Chapter XXVII (8)

All that we meet with in the master-pieces of taste and genius is to be found in the previous capacity of nature; and man, instead of adding to the store, or _creating_ any thing either as to matter or manner, can only draw out a feeble and imperfect transcript, bit by bit, and one appearance after another, according to the peculiar aptitude and affinity that subsists between his mind and some one part. The mind resembles a prism, which untwists the various rays of truth, and displays them by different modes and in several parcels. Enough has been said to vindicate both conditions of originality, which distinguish it from singularity on the one hand and from vulgarity on the other; or to show how a thing may at the same time be both true and new. This novel truth is brought out when it meets with a strong congenial mind—that is, with a mind in the highest degree susceptible of a certain class of impressions, or of a certain kind of beauty or power; and this peculiar strength, congeniality, truth of imagination, or command over a certain part of nature, is, in other words, what is meant by _genius_. This will serve to show why original inventors have in general (and except in what is mechanical), left so little for their followers to improve upon; for as the original invention implies the utmost stretch and felicity of thought, or the greatest strength and sagacity to discover and dig the ore from the mine of truth, so it is hardly to be expected that a greater degree of capacity should ever arise (than the highest), that a greater mastery should be afterwards obtained in shaping and fashioning the precious materials, than in the first heat and eagerness of discovery; or that, if the capacity were equal, the same scope and opportunity would be left for its exercise in the same field. If the genius were different, it would then seek different objects and a different vent, and open new paths to fame and excellence, instead of treading in old ones. Hence the well-known observation, that in each particular style or class of art, the greatest works of genius are the earliest. Hence, also, the first productions of men of genius are often their best. What was that _something_ that ROMNEY spoke of in REYNOLDS’S pictures that the world had never seen before, but with which they were enchanted the moment they beheld it, and which both HOPPNER and JACKSON, with all their merit, have but faintly imitated since? It was a reflection of the artist’s mind—an emanation from his character, transferred to the canvass. It was an ease, an amenity, an indolent but anxious satisfaction, a graceful playfulness, belonging to his disposition, and spreading its charm on all around it, attracting what harmonized with, and softening and moulding what repelled it, avoiding every thing hard, stiff, and formal, shrinking from details, reposing on effect, imparting motion to _still life_, viewing all things in their ‘gayest, happiest attitudes,’ and infusing his own spirit into nature as the leaven is kneaded into the dough; but, though the original bias existed in himself, and was thence stamped upon his works, yet the character could neither have been formed without the constant recurrence and pursuit of proper nourishment, nor could it have expressed itself without a reference to those objects, looks, and attitudes in nature, which soothed and assimilated with it. What made HOGARTH original and inimitable, but the wonderful redundance, and, as it were, _supererogation_ of his genius, which poured the oil of humanity into the wounds and bruises of human nature, redeemed, while it exposed, vice and folly, made deformity pleasing, and turned misfortune into a jest? But could he have done so if there were no enjoyment or wit in a night-cellar, or if the cripple could not dance and sing? No, the _moral_ was in nature; but let no one dare to insist upon it after him, in the same language and with the same pretensions! There was REMBRANDT—did he invent the extremes of light and shade, or was he only the first that embodied them? He was so only because his eye drank in light and shade more deeply than any one before or since; and, therefore, the sunshine hung in liquid drops from his pencil, and the dungeon’s gloom hovered over his canvass. Who can think of CORREGGIO without a swimming of the head—the undulating line, the melting grace, the objects advancing and retiring as in a measured dance or solemn harmony! But all this fulness, roundness, and delicacy, existed before in nature, and only found a fit sanctuary in his mind. The breadth and masses of MICHAEL ANGELO were studies from nature, which he selected and cast in the mould of his own manly and comprehensive genius. The landscapes of CLAUDE are in a fixed repose, as if nothing could be moved from its place without a violence to harmony and just proportion: in those of RUBENS every thing is fluttering and in motion, light and indifferent, as the winds blow where they list. All this is characteristic, original, a different mode of nature, which the artist had the happiness to find out and carry to the utmost point of perfection. It has been laid down that no one paints any thing but his own character, and almost features; and the workman is always to be traced in the work. Mr. FUSELI’S figures, if they were like nothing else, were like himself, or resembled the contortions of a dream; WILKIE’S have a parochial air; HAYDON’S are heroical; Sir THOMAS’S genteel. What Englishman could bear to sit to a French artist? What English artist could hope to succeed in a French coquet? There is not only an individual but a national bias, which is observable in the different schools and productions of art. _Mannerism_ is the bane (though it is the occasional vice) of genius, and is the worst kind of imitation, for it is a man’s imitating himself. Many artists go on repeating and caricaturing themselves, till they complain that nature puts them out. Gross plagiarism may consist with great originality. STERNE was a notorious plagiarist, but a true genius. His _Corporal Trim_, his _Uncle Toby_, and _Mr. Shandy_, are to be found no where else. If RAPHAEL had done nothing but borrow the two figures from MASACCIO, it would have been impossible to say a word in his defence: no one has a right to steal, who is not rich enough to be robbed by others. So MILTON has borrowed more than almost any other writer; but he has uniformly stamped a character of his own upon it. In what relates to the immediate imitation of nature, people find it difficult to conceive of an opening for originality, inasmuch as they think that they themselves see the whole of nature, and that every other view of it is wrong:—in what relates to the productions of imagination or the discoveries of science, as they themselves are totally in the dark, they fancy the whole to be a fabrication, and give the inventor credit for a sort of dealing with the Devil, or some preternatural kind of talent. Poets lay a popular and prescriptive claim to inspiration: the astronomer of old was thought able to conjure with the stars; and the skilful leech, who performed unexpected cures was condemned for a sorcerer. This is as great an error the other way. The vulgar think there is nothing in what lies on the surface; though the learned only see beyond it by stripping off incumbrances and coming to another surface beneath the first. The difference between art and science is only the difference between the _clothed_ and _naked_ figure: but the veil of truth must be drawn aside before we can distinctly see the face. The physician is qualified to prescribe remedies because he is acquainted with the internal structure of the body, and has studied the symptoms of disorders: the mathematician arrives at his most surprising conclusions by slow and sure steps; and where he can add discovery to discovery by the very certainty of the hold he has of all the previous links. There is no witchcraft in either case. The invention of the poet is little more than the fertility of a teeming brain—that is, than the number and quantity of associations present to his mind, and the various shapes in which he can turn them without being distracted or losing a ‘semblable coherence’ of the parts; as the man of observation and reflection strikes out just and unforeseen remarks by taking off the mask of custom and appearances; or by judging for himself of men and things, without taking it for granted that they are what he has hitherto supposed them, or waiting to be told by others what they are. If there were no foundation for an unusual remark in our own consciousness or experience, it would not strike us as a discovery: it would sound like a _jeu-d’esprit_, a whim or oddity, or as flat nonsense. The mere mob, ‘the great vulgar and the small,’ are not therefore capable of distinguishing between originality and singularity, for they have no idea beyond the _commonplace_ of fashion or custom. Prejudice has no ears either for or against itself; it is alike averse to objections and proofs, for both equally disturb its blind implicit notions of things. Originality is, then, ‘the strong conception’ of truth and nature ‘that the mind groans withal,’ and of which it cannot stay to be delivered by authority or example. It is feeling the ground sufficiently firm under one’s feet to be able to go alone. Truth is its essence; it is the strongest possible feeling of truth; for it is a secret and instinctive yearning after, and approximation towards it, before it is acknowledged by others, and almost before the mind itself knows what it is. Paradox and eccentricity, on the other hand, show a dearth of originality, as bombast and hyperbole show a dearth of imagination; they are the desperate resources of affectation and want of power. Originality is necessary to genius; for when that which, in the first instance, conferred the character, is afterwards done by rule and routine, it ceases to be genius. To conclude, the value of any work of art or science depends chiefly on the quantity of originality contained in it, and which constitutes either the charm of works of fiction or the improvement to be derived from those of progressive information. But it is not so in matters of opinion, where every individual thinks he can judge for himself, and does not wish to be set right. There is, consequently, nothing that the world like better than originality of invention, and nothing that they hate worse than originality of thought. Advances in science were formerly regarded with like jealousy, and stigmatised as dangerous by the friends of religion and the state: GALILEO was imprisoned in the same town of Florence, where they now preserve his finger pointing to the skies!

