saying, “Seventy guineas is a large sum, Sir Joshua, for three or four
hours’ labour, and you have not spent five on this picture.” “Not five
hours?” (exclaimed he). “Why, I have been nearly all my life about
it!”[386] Even in parrying just criticism on his defects, he would
contrive to inculcate some maxim generally applicable to his art. I saw
his great picture of _The Death of Cardinal Beaufort_[387] on his easel,
and some friends of his availed themselves of the presence of a schoolboy
to convey their criticism, by setting me on to ask why he had not shown
us King Henry VI.’s face, which is covered by his arm raised to bless the
expiring Prelate. He perceived the drift of the question, which I who put
it was not aware of, and archly replied, “Aye, now, I’m glad you asked
that question, for I shall teach something about art. That very omission
which surprises you, the want of the King’s face, is a great part of my
skill. Had it been there, you would have looked at him instead of the
Cardinal, to whom it was my business to direct your eye. The contrivance
how to hide Henry’s face cost me, I can tell you, more trouble and
thought than half the picture besides and than the painting twenty such
kings would have done.” My prompters were probably not quite satisfied
that indolence had no share in the determination, but they laughed at
the promptitude with which he detected and answered the censure, and
they must have felt the truth of the general principle involved in his
ingenious defence.
In that picture is a figure on which Mr. Fox loved to descant whenever
he praised Sir Joshua. “None,” he said, “but a man of genius could have
conceived, and none but one of consummate skill could have executed,
such a design.” It is an inferior attendant looking through the door,
whose countenance, on observing the agonies of the Cardinal, expresses
forcibly, but almost ludicrously, his persuasion that all is not as it
should be, and that, if the truth were known, it is a very bad piece of
business. What more natural? What better contrived to tell the story?
If the sentiment is somewhat more comic than one should expect on so
terrible an occasion, the inferior character, as well as position, of the
person expressing it prevents its impairing in the slightest degree the
horror and sublimity of the remorse in the principal figure.
The prosperity and cheerfulness of Sir Joshua Reynolds have often been
remarked. He was familiar with the great, though no favourite at Court,
for the King[388] was too insensible to genius to admire his works,
and too deficient in knowledge or philosophy to enjoy his society. But
though royal taste patronised other artists, Sir Joshua was honoured
by the multitude and intimate with the men of his day most eminent for
judgment or acquirements in science, literature, politics, law, or
divinity. It was not, therefore, a mere hyperbolical flourish in Mr.
Burke, when eulogising him after the funeral at St. Paul’s, to style
him the pattern of human happiness in temper, profession, fortune, and
fame. It was, on the contrary, natural in the orator, at such an era of
political dissension, to contrast the career of an artist, soothed with
the breath of flattery and wafted along by rank, fortune, fashion, and
talent to prosperity and fame, even to the close of the scene, with the
less enviable life of a statesman, too often shattered in its long and
lingering decay by the loss of its branches, and exposed with declining
strength to the assaults of enmity and detraction.
But such a panegyric, like a good portrait, had on that occasion the
merit of particular resemblance as well as of general truth. Reynolds
was prosperous in his life and cheerful in his temper. It is possible
that he might not be, at all seasons, quite exempt from that jealousy
to which artists are so particularly liable. In mitigation, however, if
not in contradiction, to such insinuations against him, I can myself
bear testimony to his speaking frequently of Gainsborough in terms of
kindness and admiration; of Wilson, whom he is supposed to have disliked
personally, with high commendation; and even of Romney, whom a set of
minor wits were industrious in extolling at his expense, with full
acknowledgment of his peculiar merits, and with ample praise of his
talents as a draughtsman. It is somewhat strange that neither he nor the
connoisseurs of that day, though earnest even to affectation in extolling
the genius of Hogarth, ever spoke of that extraordinary man as a great
colourist.
It was reserved for the exhibition in Pall Mall about the year 1820[389]
to procure him a reputation, which his arrogant pretensions as a critic
and his unsuccessful attempt at a yet higher order of excellence in
_Sigismonda_[390] lost him for near fifty years. He was for a long
time, though very preposterously, considered as a mere caricaturist,
the first, indeed, and father of that line in England, but of the same
race as Bunbury, or even Sayer and Gillray, who devoted their skill in
that diverting but not difficult branch of art, and furnished our print
shops with political caricatures. Neither they nor Bunbury aspired to the
character of painters.
