Chapter VI (4)

In our own minds we easily distinguish between the highest abilities or the most rare attainments, when the fruit of education and of application, and what we habitually distinguish as the manifestation of genius. But still we do not find it so easy to reduce to words this mental distinction; the one, after all, however gracefully and however brightly, walks upon the earth, adorning it by the good or fair things which it scatters on its way; the other has wings, and flies above the surface--it is like the aurora of Homer or of Thorwaldsen, which, as it flies above the plane of mortal actions, sheds down its flowers along its brilliant path upon those worthy to gaze upward toward it. We connect in our minds with genius the ideas of flashing splendor and eccentric movement. It is an intellectual meteor, the laws of which cannot be defined or reduced to any given theory. We regard it with a certain awe, and leave it to soar or to droop, to shine or disappear, to dash irregularly first in one direction and then in another; no one dare curb it or direct it; but all feel sure that its course, however inexplicable, is subject to higher and controlling rule. But in order to define more closely what we in reality understand by genius, it may be well to consider its action in divided and more restricted spheres of activity. For although we habitually attribute this singular quality to many, and often but on light grounds, it is seldom that we do so seriously and deliberately without some qualifying epithet. We speak of a military genius, of a mechanical genius, of a poetical genius, of a musical genius, or of an artistic genius. All these expressions contain a restrictive clause. We do not understand when we use them that the person to whom they were attributed possessed any power beyond the limits of a particular sphere. We do not mean by the use of the word genius that the soldier knew anything of poetry, or the printer of mechanism. We understand that each in his own profession or stage of excellence possessed a complete elevation over the bulk of those who followed the same pursuits; a superiority so visible, so acknowledged, and so clearly individual, that no one else considered it inferiority, still less felt shame at not being able to rise to the same level. They gather round them acknowledged disciples and admirers, who rather glory to have been guided by their teaching, and formed on their example.

And in what consisted that complete though limited excellence? If I might venture to express a judgment, I would say that genius in these different courses of science or art may be defined a natural sympathy with all that relates to each of them, with the power of giving full and certain execution to the mental conception. The military genius is one who, either untrained by studious preparation, or else starting out of the lines in which many were ranged level with himself, seizes the staff of command, and receives the homage of comrades and superiors. While others have been plodding through the long drill of theory and of practice, he is found to have discovered a new system of the science, bold, irregular, but successful. But to possess this genius, there must be a universal sympathy with all that relates {558} to its own peculiar province. The military genius of which we are speaking must embrace or acquire that which relates to the soldier's life and duty, from the _dress_ of a single soldier, from his duties in the sentry-box, or on the picquet, to the practice of the regiment and the evolutions of a field-day; from the complete command of tens of thousands on the battle-field, with an eagle's eye and a lion's heart, to the scientific planning, on the chessboard of an empire, of the campaign, which he meditates, move by move and check by check, till the final victory is crowned in the capital city. He who has not given proof of his being equal to all this, has not made good his claim to military genius. But such a one will find, wherever he puts his hand, generals and marshals, each able to command a host, or to take his place in his roughest of enterprises.

I need not pass through other forms of genius to reach similar results; Stephenson, from the labor of the mine, creating that system of mechanical motion, which may be said to have subdued the world, and bound the earth in iron links; Mozart giving concerts at the age of seven that astonished gray-headed musicians; Raphael, before the ordinary age of finished pupilage, master of every known detail in art of oil or fresco, drawing, expression, and grand composition; Giotto, caught in the field as a young shepherd by Cimabue, drawing his sheep upon a stone, and soon becoming the master of modern art. [Footnote 107] These and many others repeat to us what I have said of the military genius--an inborn capacity, comprehensive and complete, with the power of fully carrying out the suggestions of mind. Had there been a single portion of their pursuits in which they did not excel, if the result of their work had not exhibited the happy union and concord of the many qualities requisite for its perfection, they never would have attained the attribution of genius.

[Footnote 107: The early manifestation of artistic power is so
frequent and well known, that it would be superfluous to enumerate
other instances. The expression _"anch' io son pittore"_ is become
proverbial. One of the Carracci, on being translated from an
inferior profession to the family studio, was found at once to
possess the pictorial skill of his race. At the present, Mintropp at
Duesseldorf, and Ackermann at Berlin, are both instances of very high
artists, the one in drawing, the other in sculpture, both originally
shepherds.]

If this sympathy with one branch of higher pursuits passes beyond it and associates with it a similar facility of acquisition and execution in some other and distinct art or science, it is clear that the claim to genius is higher and more extensive. Raphael was before the world a painter, but he could scarcely have been so without embracing every other department of art. Before the science of perspective was matured or popularly known, when, in consequence, defects are to be found in the disposition of figures, and in the adjustment of aerial distances, [Footnote 108] his architecture shows an instinctive familiarity with its rules and proportions; a proof that he possessed an architectural eye. And consequently the one statue which he is supposed to have carved, and the one palace which he is said to have built, show how easily he could have undertaken and executed beautiful works in either of those two classes of art. In Orcagna and Michelangelo we have the three branches of art supremely united; and the second of these adds poetry and literature to his artistic excellence. In like manner, Leonardo has left proof of most varied and accurate mechanical as well as literary genius.