THE IDEAL

The _ideal_ is the abstraction of any thing from all the circumstances that weaken its effect, or lessen our admiration of it. Or it is filling up the outline of truth or beauty existing in the mind, so as to leave nothing wanting or to desire farther. The principle of the _ideal_ is the satisfaction we have in the contemplation of any quality or object, which makes us seek to heighten, to prolong, or extend that satisfaction to the utmost; and beyond this we cannot go, for we cannot get beyond the highest conceivable degree of any quality or excellence diffused over the whole of an object. Any notion of perfection beyond is is a word without meaning—a thing in the clouds. Another name for the _ideal_ is the _divine_; for, what we imagine of the Gods is pleasure without pain—power without effort. The _ideal_ is the impassive and immortal: it is that which exists in and for itself; or is begot by the intense _idea_ and innate love of it. Hence it has been argued by some, as if it were brought from another sphere, as RAPHAEL was said to have fetched his _Galatea_ from the skies; but it was the Gods, ‘the children of HOMER,’ who peopled ‘the cloud-capt Olympus.’ The statue of _Venus_ was not beautiful because it represented a goddess; but it was supposed to represent a goddess, because it was in the highest degree (that the art or wit of man could make it so) and in every part beautiful. Goddesses also walk the earth in the shape of women; the height of nature surpasses the utmost stretch of the imagination; the human form is alone the image of the divinity. It has been usual to represent the _ideal_ as an abstraction of general nature, or as a _mean_ or average proportion between different qualities and faculties, which, instead of carrying any one to the highest point of perfection or satisfaction, would only neutralise and damp the impression. We take our notions on this subject chiefly from the _antique_; but what higher conception do we form of the _Jupiter_ of PHIDIAS than that of power frowning in awful majesty? or of the _Minerva_ of the same hand, than that of wisdom, ‘severe in youthful beauty?’ We shall do well not to refine in our theories beyond these examples, that have been left us—

‘Inimitable on earth by model,
Or by shading pencil shown.’