The only artist of my time, who could aspire to anything like a
competition with Hogarth, was Goya[391] in Spain. There is spirit and
even genius in his designs, but they are generally extravagant and
sometimes unintelligible. He lacks that inimitable knowledge of human
nature and character, which made Horace Walpole class Hogarth with great
writers of comedy. Goya’s portraits on canvas are said to be extremely
good. In 1809 there existed one at Jadrague, of Don Gaspar Melchior
de Jovellanos,[392] who, in addition to his other attainments, was a
connoisseur in painting, and has inserted many articles in _La Biblioteca
de las bellas artes_ full of interest to the lovers of art or biography.
I first made acquaintance with that remarkable man, in 1793, at Gijon.
To that town, his native place, he had been sent with some commission,
to an honourable exile, soon after the death of Campomanes. That
Minister, himself an Asturian, had not failed to distinguish the rising
genius of Jovellanos. Both were proficients in political economy, but
it was not in such useful and severe studies alone that Jovellanos
acquired a reputation. Works of criticism, a drama of great merit (the
_Delinquente Honrado_), and a satire entitled _Pan y Toros_, generally
ascribed to him, proved the versatility of his talents, the correctness
of his taste, and the purity of his style. His conversation was equally
delightful—clear, perspicuous, and natural, and though not divested of
playfulness and pleasantry, elevated and instructive. There was too much
benevolence both of countenance and manner to impose any unpleasant
restraint on the company, and yet an unaffected simplicity and a certain
dignity and purity, both in language and sentiment, manifestly the
offspring of an unblemished character and a philosophical mind, gave a
tone of earnestness and propriety to conversation, such as is rarely
preserved in the unrestricted dialogue of a southern society.
He was, I think, the only person eminent in literature, with whom I
became acquainted in my first journey through Spain in 1793. I might,
indeed, except the Abbé Cavanilles,[393] a botanist and topographical
writer of some fame, who was a _protégé_ of the House of Infantado, a
man of prepossessing manners, and a native of the Kingdom of Valencia, of
which he published a description.
Lord St. Helens,[394] then Ambassador of Madrid, though of more refined
taste and cultivated mind than was common at that time in the ranks
of English diplomacy, never had his curiosity awakened to Spanish
literature, nor was at the pains to open his house to such writers,
scholars, or artists, as the country would have afforded. In Italy,
however, where I spent the two next years, I frequented many societies
where connoisseurs, scholars, and antiquaries abounded, who
Sui memores alios fecere merendo;
and however unpropitious that season of stormy politics was to the growth
or cultivation of letters, I found many in different provinces of art,
science, and literature.
In art, indeed, there were but few natives of Italy, and, if I except
Canova,[395] not one who had either then or has since that time attained
great celebrity. He was a man of simple, engaging manners, with all
that gentleness which characterises Venetians, and with enough of
the enthusiasm of an artist to give animation to his countenance and
conversation. It would be tedious to enumerate artists, not Italians,
though subsequent success may have implied merit in many of them.
The list would be long. With the exception, however, of Fabre[396]—a
successful pupil of David, but as furious an anti-revolutionary, as
his master was a revolutionary politician, and better known as the
lover, some say the third husband, of Madame D’Albany,[397] than as a
painter—those I was acquainted with were chiefly English students.
Flaxman,[398] indeed, visited Italy while I was there. I am afraid I
was more struck with the deformity of his person, the sanctity of his
primitive manners, and the visionary turn of his opinions, than with
his works or conversation; but the Italians had more sagacity than his
countrymen, and discerned early the grand originality of his conceptions,
his just ideas of beauty, and the real simplicity of his character. His
sketches and models were studied as works of established excellence
even then at Rome. He was, in truth, as Lord Egremont comically
designated him, a prodigy of deformity and genius. If unequal, from
bodily infirmity, to complete any great _chef d’œuvre_ in sculpture, he
contrived to enlighten his contemporaries and followers, and did more
by his example and his drawings to improve art than any Englishman, Sir
Joshua, in the sister branch, always excepted.