[Footnote 108: See Mr. Lloyd's article on "Raphael's School of
Athens," in Mr. Woodward's _Fine Art Quarterly Review_, January,
1864, p. 67.]

It is evident, however, that while a genius has its point of concentration, every remove from this, though wider, will be fainter and less complete. We may describe it as Shakespeare himself describes glory, and say:

"Genius is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
Till, by broad spreading, it disperse to naught."
(_"Henry VI.," act i., scene 3._)

The sympathies with more remote subjects and pursuits will be rather the means of illustration, adornment, and {559} pleasing variety, than for the essential requirements of the principal aim. But though less minute in their application, in the hand of genius they will be wonderfully accurate and apt.

IV.

All that I have been saying is applicable in the most complete and marvellous way to Shakespeare's genius. His sympathies are universal, perfect in their own immediate use, infinitely varied, and strikingly beautiful, when they reach remoter objects. And hence, though at first sight he might be classified among those who have displayed a literary genius, he stretches his mind and his feelings so beyond them on every side, that to him, almost, perhaps, beyond any other man, the simple distinctive, without any qualification, belongs. No one need fear to call Shakespeare simply a grand, a sublime genius.

The centre-point of his sympathies is clearly his dramatic art. From this they expand, for many degrees, with scarce perceptible diminution, till they lose themselves in far distant, and, to him, unexplored space. This nucleus of his genius has certainly never been equalled before or since. Its essence consists in what is the very soul of the dramatic idea, the power to throw himself into the situation, the circumstances, the nature, the acquired habits, the feelings, true or fictitious, of every character which he introduces. This forms, in fact, the most perfect of sympathies. We do not, of course, use the word in that more usual sense of harmony of affection, or consent of feeling. Shakespeare has sympathy as complete for Shylock or Iago as he as for Arthur or King Lear. For a time he lives in the astute villain as in the innocent child; he works his entire power of thought into intricacies of the traitor's brain; he makes his heart beat in concord with the usurer's sanguinary spite, and then, like some beautiful creature in the animal world, draws himself out of the hateful evil, and is himself again; and able, even, often to hold his own noble and gentle qualities as a mirror, or exhibit the loftiest, the most generous, and amiable examples of our nature. And this is all done without study, and apparently without effort. His infinitely varied characters come naturally into their places, never for a moment lose their proprieties, their personality, and the exact flexibility which results from the necessary combination in every man of many qualities. From the beginning to the end each one is the same, yet reflecting in himself the lights and shadows which flit around him.

This extraordinary versatility stands in striking contrast with the dramatic productions of other countries. The Greek tragedian is Greek throughout--his subjects, his mythology, his sentences, play wonderfully indeed, but yet restrictedly, within a given sphere. And Rome is but the imitator in all its literature of its great mistress and model.

"Graiis eloquium, Gratis dedit ore rotundo, Musa loqui."

Even through the French school, with the strict adhesion to the ancient rule of the unities, seems to have descended the partiality for what may be called the chastely classical subjects. Not so with Shakespeare.

Who, a stranger might ask, is the man, and where was he born, and where does he live, that not only his acts and scenes are placed in any age, or in any land, but that he can fill his stage with the very living men of the time and place represented; make them move as easily as if he held them in strings; and make them speak not only with general conformity to their common position, but with individual and distinctive propriety, so that each is different from the rest? Did he live in ancient Rome, strolling the Forum, or climbing the Capitol; hear ancient matrons converse with modest dignity; listen to conspirators among the columns of its porticos; mingle among senators around Pompey's {560} statue; or with plebeians crowding to hear Brutus or Anthony harangue? Was he one accustomed to idle in the piazza of St. Mark, or shoot his gondola under the Rialto? Or was he a knight or even archer in the fields of France or England during the period of the Plantagenets or Tudors, and witnessed and wrote down the great deeds of those times, and knew intimately and personally each puissant lord who distinguished himself by his valor, by his wisdom, or even by his crimes? Did he live in the courts of princes, perchance holding some office which enabled him to listen to the grave utterances of kings and their counsellors, or to the witty sayings of court jesters? Did he consort with banished princes, and partake of their sports or their sufferings? In fine, did he live in great cities, or in shepherds' cottages, or in fields and woods; and does he date from John and live on to the eighth Henry--a thread connecting in himself the different epochs of mediaeval England? One would almost say so; or multiply one man into many, whose works have been united under one man.

This ubiquity, if we may so call it, of Shakespeare's sympathies, constitutes the unlimited extent and might of his dramatic genius. It would be difficult to imagine where a boundary line could at length have been drawn, beyond which nothing original, nothing new, and nothing beautiful, could be supposed to have come forth from his mind. We are compelled to say that his genius was inexhaustible.

V.

This rare and wonderful faculty becomes more interesting if we follow it into further details.

I remember an anecdote of Garrick, who, in company with another performer of some eminence, was walking in the country, and about to enter a village. "Let us pass off," said the younger comedian to his more distinguished companion, "as two intoxicated fellows." They did so, apparently with perfect success, being saluted by the jeers and abuse of the inhabitants. When they came forth at the other end of the village, the younger performer asked Garrick how he had fulfilled his part. "Very well," was the reply, "except that you were not perfectly tipsy in your legs."