What is the _Venus_, the _Apollo_, the _Hercules_, but the personification of beauty, grace, and strength, or the displaying these several properties in every part of the attitude, face, and figure, and in the utmost conceivable degree, but without confounding the particular kinds of form or expression in an intermediate something, pretended to be more perfect than either? A thing is not more perfect by becoming something else, but by _being more itself_. If the face of the _Venus_ had been soft and feminine, but the figure had not corresponded, then this would have been a defect of the _ideal_, which subdues the discordances of Nature in the mould of passion, and so far from destroying character, imparts the same character to all, according to a certain established idea or preconception in the mind. The following up the contrary principle would lead to the inevitable result, that the most perfect, that is, the most abstract, representation of the human form could contain neither age nor sex, neither character nor expression, neither the attributes of motion nor rest, but a mere unmeaning negation or doubtful balance of all positive qualities—in fact, to propose to _embody an abstraction_ is a contradiction in terms. The attempt to carry such a scheme into execution would not merely supersede all the varieties and accidents of nature, but would effectually put a stop to the productions of art, or reduce them to one vague and undefined abstraction, answering to the word _man_. That amalgamation, then, of a number of different impressions into one, which in some sense is felt to constitute the _ideal_, is not to be sought in the dry and desert spaces or the endless void of metaphysical abstraction, or by taking a number of things and _muddling_ them all together, but by singling out some one thing or leading quality of an object, and making it the pervading and regulating principle of all the rest, so as to produce the greatest strength and harmony of effect. This is the natural progress of things, and accords with the ceaseless tendency of the human mind from the _Finite_ to the _Infinite_. If I see beauty, I do not want to change it for power; if I am struck with power, I am no longer in love with beauty; but I wish to make beauty still more beautiful, power still more powerful, and to pamper and exalt the prevailing impression, whatever it be, till it ends in a dream and a vision of glory. This view of the subject has been often dwelt upon: I shall endeavour to supply some inferences from it. The _ideal_, it appears then by this account of it, is the enhancing and expanding an idea from the satisfaction we take in it; or it is taking away whatever divides, and adding whatever increases our sympathy with pleasure and power ‘till our content is absolute,’ or at the height. Hence that _repose_ which has been remarked as one striking condition of the _ideal_; for as it is nothing but the continued approximation of the mind to the _great_ and the _good_, so in the attainment of this object it rejects as much as possible not only the petty, the mean, and disagreeable, but also the agony and violence of passion, the force of contrast, and the extravagance of imagination. It is a law to itself. It relies on its own aspirations after pure enjoyment and lofty contemplation alone, self-moved and self-sustained, without the grosser stimulus of the irritation of the will, privation, or suffering—unless when it is inured and reconciled to the last (as an element of its being) by heroic fortitude, and when ‘strong patience conquers deep despair.’ In this sense, MILTON’s _Satan_ is _ideal_, though tragic: for it is permanent tragedy, or one fixed idea without vicissitude or frailty, and where all the pride of intellect and power is brought to bear in confronting and enduring pain. Mr. WORDSWORTH has expressed this feeling of stoical indifference (proof against outward impressions) admirably in the poem of _Laodamia_:—

‘Know, virtue were not virtue, if the joys
Of sense were able to return as fast
And surely as they vanish. Earth destroys
Those raptures duly: _Erebus disdains—
Calm pleasures there abide, majestic pains_.’

These lines are a noble description and example of the _ideal_ in poetry. But the _ideal_ is not in general the stronghold of poetry. For description in words (to produce any vivid impression) requires a translation of the object into some other form, which is the language of metaphor and imagination; as narrative can only interest by a succession of events and a conflict of hopes and fears. Therefore, the sphere of the _ideal_ is in a manner limited to Sculpture and Painting, where the object itself is given entire without any possible change of circumstances, and where, though the impression is momentary, it lasts for ever. Hence we may see the failure in _Sir Charles Grandison_, which is an attempt to embody this perfect or _ideal_ character in a succession of actions without passion, and in a variety of situations where he is still the same everlasting coxcomb, and where we are tired to death of the monotony, affectation, and self-conceit. The story of ‘Patient Grizzle,’ however fine the sentiment, is far from dramatic: for the _ideal_ character, which is the self-sufficient, the immovable, and the one, precludes change, or at least all motive for, or interest in, the alternation of events, to which it constantly rises superior. SHAKSPEARE’S characters are interesting and dramatic, in proportion as they are not above passion and outward circumstances, that is, as they are men and not angels. The Greek tragedies may serve to explain how far the _ideal_ and the _dramatic_ are consistent; for the characters there are almost as ideal as their statues, and almost as impassive; and perhaps their extreme decorum and self-possession is only rendered palatable to us by the story which nearly always represents a conflict between Gods and men. The _ideal_ part is, however, necessary at all times to the grandeur of tragedy, since it is the superiority of character to fortune and circumstances, or the larger scope of thought and feeling thrown into it, that redeems it from the charge of vulgar grossness or physical horrors. Mrs. SIDDONS’S acting had this character; that is to say, she kept her state in the midst of the tempest of passion, and her eye surveyed, not merely the present suffering, but the causes and consequences; there was inherent power and dignity of manner. In a word, as there is a sanguine temperament, and a health of body and mind which floats us over daily annoyances and hindrances (instead of fastening upon petty and disagreeable details), and turns every thing to advantage, so it is in art and works of the imagination, the principle of the _ideal_ being neither more nor less than that fulness of satisfaction and enlargement of comprehension in the mind itself that assists and expands all that accords with it, and throws aside and triumphs over whatever is adverse. Grace in movement is either that which is continuous and consistent, from having no obstacles opposed to it, or that which perseveres in this continuous and equable movement from a _delight_ in it, in spite of interruption or uneven ground; this last is the _ideal_, or a persisting in, and giving effect to, our choice of the good, notwithstanding the unfavourableness of the actual or outward circumstances. We may in like manner trace the origin of dancing, music, and poetry, which is the march of words. Self-possession is the _ideal_ in ordinary behaviour. A low or vulgar character seizes on every trifling or painful circumstance that occurs, from _irritability_ and want of imagination to look beyond the moment; while a person of more refinement and capacity, or with a stronger predisposition of the mind to good, and a greater fund of good sense and pleasurable feeling to second it, despises these idle provocations, and preserves an unruffled composure and serenity of temper. This internal character, being permanent, communicates itself to the outward expression in proportionable sweetness, delicacy, and unity of effect, which it requires all the same characteristics of the mind to feel and convey to others; and hence the superiority of RAPHAEL’S _Madonnas_ over HOGARTH’S faces. _Keeping_ is not the _ideal_, for there may be _keeping_ in the little, the mean, and the disjointed, without strength, softness or expansion. The Fauns and Satyrs of antiquity belong (like other fabulous creations) rather to the grotesque than the _ideal_. They may be considered, however, as a bastard species of the _ideal_, for they stamp one prominent character of vice and deformity on the whole face, instead of going into the minute, uncertain, and shuffling details. As to the rest, the _ideal_ abhors monsters and incongruity. If the horses in the Elgin marbles, or the boar of MELEAGER, are ranked with the human figures, it is from their being perfect representations of the forms and actions of the animals designed, not caricatures half-way between the human and the brute.