Natural philosophy, however, was the passion of the day, and geology,
chemistry, and electricity the fashionable topics of conversation. I
was myself far too ignorant to judge of the professors or proficients
in such studies: I never saw Spallanzani,[399] nor was I acquainted
with Galvani,[400] whom I have met at Bologna. But of Fontana,[401]
whose contemporary reputation was greater than the works he has left
will maintain, I can speak from personal intercourse amounting almost to
intimacy.
He was as remarkable for the boldness of his opinions as for the energy,
eloquence, and ingenuity, with which he defended them. There had long
existed in Tuscany a school of very free, not to say irreligious,
philosophy. Cocchi was, if not the founder, a leading disciple in it.
He had co-operated with the Grand Duke Leopold in suppressing both
Jesuits and Inquisition, and in reducing the number, power, and wealth
of the monastic institutions. Fontana, who, when young, had frequented
Baron Holbach’s society in Paris, was a professed materialist after
the system of Helvetius. He naturally assumed the ascendancy among
the free-thinkers of Florence, and, no doubt, more covertly favoured
the political principles which Condorcet and other Frenchmen of the
_Encyclopédie_ had adopted. He was positive, vehement, and dogmatic, but
far from unpleasant, in conversation; more remarkable, I suspect, for the
natural vigour of his understanding than for the extent or accuracy of
his knowledge in science or literature, over the whole range of which he
somewhat presumptuously was wont to assert his dominion. He was well with
the Grand Duke and his Minister, Manfredini. It was generally whispered
in Florence, always the _città maldicente_ that Dante describes, that
he made an ungenerous use of his influence, that he checked rather than
promoted the reward of others, and that he did not scruple to appropriate
to himself their labours and discoveries.
Thus the anatomical man, composed of many thousand pieces of wood
accurately representing parts of the human body in wood, was said to
be the work of Fabroni,[402] the Sub-Director; although Fontana, the
Director, was in the habit of exhibiting, explaining, and extolling it
as his own. He had patronised Fabroni when very young, and introduced
him into the institution from the stage, where he was, if not actually
a dancer, connected with the ballet. But when the proficiency of the
disciple attracted notice, the master was suspected of repressing him,
from jealousy of attainments which were more than equal to his own;
though in natural understanding, as well as Court favour, Fontana
unquestionably maintained his superiority.
Fabroni was a Tuscan; Fontana, a native of Reveredo. Manfredini, who came
from the latter place, also might have some prepossession in favour of
Fontana; but his Tuscan origin could not fail to give his rising rival
corresponding advantages in a society so narrowly national as that of
Florence. Fontana had a brother, a monk and a professor at Pavia, where
I saw him. He had the appearance as well as name of a man of genius;
but, suspected of republican principles, he was compelled to remove the
aspersion by publications in the opposite extreme, and to consign his
character to posterity as the strenuous and even acrimonious advocate of
systems religious, moral, and political, which he loathed and abhorred.
Hard is the lot of genius under arbitrary governments. Accordingly, the
faculties best suited to the improvement of mankind are more desirous, on
such soils, to withdraw than to force themselves into notice.
Parini,[403] the first poet and one of the most amiable men of that
period, I never met. Monti[404] had not yet acquired such celebrity as
was likely to attract a young traveller. The only literary man, within
the Austrian dominions, whom I visited in 1795, was the Spanish ex-Jesuit
Andrès,[405] more distinguished for laborious and impartial compilation
than for critical acumen or original thought. He lived unmolested, but
little known, in Mantua, and preferred publishing his works in Italian,
though the subjects of which they treat and the good taste they inculcate
would have been more useful and more novel to Spanish readers than to
those who were familiar with Tiraboschi.[406]
There were, no doubt, many more men of letters in Venice and its
dependencies, but I had not the advantage of knowing any but
Cesarotti.[407] He was in appearance a grave, heavy, old-fashioned
professor, and his large tye wig resembled that which, in ridicule
of his translation of Homer, a caricaturist had placed on the bust of
that poet. Cesarotti had, indeed, the audacity to paraphrase and alter
the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_! There was less presumption and more success
in bestowing some Italian graces on the _Ossian_ of Macpherson. He
reconciled many southern readers, and among them Napoleon Bonaparte
himself, to the equivocal bard of the north.