Now, in Shakespeare there is no danger of a similar defect. Whatever his character is intended to be it is carried out to its very extremities. Nothing is forgotten, nothing overlooked. Many of you, no doubt, are aware that a controversy has long existed whether the madness of Hamlet is intended by Shakespeare to be real or simulated. If a dramatist wished to represent one of his persons as feigning madness, that assumed condition would be naturally desired by the writer to be as like as possible to the real affliction. If the other persons associated with him could at once discover that the madness was put on, of course the entire action would be marred, and the object for which the pretended madness was designed would be defeated by the discovery. How consummate must be the poet's art, who can have so skilfully described, to the minutest symptoms, the mental malady of a great mind, as to leave it uncertain to the present day, even among learned physicians versed in such maladies, whether Hamlet's madness was real or assumed.

This controversy may be said to have been brought to a close by one of the ablest among those in England who have every opportunity of studying the almost innumerable shades through which alienation of mind can pass. [Footnote 109] And so delicate are the changeful characteristics which Shakespeare describes, that Dr. Conolly considers that a twofold form of {561} disease is placed before us in the Danish prince. He concludes that he was laboring under real madness, yet able to put on a fictitious and artificial derangement for the purposes which he kept in view. Passing through act by act and scene by scene, analyzing, with experienced eye, each new symptom as it occurs, dividing and anatomatizing, with the finest scalpel, every fibre of his brain, he exhibits, step by step, the transitionary characters of the natural disease in a mind naturally, and by education, great and noble, but thrown off his pivot by the anguish of his sufferings and the strain of aroused passion. And to this is superadded another and not genuine affection, which serves its turn with that estranged mind when it suits it to act, more especially that part which the natural ailment did not suffice for. Now, Dr. Conolly considers these symptoms so accurately as well as minutely described, that he throws out the conjecture that Shakespeare may have borrowed the account of them from some unknown papers by his son-in-law, Dr. Hall.

[Footnote 109: "A Study of Hamlet," by John Conolly, M.D., London,
1863. In p. 52 the author quotes Mr. Coleridge and M. Killemain as
holding the opinion that Shakespeare has "contrived to blend both
(feigned and real madness) in the extraordinary character of Hamlet;
and to join together the light of reason, the cunning of intentional
error, and the involuntary disorder of a soul."]

But let it be remembered that in those days mental phenomena were by no means accurately examined or generally known. There was but little attention paid to the peculiar forms of monomania, or to its treatment, beyond restraint and often cruelty. The poor idiot was allowed, if harmless, to wander about the village or the country, to drivel or gibber amidst the teasing or ill-natured treatment of boys or rustics. The poor maniac was chained or tied in some wretched out-house, at the mercy of some heartless guardian, with no protector but the constable. Shakespeare could not be supposed, in the little town of Stratford, nor indeed in London itself, to have had opportunities of studying the influence and the appearance of mental derangement of a high-minded and finely-cultivated prince. How then did Shakespeare contrive to paint so highly-finished and yet so complex an image? Simply by the exercise of that strong sympathetic will which enabled him to transport, or rather to transmute, himself into another personality. While this character was strongly before him he changed himself into a maniac; he felt intuitively what would be his own thought, what his feelings, were he in that situation; he played with himself the part of the madman, with his own grand mind as the basis of its action; he grasped on every side the imagery which he felt would have come into his mind, beautiful even when dislorded, sublime even when it was grovelling, brilliant even when dulled, and clothed it in words of fire and of tenderness, with a varied rapidity which partakes of wildness and of sense. He needed not to look for a model out of himself, for it cost him no effort to change the angle of his mirror and sketch his own countenance awry. It was but little for him to pluck away the crown from reason and contemplate it dethroned.

Before taking leave of Dr. Conolly's most interesting monography, I will allow myself to make only one remark. Having determined to represent Hamlet in this anomalous and perplexing condition, it was of the utmost importance to the course and end of this sublime drama, that one principal incident should be most decisively separated from Hamlet's reverse of mind. Had it been possible to attribute the appearance of the Ghost, as the Queen, his mother, does attribute it in the fifth act, to the delusion of his bewildered phantasy, the whole groundwork of the drama would have crumbled beneath its superincumbent weight. Had the spectre been seen by Hamlet, or by him first, we should have been perpetually troubled with the doubt whether or not it was the hallucination of a distracted, or the invention of a deceitful brain. But Shakespeare felt the necessity of making this apparition be held for a reality, and therefore he makes it the very first incident in his tragedy, antecedent to the slightest symptom {562} of either natural or affected derangement, and makes it first be seen by two witnesses together, and then conjointly by a third unbelieving and fearless witness. It is the testimony of these three which first brings to the knowledge of the incredulous prince this extraordinary occurrence. One may doubt whether any other writer has ever made a ghost appear successively to those whom we may call the wrong persons, before showing himself to the one whom alone he cared to visit. The extraordinary exigencies of Shakespeare's plot rendered necessary this unusual fiction. And it serves, moreover, to give the only color of justice to acts which otherwise must have appeared unqualified as mad freaks or frightful crimes.