The ideal, then, is the highest point of purity and perfection to which we can carry the idea of any object or quality. The natural differs from the ideal style, inasmuch as what anything is differs from what we wish and can conceive it to be. Many people would substitute the phrase, from what it ought to be, to express the latter part of the alternative, and would explain what a thing ought to be by that which is best. But for myself, I do not understand, or at least it does not appear to me, a self-evident proposition, either what a thing ought to be, or what it is best that it should be; it is only shifting the difficulty a remove farther, and begging the question a second time. I may know what is good; I can tell what is better: but that which is best is beyond me—it is a thing in the clouds. There is perhaps also a species of cant—the making up for a want of clearness of ideas by insinuating a pleasing moral inference—in the words purity and perfection used above; but I would be understood as meaning by purity nothing more than a freedom from alloy or any incongruous mixture in a given quality or character of an object, and by perfection completeness, or the extending that quality to all the parts and circumstances of an object, so that it shall be as nearly as possible of a piece. The imagination does not ordinarily bestow any pains on that which is mean and indifferent in itself, but having conceived an interest in any thing, and the passions being once excited, we endeavour to give them food and scope by making that which is beautiful still more beautiful, that which is striking still more grand, that which is hateful still more deformed, through the positive, comparative, and superlative degrees, till the mind can go no farther in this progression of fancy and passion without losing the original idea, or quitting its hold of nature, which is the ground on which it still rests with fluttering pinions. The ideal does not transform any object into something else, or neutralize its character, but, by removing what is irrelevant and supplying what was defective, makes it more itself than it was before. I have included above the Fauns and Satyrs, as well as the Heroes and Deities of antique art, or the perfection of deformity as well as of beauty and strength, but any one who pleases may draw the line, and leave out the exceptionable part; it will make no difference in the principle.

Venus is painted fair, with golden locks, but she must not be fair beyond the fairness of woman—for the beauty we desire is that of woman—nor must the hair be actually of the colour of gold, but only approaching to it, for then it would no longer look like hair, but like something else, and in striving to enhance the effect we should weaken it. Habit, as well as passion, knowledge as well as desire, is one part of the human mind; nor, in aiming at imaginary perfection, are we to confound the understood boundaries and distinct classes of things, or ‘to o’erstep the modesty of nature.’ We may rise the superstructure of fancy as high as we please; the basis is custom. We talk in words of an ivory skin, of golden tresses; but these are but figures of speech, and a poetical licence. Richardson acknowledges that Clarissa’s neck was not so white as the lace on it, whatever the poets might say if they had been called upon to describe it.

ROYAL ACADEMY

The choice of a President for this Society is one of some nicety. Where there is not any individual taking a decided and indisputable lead in art, it requires a combination and balance of qualities not always easily to be met with. The President of the great body of art in this country ought not merely to be eminent in his profession, but a man of gentlemanly manners, of good person, of respectable character, and standing well in the opinion of his brother artists. He should be a person free from peculiarity of temper, from party spirit, and able to represent the elegant arts (of which he stands at the head) as the last ostensible link connecting scientific pursuit with the enlightened taste and aristocratic refinements of their immediate patrons. The choice has fallen upon Mr. SHEE, and his honours will sit well upon him. This artist has been long a favourite with the public in the most popular branch of his art, and is scarcely less distinguished by his occasional brilliant effusions as a poet and his accomplishments as a man. The characteristics of Mr. SHEE’S style of portrait painting are vivacity of expression, facility of execution, and clearness of colouring. He has attempted history with some success. Perhaps if he had done more in this way, it might have been to his own detriment; and the habits and studies of the historical painter, immersed in a world of retirement and abstraction, are such as hardly serve for an introduction to situations of ornament and distinction in social life. Mr. WILKIE’S merits as a painter of familiar subjects have procured him the deserved honour of being appointed ‘historical painter to the King’—the admirable busts of Mr. CHANTREY might also have been thrown into the opposite scale; but, upon the whole, the judgment of the public will not take the laurel from the head where the hands of the Academy have placed it. If we might hint a fault where so much praise is due, it would be by expressing a wish that Mr. SHEE could more boldly say with Rembrandt, ‘_Je suis peintre, non pas teinturier_.’ His tones are too pure, approaching too nearly to virgin tints. For one department of his office the new President is happily qualified—we mean the delivery of lectures from the Chair of the Royal Academy. The art of painting is dumb but Mr. SHEE can borrow the aid of a sister muse.

