is, and what
the principles of art are which are to be derived from it, we shall
briefly attempt to state in another article on this interesting subject.
-----
Footnote 97:
_Hamlet_, III. 3.
Footnote 98:
Thomson, _The Seasons_, ‘Summer,’ 1347. Cf. _ante_, p. 107.
Footnote 99:
Wordsworth’s sonnet, ‘The World is too much with us.’
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh
University Press
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Changed “Poodles are the true desirés” to “Poodles are the true
désirs” on p. 125.
2. Changed “feeling in rare” to “feeling is rare” on p. 277.
3. Silently corrected typographical errors.
4. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.