What Dr. Conolly has done for Hamlet and Ophelia, Dr. Bucknill had previously performed on a more extensive scale. In his "Psychology of Shakespeare" [Footnote 110] he has minutely investigated the mental condition of Macbeth, King Lear, Timon, and other characters. On Hamlet he seems inclined to take a different view from Dr. Conolly; inasmuch as he considers the simulated madness the principal feature, and the natural unsoundness which it is impossible to overlook as secondary. But this eminent physician, well known for his extensive studies of insanity, bears similar testimony to the extraordinary accuracy of Shakespeare's delineations of mental diseases; the nicety with which he traces their various steps in one individual, the accuracy with which he distinguishes these morbid affections in different persons. He seems unable to account for the exact minuteness in any other way than by external observation. He acknowledges that "indefinable possession of genius, call it spiritual tact or insight, or whatever term may suggest itself, by which the great lords of mind estimate all phases of mind with little aid from reflected light," as the mental instrument through which Shakespeare looked upon others at a distance or within reach of minute observation. Still he seems to think that Shakespeare must have had many opportunities of observing mental phenomena. I own I am more inclined to think that the process by which the genius of Shakespeare reached this painful yet strange accuracy was rather that of introversion than of external observation. At any rate, it is most interesting to see eminent physicians maintaining by some means or other that Shakespeare arrived by some sort of intuition at the possession of a psychological or even medical knowledge, fully verified and proved to be exact by the researches two centuries later of distinguished men in a science only recently developed. Mrs. Jameson has well distinguished the different forms of mental aberration in Shakespeare's characters, when she says that "Constance is frantic, Lear is mad, Ophelia is insane." [Footnote 111]

[Footnote 110: Pages 58 and 100.]

[Footnote 111: "Characteristics of Women." New York 1833, p. 142.]

VI.

This last quotation may serve to introduce a further and a more delicate test of Shakespeare's insight into character. That a man should be able to throw himself into a variety of mind and characters among his fellow-men, may be not unreasonably expected. He has naturally a community of feelings, of passions, of temptations, and of motives with them. He can understand what is courage, what ambition, what strength or feebleness of mind. Inward observation and matured experience help much to guide him to a conception and delineation of the character of his fellow-men. But of the stronger emotions, the wilder passions, the subdued gentleness and tenderness, the heroic endurance, the meek bearing, and the saintly patience of the woman, he can have had no experience. Looking into himself for a reflection, he will probably find a blank.

{563}

It has often been said that in his female characters Shakespeare is not equal to himself. The work to which I have just alluded meets, I think completely, this objection, which, I believe, even Schlegel raises. It required a lady, with mind highly cultivated, with the nicest powers of discrimination, and with happiness of expression, to vindicate at once Shakespeare and her sex. The difficulty of this task can hardly be appreciated without the study of its performance. Its great difficulty consists in the almost family resemblance of the different portraits which make up Shakespeare's female gallery. There is scarcely any room for events, even for incident, still less for actions, say for bold and unfeminine deeds. Several of the heroines of Shakespeare are subjected to similar persecutions, and almost the same trials. In almost every one the affections and their expression have alone to interest us. From Miranda, the desert-nurtured child in the simplicity of untempted innocence, to Isabella in her cloistered virtue, or Hermione in her unyielding fortitude--there are such shades, such varying yet delicate tints, that not two of these numerous conceptions can be said to resemble another. And whence did Shakespeare derive his models? Some are lofty queens, others most noble ladies, some foreigners, some native; different types in mind and heart, as in the lineament or complexion. Where did he find them? Where did he meet them? In the cottages of Stratford, or in the purlieus of Blackfriars? Among the ladies of the court, or in the audience in his pit? No one can say--no one need say. They were the formations of his own quickened and fertile brain, which required but one stroke, one line, to sketch him a portrait to which he would give immortality. Far more difficult was this success, and not less completely was it achieved, in that character which medical writers seem hardly to believe could be but a conception. We may compare the mind of Shakespeare to a diamond pellucid, bright, and untinted, cut into countless polished facets, which, in constant movement, at every smallest change of direction or of angle caught a new reflection, so that not one of its brilliant mirrors could be for a moment idle, but by a power beyond its control was ever busy with the reflection of innumerable images, either distinct or running into one another, or repeated each so clearly as to allow him, when he chose, to fix it in his memory.

VII.

We may safely conclude that, in whatever constitutes the dramatic art in its strictest sense, Shakespeare possessed matchless sympathies with all its attributes. The next and most essential quality required for true genius is the power to give outward life to the inward conception. Without this the poet is dumb. He may be a "mute, inglorious Milton;" he cannot be a speaking, noble Shakespeare. I should think that I was almost insulting such an audience, were I to descant upon Shakespeare's position among the bards and writers of England, and of the modern world. Upon this point there can scarcely be a dissentient opinion. His language is the purest and best, his verses the most flowing and rich; and as for his sentiments, it would be difficult without the command of his own language to characterize them. No other writer has ever given such periods of sententious wisdom.

. . . . .