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Footnote 12:

One would think that a people so devoted to perfumes, who deal in
essences and scents, and have fifty different sorts of snuffs, would
be equally nice, and offended at the approach of every disagreeable
odour. Not so. They seem to have no sense of the disagreeable in
smells or tastes, as if their heads were stuffed with a cold, and hang
over a dunghill, as if it were a bed of roses, or swallow the most
detestable dishes with the greatest relish. The nerve of their
sensibility is bound up at the point of pain. A Frenchman (as far as I
can find) has no idea answering to the word _nasty_; or if he has,
feels a predilection for, instead of an aversion to, it. So in morals
they bid fair to be the _Sybarites_ of the modern world. They make the
best of every thing (which is a virtue)—and treat the worst with
levity or complaisance (which is a vice). They harbour no antipathies.
They would swallow Gil Blas’s supper as a luxury, and boast of it
afterwards as a feat. Their moral system is not sustained by the two
opposite principles of attraction and repulsion, for they are shocked
at nothing: what excites horror or disgust in other minds, they
consider as a _bagatelle_; it is resolved into an abstraction of
agreeable sensations, a source of amusement. There is an oil of
self-complacency in their constitutions, which takes the sting out of
evil, and neutralizes the poison of corruption. They, therefore, can
commit atrocities with impunity, and wallow in disgrace without a
blush, as no other people can. There is Monsieur Chateaubriand, for
instance. Who would not suppose that the very echo of his own name
would hoot him out of the world? So far from it, his pamphlet _On the
Censorship_ has just come to a third edition, and is stuck all over
Paris!

Footnote 13:

This is not correct; there is no foot-path in France, but there is a
side-path, claiming, I presume, the same privileges.

Footnote 14:

‘There is nothing which an Englishman enjoys so much as the pleasure
of sulkiness.’—_Edinburgh Review_, No. 80.

Footnote 15:

We may trace something of their national origin in both their minds.
In Claude there is the French _finicalness_, and love of minute
details; but there is a _fusion_ of all these into the most perfect
harmony from the influence of a southern sky, and he has none of the
flimsiness or littleness of effect, to which his countrymen are prone.
Again, it cannot be denied that there is a certain setness and
formality, a _didactic_ or prosing vein in Nicolas Poussin’s
compositions. He proceeds on system, has a deliberate purpose to make
out, and is often laboured, monotonous, and extravagant. His pictures
are the finest subjects in the world for French criticism—to point the
moral, or detach an episode. He is somewhat pedantic and
over-significant, in the manner of French orators and poets. He had,
like his countrymen, no great eye for nature or truth of expression;
but he had what they chiefly want—_imagination_, or the power of
placing himself in the circumstances of others. Poussin, in fact, held
a middle place between Raphael and other painters of the Italian
school, who have embodied the highest poetry of expression, and the
common run of French artists, whose utmost stretch of invention
reaches no farther than correctness in the costume and chronology of
their subject.

Footnote 16:

It is at Florence.

Footnote 17:

Is not a monkey grave when it is doing nothing, or when it is not
employed in mischief?

Footnote 18:

The French phrase for _being present at a play_ is, to _assist at it_.
It must be owned that there is some appearance of truth in the
expression.

Footnote 19:

Inventor of the Diorama.

Footnote 20:

It is the same idle, inveterate self-complacency, the same limited
comprehension, that has been their ruin in every thing. Parisian
_exquisites_ could not conceive that it snowed in Russia, nor how it
was possible for barbarians to _bivouac_ in the Champs Elysées. But
they have forgotten the circumstance altogether. Why should I remind
them of it?

Footnote 21:

French pictures, to be thoroughly and unexceptionably good, ought to
be _translated_ back again into sculpture, from which they are
originally taken.

Footnote 22:

Yet they tax Shakspeare with grossness and barbarity. There is nothing
like this scene in all his plays, except Titus Andronicus, which is
full of the same tragic exaggeration and tautology. I was walking out
(this 1st of October—a clear grey autumnal morning) in the gardens of
the Tuileries, and seeing the long, tall avenue of trees before me
that leads up to the barrier of Neuilly, it put me in mind of former
times, of prints and pictures of the scenery and roads in foreign
countries which I had been used to from a child, with the
old-fashioned look of every thing around Paris, as if it were the year
1724, instead of 1824, till the view before me seemed to become part
of a dream, or to transport me into past time, or to raise itself up
in my imagination, like a picture in the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’ I
wondered whether Buonaparte sometimes thought of this view when he was
at St. Helena. I checked myself in this strain of speculation as
overcharged and disproportioned to the occasion, according to the
correct and elegant taste of the people where I was, when on a post
opposite, I saw stuck up in large letters, ‘_Pension de l’Univers_,’
meaning a tenpenny ordinary. These are the people that are continually
crying out against the extravagance and bombast of their neighbours.
Their imagination runs to the ends of the universe, when it has
nothing but words to carry—no people so magnificent, so prodigal of
professions, so hyperbolical as they—add but meaning or a weight of
feeling to them, and they complain bitterly of the load, and throw it
off as barbarous, intolerable, Gothic, and uncouth. It is not the
extravagance of the style, then, with which they quarrel, but the
palpableness of the imagery which gives a blow to their slender
intellectual _stamina_, or the accumulation of feeling about it with
which they have not firmness or comprehension to grapple. ‘Dip it in
the ocean, and it will stand’—says Sterne’s barber of the buckle of
his wig. They magnify trifles, _con amore_; it is only when a poor
struggling attempt is to be made to gain relief from the ‘perilous
stuff that weighs upon the heart,’ or to embody the swelling
conceptions of the soul in remote and lofty images, that they shrink
back with the timidity of women and the formality of pedants.