It was in 1796 that the English public, saturated with political
disquisition and party invectives, were recalled to a sense of the
sweets of literature and poetry, and especially to a taste for the
Italian writers, by the publication of a book, whose merit, after all,
is scarcely equal to its success, and whose success is mainly to be
attributed to the fortunate period of its appearance. This was _The Life
[of] Lorenzo of Medici_, by Mr. Roscoe,[408] an attorney and afterwards
merchant and banker at Liverpool. After the horrors and wars, _plus quam
civilia_, which revolutionary fanaticism in France, and the real or
affected dread of it elsewhere, had diffused pretty generally throughout
Europe, a languor succeeded; a strong desire for such enjoyments, as the
calmer pursuits of poetry and criticism afford, bespoke a favourable
reception for Mr. Roscoe’s book, which was more easy and spirited in
those parts which related to the revival of arts and literature, than in
such as professed but failed to explain the changes and institutions of
Florence under the Medici.
There was something _piquant_ (to use a French term) in the appearance of
a history of Florence written at Liverpool. Mr. Roscoe was a man of no
great scope of genius. Yet when the nature and extent of his attainments
is contrasted with his slender means of acquiring them, he becomes a sort
of prodigy. He was the lad or waiter at a coffee house, and even that
humble occupation had been a step from his original condition, for when
a boy he was accustomed to bring potatoes with his father to market.
His assiduity, cleanliness, and honesty recommended him, and some of
the guests articled him as a clerk to a thriving solicitor. His passion
for letters was inextinguishable and his application unwearied. It was
accidentally directed to Italian; and a friend (the Rev. Dr. Clarke, I
think) being settled for some years in Tuscany, he collected through him
various materials and dedicated himself to the composition of a work
which immediately placed him on the line of the most successful authors
of the day.
Lord Orford,[409] who had hailed Robertson and Gibbon, but not, I think,
Hume, on the first appearance of their works, lived to offer similar
incense in particles of epigrammatic antithesis to the biographer
of Lorenzo de Medici. Mr. Fox, overlooking a style which he could
not approve, through his delight at passages of Italian poetry not
inelegantly rendered in the course of the work, greeted the publication
and the author with encouragement. To the praise of Mr. Roscoe be it
said, that neither this burst into sudden blaze nor his subsequent
success in public life ever turned his head or disfigured the simplicity
of his manners. He spoke in Parliament with judgment and effect, but in
a short time, upon elections and other occurrences, there appeared some
unequivocal symptoms of that indecision which disqualifies a man from
public life more irretrievably than vulgarity or affectation or even than
ignorance and incapacity. He confined himself afterwards to his literary
pursuits, and to establishing a taste for arts in his native town not
unworthy of his celebrated Florence; and Liverpool bids fair to give to
its architecture, public works, amusements, and society, a refinement not
usual in communities so rapidly enriched by commercial enterprise alone.
In this task Dr. Currie,[410] the physician and the biographer of
Burns, was his most active coadjutor. He had a stronger understanding,
but less correct taste, than his friend. In his own profession he was
distinguished for a new, bold, and successful application of cold water
in certain stages of fever; and on matters of politics, science, and
philosophy he had acquired great provincial authority. Some popular
letters on the effect of the war upon trade, printed with the name of
Jaspar Wilson, were with justice attributed to him, and added not a
little to his reputation.
Roscoe, after shrinking from a contested election at Liverpool during
the No-Popery cry, engaged in trade and was unfortunate. A body of his
literary friends, led by Dr. Shepherd,[411] handsomely relieved him from
many of the consequences, and alleviated the chagrin at his failure.
Mr. Coke, of Norfolk, with much delicacy and generosity, employed him
in classing his MSS. at Holkham, of which the curious library of Justus
Lipsius forms a part. Roscoe, broken by misfortunes and somewhat impaired
by age, did not show all the discernment expected from him; but he had
the merit of being the first guest at Holkham who drew the attention of
his host and directed his own to those philological treasures. Many men
of learning and taste had been in the habit of visiting Mr. Coke; but
all (according to Mr. Roger Wilbraham’s malicious remark), including Dr.