I have spoken of genius as a gift to an individual man. I will conclude by the reflection that that man becomes himself a gift; a gift to his nation; a gift to his age; a gift to the world of all times. That same Providence which bestows greatness, majesty, abundance, and grace, no less presents, from time to time, to a people or a race, these few transcendent men who mark for it {564} periods no less decisively, though more nobly, than victories or conquests. On England that supreme power has lavished the choicest blessings of this worldly life; it has made it vast in dominion, matchless in strength; it has made it the arbiter of the earth, and mistress of the sea; it has made it able to stretch its arm for war to the savage antipodes, and, if it chose, its hand for peace to the utter civilized west; it has brought the produce of north and south to its feet with skill and power, to transform and to refashion in forms graceful or useful, to send them back, almost as new creations, to its very source. Industry has clothed its most barren plains with luxuriant crops, and with Titan boldness hollowed its sternest rocks, to plunder them of their ever-hidden treasures. Its gigantic strength seems but to play with every work of venturesome enterprise, till its cities seem to the stranger to overflow with riches, and its country to be overspread with exuberant prosperity.

Well, these are great and magnificent favors of an over-ruling, most benignant Power; and yet there is a boast which belongs to our country that may seem to be overlooked. Yet it is a double gift that that same creating and directing rule has made this country the birthplace and the seat of the two men who, within a short period, were made the rulers each of a great and separate intellectual dominion, never to be deposed, never to be rivalled, never to be envied. To Newton was given the sway over the science of the civilized world; to Shakespeare the sovereignty over its literature.

The one stands before us passionless and grave, embracing in his intellectual grandeur every portion of the universe, from the stars, to him invisible, to the rippling of the tiny waves which the tide brought to his feet. The host of heaven, that seemed in causeless dispersion, he marshalled into order, and bound in safest discipline. He made known to his fellow-men the secret laws of heaven, the springs of movement, and the chains of connection, which invariably and unchangeably impel and guide the course of its many worlds.

In this aspect one's imagination figures him as truly the director of what he only describes--as the leader of a complicated army, who, with his staff, seems to draw or to send forward the wheeling battalions, intent on their own errands, combining or resolving movements far remote; or, under a more benign and pleasing form, we may contemplate him, like a great master in musical science, standing in the midst of a throng, in which are mingled together the elements of sublimest harmonies, confused to the eye, but sweetly attuned to the ear, mingling into orderly combination and flowing sequence, as they float through the air, which, though he elicit not nor produce, he seems by his outstretched hand to direct, or, at least, he proves himself fully to understand. For what each one separately does, unconscious of what even his companion is doing, he from afar knows, and almost beholds, understanding from his centre the concerted and sure results of their united action. And so Newton, from his chamber on this little earth, without being able more than the most helpless insect to add power or give guidance to one single element in the composition of this universe, could trace the orbits of planet or satellite, and calculate the oscillations and the reciprocal influences of celestial spheres.

Then his directing wand seems to contract itself to a space within his grasp. It becomes that magic prism with which he intercepts a ray from the sun on his passage to earth; and as a bird seizes in its flight the bee laden with its honey, and robs it of its sweet treasure--even so he compels the messenger of light to unfold itself before us, and lay bare to our sight the rich colors which the rainbow had exhibited to man since the deluge, and which had lain concealed since creation, in every sunbeam that had passed through our atmosphere. And further still, he bequeathes that wonderful alembic of light {565} to succeeding generations, till, in the hand of new discoverers, it has become the key of nature's laboratory, in which she has been surprised melting and compounding, in crucibles huge as ocean, the rich hues with which she overlays the surfaces of suns and stars, yet, at the same time, breathes its delicate blush upon the tenderest petals of the opening rose.

And all the laws and all the rules which form his code of nature seem engraved, as with a diamond point, upon a granite surface of the primitive rocks--inflexible, immovable, unchangeable as the system which they represent.

Beside him stands the Ruler of that world, which, though even sublimely intellectual, is governed by him with laws in which the affections, even the passions, the moralities, and the anxieties of life have their share; in which there is no severity but for vice, no slavery but for baseness, no unforgivingness but for calculating wickedness. In his hand is not the staff of authority, whether it take the form of a royal sceptre or of a knightly lance, whether it be the shepherdess's crook or the fool's bauble, it is still the same, the magician's wand. Whether it be the divining rod with which he draws up to light the most hidden streams of nature's emotions, or the potential instrument of Prospero's spells, which raises storms in the deep or works spirit-music in the air, or the wicked implement with which the witches mingle their unholy charm, its cunning and its might have no limit among created things. But it is not a world of stately order which he rules, nor are the laws of unvarying rigor by which it is commanded. The wildest paroxysms of passion; the softest delicacy of emotions; the most extravagant accident of fortune; the tenderest incidents of home; the king and the beggar, the sage and the jester, the tyrant and his victim; the maiden from the cloister and the peasant from the mountains; the Italian school-child and the Roman matron; the princes of Denmark and the lords of Troy--all these and much more are comprised in the vast embrace of his dominions. Scarcely a rule can be drawn from them, yet each forms a model separately, a finished group in combination. Unconsciously as he weaves his work, apparently without pattern or design, he interlaces and combines in its surface and its depth images of the most charming variety and beauty; now the stern mosaic, without coloring, of an ancient pavement, now the flowing and intertwining arabesque of the fanciful east; now the rude scenes of ancient mediaeval tapestry like that of Beauvais, and then the finished and richly tinted production of the Gobelins loom.