Footnote 23:

The _Orpheus and Eurydice_ of Drölling is a performance of great
merit. The females, floating in the air before Orpheus, are pale as
lilies, and beautiful in death. But he need hardly despair, or run
wild as he does. He may easily overtake them; and as to vanishing,
they have no appearance of it. Their figures are quite solid and
determined in their outline.

Footnote 24:

See the admirably-drawn, but painful scene in Evelina between Captain
Mervin and Monsieur Dubois.

Footnote 25:

A French dwarf, exhibited in London some years ago, and who had the
misfortune to be born a mere trunk, grew enraged at the mention of
another dwarf as a rival in bodily imperfection, and after insisting
that the other had both hands and feet, exclaimed emphatically, ‘Mais
moi, je suis unique.’ My old acquaintance (Dr. Stoddart) used formerly
to recount this trait of French character very triumphantly, but then
it was in war-time. He may think it indecent to have here hinted any
such thing of an individual of a nation with whom we are at peace. At
present, he seems to have become a sort of portent and by-word himself
among English politicians; and without head or heart may
exclaim—‘_Mais moi, je suis unique!_‘—See his late articles on the
Spanish Refugees, &c. Would such a man have been any better, had he
never turned renegade, or had he become (his first ambition) a
revolutionary leader? Would he not have been as blood-thirsty, as
bigoted, as perverse and ridiculous on the side of the question he
left, as on the one he has come over to? It imports little what men
are, so long as they are _themselves_. The great misfortune of a
certain class of persons (both for their own sake and that of others)
is ever to have been born or heard of!

Footnote 26:

I remember being once much amused with meeting, in a hot dusty day,
between Blenheim and Oxford, some strolling Italians with a troop of
dancing dogs, and a monkey in _costume_ mounted on the back of one of
them. He rode _en cavalier_, and kept his countenance with great
gravity and decorum, and turned round with a certain look of surprise
and resentment, that I, a foot-passenger, should seem to question his
right to go on horseback. This seemed to me a fine piece of practical
satire in the manner of Swift.

Footnote 27:

Mr. Wordsworth, in some fine lines, reproaches the French with having
‘no single volume paramount, no master-spirit’—

‘But equally a want of books and men.’

I wish he would shew any single author that exercises such a
‘paramount’ influence over the minds of the English, as four or five
‘master-spirits’ do on those of the French. The merit is not here the
question, but the effect produced. He himself is not a very striking
example of the sanguine enthusiasm with which his countrymen identify
themselves with works of great and original genius!

Footnote 28:

The same circumstance literally happened to Gibbon, though from a
different cause. He fell on his knees before a Swiss lady (I think a
Mademoiselle d’Ivernois,) and was so fat he could not rise. She left
him in this posture, and sent in a servant to help him up.

Footnote 29:

The fronts of the houses and of many of the finest buildings seem (so
to speak) to have been composed in mud, and translated into stone—so
little projection, relief, or airiness have they. They have a look of
being _stuck_ together.

Footnote 30:

They are as different as Mr. Moore’s verses and an epic poem.

Footnote 31:

The French physiognomy is like a telegraphic machine, ready to shift
and form new combinations every moment. It is commonly too light and
variable for repose; it is careless, indifferent, but not sunk in
indolence, nor wedded to ease: as on the other hand, it is restless,
rapid, extravagant, without depth or force. Is it not the same with
their feelings, which are alike incapable of a habit of quiescence, or
of persevering action or passion? It seems so to me. Their freedom
from any tendency to drunkenness, to indulge in its dreamy stupor, or
give way to its incorrigible excesses, confirms by analogy the general
view of their character. I do not bring this as an accusation against
them, I ask if it is not the fact; and if it will not account for many
things observable in them, good, bad, and indifferent? In a word,
mobility without _momentum_ solves the whole riddle of the French
character.

Footnote 32:

Lord Byron has merely taken up the common cant of connoisseurship,
inflating it with hyperbolical and far-fetched eulogies of his own—not
perceiving that the Apollo was somewhat of a coxcomb, the Venus
somewhat insipid, and that the expression in the Laocoon is more of
physical than of mental agony. The faces of the boys are, however,
superlatively fine. They are convulsed with pain, yet fraught with
feeling. He has made a better hit in interpreting the downcast look of
the _Dying Gladiator_, as denoting his insensibility to the noise and
bustle around him:—

‘He heard it, but he heeded not—his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He reck’d not of the life he lost, nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
_There_ were his young barbarians all at play,
_There_ was their Dacian mother—he, their sire,
Butcher’d to make a Roman holyday—
All this rush’d with his blood—shall he expire
And unaveng’d?—Arise! ye Goths and glut your ire!’