Parr, most delicately and politely caught the spirit of the place, and
preferred the pleasures of the field and of the table to the intellectual
labours of classical research. Roscoe and the literary society in
Liverpool were not singular in their profession of liberal principles
in politics and religion; almost all provincial _literati_ at the close
of the seventeenth century (Whitaker and some clergymen excepted)
were averse to the war and the system with which it was studiously
interwoven. They were, accordingly, more or less stigmatised as visionary
speculatists or disaffected Jacobins. The rebound from this contumely and
repression was sensibly felt afterwards. It contributed with other causes
to the successive and alternate reforms which have ensued.
Perhaps the insensibility to all intellectual merit which pervaded the
Court of George III., and the yet more unaccountable indifference to
the progress of literature of a man so capable of relishing and judging
of genius as Mr. Pitt, estranged the whole republic of letters from
their politics. Possibly the selection of “_savans_” in France for the
direction of human affairs (no very successful experiment, it must
be acknowledged) engaged the ardent spirits of the time in the cause
of democracy. In aid of such propensities, a passion, or at least a
curiosity, for German literature suddenly seized the reading part of the
community. Young authors educated in Germany gratified this appetite
for foreign novelties by plays, novels, and poems, translated from the
German originals. Whatever might be their motives, they were practically
labourers in the same vineyard. The fruits of their studies had all
a tang or smack of philosophy very opposite to that which it was the
endeavour of our Government, as well [as] of our Church, to disseminate.
Among these, my college friend, Mr. M. G. Lewis,[412] commonly known by
the name of his first novel, _The Monk_, deserves to be recorded; for,
though a Member of Parliament, he supported the Minister and the French
war. He inculcated in his writings opinions which led to a directly
opposite conclusion. He had a clear and even a strong understanding,
imagination amounting almost to genius, and indefatigable industry. As
a poet he was endowed with an excellent ear and a command of elegant
language. But his mind was vitiated with a mystical, though irreligious,
philosophy; his taste in reading, writing, and thinking, corrupted
by paradox; and his conversation disfigured by captious perverseness
in controversy or sickly affectation in sentiment. His efforts at
pleasantry, which were continual, were very unsuccessful. He had no
talent for humour. He was sincere, affectionate, and generous; but his
vanity was inordinate and more troublesome than diverting.
As he advanced in life he grew exceedingly tedious, especially upon all
that related to himself; so that contrary to the usual course of things,
the peculiarities and egotism which had been in some degree pardoned to
his genius and youth, _when poor_ became quite intolerable, and were, in
fact, not tolerated in society when he succeeded to a large property in
Jamaica. He went thither, and was nearly as prolix in his exhortations to
his negroes as in his reports of their condition and treatment. It is but
just to add he very earnestly endeavoured to the best of his judgment to
improve the latter. He died on board ship in his return from his second
visit to Jamaica. His obstinacy and paradox may be said to have brought
him to that untimely end; for he persisted, against the prohibition of
the only medical man in the vessel, to take emetics for sea sickness,
and, weakened as he had been by a previous fever on shore, actually died
of inanition and exhaustion.
The poetry, plays, and essays of a herd of male and female followers, of
whom Dr. Darwin[413] was the chief, though in character and taste very
different from Lewis’, had a similar tendency to reconcile men’s minds
to approaching changes and to shake the received manner of thinking on
religion and politics. Darwin himself, though a versifier rather than a
poet, was a remarkable man. His medical practice, singular and startling,
was not unsuccessful. His fame in Derbyshire and the adjacent counties
was extensive, and not confined to the ignorant or the credulous. With
an unwieldy person, uncouth manner, and large tongue, his appearance and
conversation captivated strangers, and his more solid qualities attached
a numerous body of friends. He was surrounded by admiring disciples. They
imbibed, together with a taste for minute and curious observation in
physical philosophy, great intrepidity in the search of truth, and not
less zeal in diffusing it.