And yet through this seeming chaos the light permeates, and that so clear and so brilliant as equally to define and to dazzle. Every portion, every fragment, every particle, stands forth separate and particular, so as to be handled, measured, and weighed in the balance of critic and poet. Each has its own exact form and accurate place, so that, while separately they are beautiful, united they are perfect. Hence their combinations have become sacred rules, and have given inviolable maxims not only to English but to universal literature. Germany, as we have seen, studies with love and almost veneration every page of Shakespeare; national sympathies and kindred speech make it not merely easy but natural to all people of the Teutonic family to assimilate their literature to that its highest standard. France has departed, or is fast departing, from its favorite classical type, and adopting, though with unequal power, the broader and more natural lines of the Shakespearian model. His practice is an example, his declarations are oracles.

Still, as I have said, the wide region of intellectual enjoyment over which our great bard exerts dominion, is not one parcelled out or divided into formal and state-like provinces. While the student of science is reading in his {566} chamber the great "Principia" of Newton, he must keep before him the solution of only one problem. On that his mind must undistractedly rest, on that his power of thought be intensely concentrated. Woe to him if imagination leads his reason into truant wanderings; woe if he drop the thread of finely-drawn deductions! He will find his wearied intelligence drowsily floundering in a sea of swimming figures and evanescent quantities, or floating amidst the fragments of a shipwrecked diagram. But over Shakespeare one may dream no less than pore; we may drop the book from our hand and the contents remain equally before us. Stretched in the shade by a brook in summer, or sunk in the reading chair by the hearth in winter, in the imaginative vigor of health, in the drooping spirits of indisposition, one may read, and allow the trains of fancy which spring up in any scene to pursue their own way, and minister their own varied pleasure or relief; and when by degrees we have become familiar with the inexhaustible resources of his genius, there is scarcely a want in mind or the affections that needs no higher than human succor, which will not find in one or other of his works that which will soothe suffering, comfort grief, strengthen good desires, and present some majestic example to copy, or some fearful phantom. But when we endeavor to contemplate all his infinitely varied conceptions as blended together in one picture, so as to take in, if possible, at one glance the prodigious extent of his prolific genius, we thereby build up what he himself so beautifully called the "fabric of a vision," matchless in its architecture as in the airiness of its materials. There are forms fantastically sketched in cloud-shapes, such as Hamlet showed to Polonius, in the midst of others rounded and full, which open and unfold ever-changing varieties, now gloomy and threatening, then tipped with gold and tinted with azure, ever-rolling, ever-moving, melting the one into the other, or extricating each itself from the general mass. Dwelling upon this maze of things and imaginations, the most incongruous combinations come before the dreamy thought, fascinated, spell-bound, and entranced. The wild Ardennes and Windsor Park seem to run into one another, their firs and their oaks mingle together; the boisterous ocean boiling round "the still vexed Bermoothes" runs smoothly into the lagoons of Venice; the old gray porticos of republican Rome, like the transition in a dissolving view, are confused and entangled with the slim and fluted pillars of a Gothic hall; here the golden orb, dropped from the hand of a captive king, rolls on the ground side by side with a jester's mouldy skull--both emblems of a common fate in human things. Then the grave chief-justice seems incorporated in the bloated Falstaff; King John and his barons are wassailing with Poins and Bardolph at an inn door; Coriolanus and Shylock are contending for the right of human sensibilities; Macbeth and Jacques are moralizing together on tenderness even to the brute. And so of other more delicate creations of the poet's mind--Isabella and Ophelia, Desdemona and the Scotch Thane's wife, produce respectively composite figures of inextricable confusion. And around and above is that filmy world, Ariel and Titania and Peas-blossom and Cobweb and Moth, who weave as a gossamer cloud around the vision, dimming it gradually before our eyes, in the last drooping of weariness, or the last hour of wakefulness.

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MISCELLANY.

ART.

_Domestic._--The south gallery of the new academy is the largest and best lighted of the several exhibition rooms, and contains some of the most ambitious pictures of the year. As the visitor, pausing for a moment to survey the paintings, drawings, studies, architectural designs, and miscellanea which are hung around the four sides of the open corridor at the head of the grand staircase, turns naturally into the great gallery, through whose wide entrance he catches glimpses of the art treasures within, so do we propose to conduct the reader thither without further parley. Here confront us specimens of almost every subject legitimate to the art, and of some not legitimate--great pictures and little pictures, grave pictures and gay pictures, landscape and _genre_, history and portraiture, beasts, birds, fishes, and flowers. At either end of the room hangs a full-length portrait of a gentleman of note, which challenges the visitor's attention, be he never so reluctant. No. 464, the late Governor Gamble, of Missouri, by F.T.L. Boyle, belongs to a family only too numerous among us (we speak of the picture only), and whose acquaintance one feels strongly inclined to cut in the present instance. But that is impossible. There stands the familiar lay-figure in the old conventional attitude, which we feel sure the governor never assumed of his own accord. The marble columns, the draped curtain, the library table and the books--all the stock accessories in fine--are there; and either for the purpose of pointing a moral, of instituting a personal comparison, or of calling attention to its workmanship, the governor blandly directs your attention to a bust of Washington. He might be intending to do any one or all of these things so far as the expression of his face affords an indication. The idea on which the portrait is painted is thoroughly false, and ought to be by this time discarded; but year after year artists continue to mint these modish, stiff, and ridiculous figures, when with a little regard to common sense they could produce portraits which all would recognize as natural and effective. Especially is this the case with the present picture, which evinces considerable executive ability. The other portrait to which we alluded, No. 412, a full length of Ex-Governor Morgan, painted by Huntington, for the Governor's Room in the City Hall, is one of the least creditable works ever produced by that artist, cold and repulsive in color, awkward in attitude, and unsatisfactory as a likeness.

Occupying a less prominent position than either of these pictures, but conspicuous enough to attract a large share of attention, is the full-length portrait of Archbishop McCloskey, No. 438, by G.P.A. Healy. Mr. Healy, though never very happy as a colorist and often disposed to sacrifice characteristic expression to a passion for painting brocades and draperies, has generally succeeded in imparting a refined air to his portraits, however feeble they might be as likenesses. The present work is coarse in expression, and untrue as a likeness. It is a mistake to suppose that a free, rapid touch is adapted to every style of face. The small and delicate features of the archbishop, with their shrewd, yet refined and benevolent expression, cannot be dashed off with a few strokes of the brush, but require careful painting, and, above all, patient painting. Mr. Healy's portrait of Dr. Brownson in last year's exhibition, though of little merit as a painting, was much better than this. No. 448, a portrait of the late Peletiah Perit, by Hicks, is one of the most creditable specimens of that very unequal painter that we have recently seen. Mr. Perit is sitting easily and naturally in his library chair, and is not made to assume the attitude of a posture-master for the time being, in order that posterity may know how he did _not_ look in life. The likeness is not remarkable; but the accessories are carefully painted and agreeably colored. No. 423, portrait of a lady, by R.M. Staigg, is exactly what it assumes to be--a lady. In the refined air of the gentlewoman which the artist has so happily conveyed, he recalls some of the female heads of Stuart, though in the present instance he had no wide scope for the display {568} of Stuart's charming gift of color. The resemblance is more in the general sentiment than in any technical qualities. Almost adjoining this work is another portrait of a lady, No. 425, by W.H. Furness, a forcible example of the naturalistic school, of great solidity of texture and purity of color. There is intelligence, earnestness, and strength in this face, and in the attitude, though the latter, as well as the accessories, is studiously simple. Baker and Stone contribute some attractive portraits to this room. No. 454, a lady, by the latter, is a good specimen of a style neither strong nor founded on true principles, but which, on account of a certain conventional gracefulness, which amply satisfies those who look no deeper than the surface of the canvas, will always find admirers. No. 458, a portrait of Capt. Riblett, of the New York 7th Regiment, by Baker, is a clever work, noticeable for the easy pose of the figure, the clear fresh coloring, and the firm handling.

Two other portrait pieces may be noticed in this room, of very opposite degrees of merit. They illustrate a method of treating this branch of the art which has become popular of late years, and which seeks to combine portraiture with _genre_; that is to say, the figures represent real personages, but to the uninitiated seem merely the actors in some little domestic scene. Any subject verging on the dramatic is of course inappropriate to this method. Thus the stiffness too often inseparable from portraiture and its unsympathetic character to a stranger are avoided, and the "gentlemen" and "ladies" who have monopolized so much space on the walls awaken an interest in a wider circle than when appearing simply in their proper persons. No. 441, "A Picnic in the Highlands," by Rossiter, presents us with portraits of some twenty ladies and gentlemen, including a fair proportion of generals, who have been ruthlessly summoned from the pleasures of the rural banquet or of social intercourse to place themselves in attitudes which a travelling photographer would blush to copy, and be thus handed down to posterity. In submitting to this dreadful process Generals Warren and Seymour afforded a new proof of courage under adverse circumstances; and one scarcely knows whether they deserve most to be pitied, or the artist to be denounced for putting brave men in so ridiculous a position. The picture is simply disgraceful, and would naturally be passed over in silence had it not been hung in a position to challenge attention, while many works of merit are placed far above the line. Thirty or forty years ago, when the academy was glad to enroll painters of the calibre of Mr. Rossiter among its members, such productions were perhaps acceptable on the line. But have hanging committees no appreciation that there is such a thing as progress? The other picture above alluded to is No. 435, "Claiming the Shot," by J.G. Brown. It represents a hunting scene in the Adirondacks, and though thinly painted, with no merit in the landscape, and of a general commonplace character, tells its story with humor and point. We have not the pleasure of knowing the party of amateur hunters whose good-natured altercation forms the subject of Mr. Brown's picture, but their faces are perfectly familiar to us, and may be seen any day on Broadway, until the shooting season summons them to a purer atmosphere than our civic rulers permit us to breathe. That good-looking and well-dressed young man, with the incipient aristocratic baldness, and the languid, gentleman-like air, reclining in a not ungraceful attitude on a stump, and whose incredulous shake of the head denotes that he will not resign his claim to the successful shot--is he not a type of our _jeunesse doree?_ And who has not met the portly, florid gentleman, his face beaming with good nature and good living, who claps our young friend on the back and advises him to give it up? The earnest expression of the half-kneeling hunter, clinching the argument as he identifies his bullet-hole in the side of the slain buck, is well rendered, as is also that of another florid gentleman who looks on, a quiet but highly amused witness of the dispute. In the background are a party of guides and boatmen engaged in preparing supper for the disputants, over whose perplexity they appear to be indulging in a little quiet "chaff." We imagine that the faces of the principal actors in this group are good likenesses, and we feel sure that to see them thus depicted amidst scenes suggesting healthful out-door sports will be pleasant to their friends.

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From portraits we pass naturally to figure pieces, and first pause with astonishment before No. 394, "The Two Marys at the Sepulchre," by R.W. Weir. Here is a work which has doubtless cost much thought and patient labor, but which is so hopelessly beneath the dignity of the subject as to seem almost like a caricature. When will modern painters recognize that sacred history is a branch of their art not to be attempted except under very peculiar and favorable circumstances?--that the artist must feel and believe what he paints, unless he wishes to degenerate into insipidity? We do not desire to impugn Mr. Weir's sincerity, but a work so cold, lifeless, and void of propriety shows that he is either hiding his light under a bushel, or is incapable of feeling, perhaps we should say of reflecting, the religious fervor which should be associated with so awful a scene. Had he even stuck to the conventional forms and accessories which have satisfied six centuries of Christian painters, he might have produced something of respectable mediocrity. But modern realism would not permit this, and therefore the Virgin is represented as a commonplace middle-aged woman, who might as well be Mr. Weir's housekeeper, and whose mawkish expression is positively repulsive. Of St. Mary Magdalen the attitude, figure, and expression are not less inappropriate. Surely these personages are raised above the level of ordinary women--no believer in Christianity will deny that--and cannot the painter so represent them? In other respects the picture has little merit, being stiff and mannered in the drawing and of a mixture of dull gray and salmon in its local coloring.

The most conspicuous landscape in this room is Bierstadt's immense view of the Yo Semite Valley in California, No. 436, which occupies the place of honor in the middle of the south wall. For months past the artist has been announced as at work on this picture, and in view of the great merits recognized in his "Rocky Mountains," public expectation has been raised to a high pitch. But public expectation has been doomed to disappointment this time, for the Yo Semite is much inferior to its predecessor, though, in several respects, both works show the same characteristics in equal perfection. They have breadth of drawing, admirable perspective, and convey an idea of the solemn grandeur of nature in the virgin solitudes of the west. But while in the older work Mr. Bierstadt succeeded in forgetting for a time the academic mannerisms which he brought with him from Germany, in the present one he has, unconsciously, perhaps, lapsed into them again, and produced something of great mechanical excellence, and with about as much nature as can be seen through the atmosphere of a Duesseldorf studio. Yellow appears to be his weakness, and the canvas is accordingly suffused with yellow tints of every gradation of tone; not a luminous yellow which the eye may rest upon with pleasure, but a hard, dusty-looking pigment, without warmth, or transparency, or depth; such a yellow as never tinged the skies of California or any other part of the world, but is begotten of men who derive their ideas of nature from copying _pictures_ of landscapes, instead of going directly to nature. The grass and the foliage which receive the sunlight are of a dirty, yellowish green, those in the shadow of the great mountain ridge on the right of the scene of a yellowish black, the very rocks and water are yellow, and if Indians or emigrants had been introduced into the foreground, we feel convinced they would have received the prevailing hue. Only in the mountain peaks, checkered with sunlight and shadow, does the artist seem to escape from this thraldom to one color, and paint with force and truthfulness. The picture is therefore a failure; and yet viewed from the head of the great stair-case, across the open space, and through the entrance to the exhibition-room, it has a mellowness of tone and truthfulness of perspective which almost induce us to retract our criticism. Approach it, however, and the illusion vanishes. Another Californian scene by Bierstadt, in this room, No. 472, "the Golden Gate," shows the artist's predominant fault even more conspicuously, and is not only unworthy of him, but absolutely unpleasant to look at. No. 487, "Among the Alps," by Gignoux, is a solidly, though coarsely painted work, and notwithstanding a prevalent cold, leaden tone, tolerably effective. The idea of solemn repose is well conveyed, although scarcely one of the details is truthfully rendered. The water of the mountain lake is not water, but an opaque mass, the trees and rocks are so slurred in the drawing as to be {570} unrecognizable by the naturalist, and the shadows are unnecessarily deep and sombre. Such painting, however, pleases the multitude, who do not care much for absolute truth, provided effect is obtained; and Mr. Gignoux's picture is considered very fine indeed. No. 466, "A Mountain Lake in the Blue Ridge," by Sonntag, is a fine piece of scene painting, and, if properly enlarged, would form an excellent design for a stage drop-curtain. As a representation of nature it is false in nearly every detail. And yet no landscape painter deals more readily and dexterously with the external forms of American forest scenery, or perhaps has more neatness of touch; and none, it may be added, has wandered further from the true path.