Footnote 33:

Why do the French confound the words _exhibition_ and _exposure_? One
of which expresses what is creditable, and the other what is
disgraceful. Is it that the sense of vanity absorbs every other
consideration, turning the sense of shame, in case of exposure, into a
source of triumph, and the conscious tingling feeling of ostentation
in a display of talent into a flagrant impropriety? I do not lay much
stress on this word-catching, which is a favourite mode of German
criticism. We say, for instance, indiscriminately, that ‘a thing
_redounds_ to our credit or our disgrace.’

Footnote 34:

It were to be wished that the French sculptors would come over and
look at the Elgin Marbles, as they are arranged with great care and
some pomp in the British Museum. They may smile to see that we are
willing to remove works of art from their original places of abode,
though we will not allow others to do so. These noble fragments of
antiquity might startle our fastidious neighbours a little at first
from their rude state and their simplicity, but I think they would
gain upon them by degrees, and convince their understandings, if they
did not subdue their affections. They are indeed an equally
instructive lesson and unanswerable rebuke to them and to us—to them
for thinking that finishing every part _alike_ is perfection, and to
us who imagine that to leave every part alike unfinished is grandeur.
They are as remote from finicalness as grossness, and combine the
parts with the whole in the manner that nature does. Every part is
given, but not ostentatiously, and only as it would appear in the
circumstances. There is an alternate action and repose. If one muscle
is strained, another is proportionably relaxed. If one limb is in
action and another at rest, they come under a different law, and the
muscles are not brought out nor the skin tightened in the one as in
the other. There is a flexibility and sway of the limbs and of the
whole body. The flesh has the softness and texture of flesh, not the
smoothness or stiffness of stone. There is an undulation and a liquid
flow on the surface, as the breath of genius moved the mighty mass:
they are the finest forms in the most striking attitudes, and with
every thing in its place, proportion, and degree, uniting the ease,
truth, force, and delicacy of Nature. They shew nothing but the
artist’s thorough comprehension of, and entire docility to that great
teacher. There is no _petit-maitreship_, no pedantry, no attempt at a
display of science, or at forcing the parts into an artificial
symmetry, but it is like cutting a human body out of a block of
marble, and leaving it to act for itself with all the same springs,
levers, and internal machinery. It was said of Shakspeare’s dramas,
that they were the _logic of passion_; and it may be affirmed of the
Elgin Marbles, that they are the _logic of form_.—One part being
given, another cannot be otherwise than it is. There is a mutual
understanding and re-action throughout the whole frame. The Apollo and
other antiques are not equally simple and severe. The limbs have too
much an appearance of being cased in marble, of making a display of
every recondite beauty, and of balancing and answering to one another,
like the rhymes in verse. The Elgin Marbles are harmonious, flowing,
varied prose. In a word, they are like casts after the finest nature.
Any cast from nature, however inferior, is in the same style. Let the
French and English sculptors make casts continually. The one will see
in them the parts everywhere given—the other will see them everywhere
given in subordination to, and as forming materials for a whole.

Footnote 35:

For some account of Madame Pasta’s acting in _Nina_, I take the
liberty to refer to a volume of TABLE-TALK, just published.

Footnote 36:

At Milan, a short time ago, a gentleman had a Homer, in Greek and
Latin, among his books. He was surlily asked to explain what it meant.
Upon doing so, the Inspector shook his head doubtingly, and said, ‘it
might pass this time,’ but advised him to beware of a second. ‘Here,
now, is a work,’ he continued, pointing to ——’s Lives of the Popes,
containing all the abominations (public and private) of their history,
‘You should bring such books as this with you!’ This is one specimen
of that learned conspiracy for the suppression of light and letters,
of which we are sleeping partners and honorary associates. The Allies
complain at present of Mr. Canning’s ‘faithlessness.’ Oh! that he
would indeed play them false and earn his title of ‘slippery George!’
Faithful to anything he cannot be—faithless to them would be
something. The Austrians, it is said, have lately attempted to strike
the name of Italy out of the maps, that that country may neither have
a name, a body, or a soul left to it, and even to suppress the
publication of its finest historians, that it may forget it ever had
one. Go on, obliging creatures! Blot the light out of heaven, tarnish
the blue sky with the blight and fog of despotism, deface and trample
on the green earth; for while one trace of what is fair or lovely is
left in the earth under our feet, or the sky over our heads, or in the
mind of man that is within us, it will remain to mock your impotence
and deformity, and to reflect back lasting hatred and contempt upon
you. Why does not our Eton scholar, our classic Statesman, suggest to
the Allies an intelligible hint of the propriety of inscribing the
name of Italy once more on the map,

‘Like that ensanguined flower inscribed with woe’—

of taking off the prohibition on the Histories of Guicciardini and
Davila? Or why do not the English people—the English House of Commons,
suggest it to him? Is there such a thing as the English people—as an
English House of Commons? Their influence is not felt at present in
Europe, as erst it was, to its short-lived hope, bought with flat
despair. The reason is, the cause of the people of Europe has no echo
in the breasts of the British public. The cause of Kings had an echo
in the breast of a British Monarch—that of Foreign Governments in the
breasts of British Ministers! There are at present no fewer than
fifteen hundred of the Italian nobility of the first families
proscribed from their country, or pining in dungeons. For what? For
trying to give to their country independence and a Constitutional
Government, like England! What says the English House of Lords to
that? What if the Russians were to come and apply to us and to them
the benefits and the principles of the Holy Alliance—the bayonet and
the thumbscrew? Lord Bathurst says, ‘Let them come;’—and they will
come when we have a servile people, dead to liberty, and an arbitrary
government, hating and ready to betray it!

Footnote 37:

Why have they such quantities of looking-glasses in Italy, and none in
Scotland? The dirt in each country is equal; the finery not. Neither
in Scotland do they call in the aid of the Fine Arts, of the
upholsterer and tapissier, to multiply the images of the former in
squalid decorations, and thus shew that the debasement is moral as
well as physical. They write up on certain parts of Rome ‘Immondizia.’
A Florentine asked why it was not written on the gates of Rome? An
Englishman might be tempted to ask, why it is not written on the gates
of Calais, to serve for the rest of the Continent? If the people and
houses in Italy are as dirty or dirtier than in France, the streets
and towns are kept in infinitely better order.

Footnote 38:

See _Westminster Review_.

Footnote 39:

They tell a story in Paris of a monkey at the Jardin des Plantes, that
was noted for its mischievous tricks and desire to fly at every one.
Dr. Gall observed the organ of philanthropy particularly strong in the
beast, and desired the keeper to let him loose, when he sprung upon
the Doctor, and hugged him round the neck with the greatest
_bon-hommie_ and cordiality, to the astonishment of the keeper and the
triumph of craniology! Some men are as troublesome as some animals
with their demonstrations of benevolence.

Footnote 40:

He was confined in the Inquisition about six weeks, where it is
supposed he was put to the torture; for he had strange pains in his
limbs, and bodily disabilities afterwards. In the Museum here is at
present preserved, in a glass-case, a finger of Galileo, pointing to
the skies! Such is the history of philosophy and superstition.

Footnote 41:

The jewellers’ shops on the bridge, in one of which he was brought up,
still remain. The Rape of the Sabines, by John of Bologna, near
Benvenuto’s Perseus, is an admirable group: nothing can exceed the
fleshiness and softened contours of the female figure, seen in every
direction.

Footnote 42:

See his Memoirs of himself, lately re-translated by Thomas Roscoe,
Esq.

Footnote 43:

Excellent tea is to be had at Rome at an Italian shop at the corner of
the Via Condotti, in the Piazza di Spagna.

Footnote 44:

We have five names unrivalled in modern times and in their different
ways:—Newton, Locke, Bacon, Shakspeare, and Milton—and if to these we
were to add a sixth that could not be questioned in his line, perhaps
it would be Hogarth. Our wit is the effect not of gaiety, but
spleen—the last result of a pertinacious _reductio ad absurdum_. Our
greatest wits have been our gravest men. Fielding seems to have
produced his _History of a Foundling_ with the same deliberation and
forethought that Arkwright did his spinning-jenny. The French have no
poetry; that is, no combination of internal feeling with external
imagery. Their dramatic dialogue is frothy verbiage or a mucilage of
sentiment without natural bones or substance: ours constantly clings
to the concrete, and has a _purchase_ upon matter. Outward objects
interfere with and extinguish the flame of their imagination: with us
they are the fuel that kindle it into a brighter and stronger blaze.

Footnote 45:

A Mr. Law lately came over from America to horsewhip the writer of an
article in the _Quarterly_, reflecting on his mother (Mrs. Law) as a
woman of bad character, for the Tory reason that she was the wife of a
Mr. Law, who differed with his brother (Lord Ellenborough) in
politics. He called on Mr. Barrow, who knew nothing of the writer; he
called on Mr. Gifford, who knew nothing of the writer; he called on
Mr. Murray, who looked oddly, but he could get no redress except a
public disavowal of the falsehood; and they took that opportunity to
retract some other American calumny. Mr. L. called on one Secretary of
the Admiralty, but there are two Secretaries of the Admiralty!

Footnote 46:

Chief Justice Holt used to say, ‘there were more robberies committed
in England than in Scotland, _because we had better hearts_.’ The
English are at all times disposed to interpret this literally.

Footnote 47:

See even the Ananias, Elymas, and others, which might be thought
exceptions.

Footnote 48:

The girls who work in the vineyards, are paid three batz a day.

Footnote 49:

Since my return I have put myself on a regimen of brown bread, beef,
and tea, and have thus defeated the systematic conspiracy carried on
against weak digestions. To those accustomed to, and who can indulge
in foreign luxuries, this list will seem far from satisfactory.

Footnote 50:

I believe this rule will apply to all except grotesques, which are
evidently taken from opposite natures.

Footnote 51:

Some one finely applied to the repose of this figure the words:

‘——Sedet, in æternumque sedebit,
Infelix Theseus.’

Footnote 52:

By Mr. Coleridge.

Footnote 53:

The oil-pictures attributed to Michael Angelo are meagre and pitiful;
such as that of the Fates at Florence. Another of Witches, at Cardinal
Fesch’s at Rome, is like what the late Mr. Barry would have admired
and imitated—dingy, coarse, and vacant.

Footnote 54:

See an admirable Essay on the genius of Hogarth, by Charles Lamb, in a
periodical work, called _The Reflector_.

Footnote 55:

This painter’s book of studies from nature, commonly called _Liber
Veritatis_, disproves the truth of the general opinion that his
landscapes are mere artificial compositions for the finished pictures
are nearly fac-similes of the original sketches.

Footnote 56: