Chapter XI: Front Matter (11)

‘The history of our Exhibitions affords itself the strongest evidence of their impressive effect upon public taste. At their commencement, though men of enlightened minds could distinguish and appreciate what was excellent, the admiration of the _many_ was confined to subjects either gross or puerile, and commonly to the meanest efforts of intellect; whereas, at this time, the whole train of subjects most popular in the earlier exhibitions have disappeared. The loaf and cheese, that could provoke hunger, the cat and canary-bird, and the dead mackarel on a deal board, have long ceased to produce astonishment and delight; while truth of imitation now finds innumerable admirers, though combined with the high qualities of beauty, grandeur, and taste.

‘To our Public Exhibitions, and to arrangements that followed in consequence of their introduction, this change must be chiefly attributed. _The present generation appears to be composed of a new, and at least, with respect to the arts, a superior order of beings._ Generally speaking, their thoughts, their feelings, and language on these subjects differ entirely from what they were sixty years ago. No just opinions were at that time entertained on the merits of ingenious productions of this kind. The state of the public mind, incapable of discriminating excellence from inferiority, proved incontrovertibly that a right sense of art in the spectator can only be acquired by long and frequent observation; and that, without proper opportunities to improve the mind and the eye, a nation would continue insensible of the true value of the fine arts.

‘The first or probationary Exhibition, which opened April 21st, 1760, was at a large room in the Strand, belonging to the society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, which had then been instituted five or six years. It is natural to conclude, that the first artist in the country was not indifferent to the success of a plan which promised to be so extensively useful. Accordingly, four of his pictures were for the first time here placed before the public, with whom, by the channel now opened, he continued in constant intercourse as long as he lived.

‘Encouraged by the successful issue of the first experiment, the _artistical body_ determined that it should be repeated the following year. Owing, however, to some inconveniences experienced at their former place of exhibition, and also to a desire to be perfectly independent in their proceedings, they engaged, for their next public display, a spacious room near the Spring Gardens’ entrance into the Park; at which place the second Exhibition opened, May 9th, 1761. Here Reynolds sent his fine picture of Lord Ligonier on horseback, a portrait of the Rev. Laurence Sterne, and three others....

‘The artists had now fully proved the efficacy of their plan; and their income exceeding their expenditure, affording a reasonable hope of a permanent establishment, they thought they might solicit a Royal Charter of Incorporation; and having applied to his Majesty for that purpose, he was pleased to accede to their request. This measure, however, which was intended to consolidate the body of artists, was of no avail: on the contrary, it was probably the cause of its dissolution; for in less than four years a separation took place, which led to the establishment of the Royal Academy, and finally to the extinction of the incorporated Society. The charter was dated January 26th, 1765; the secession took place in October, 1768; and the Royal Academy was instituted December 10th in the same year.’ p. 53.

On this statement we must be allowed to make a few remarks. First, the four greatest names in English art, Hogarth, Reynolds, Wilson[12] and West, were not formed by the Academy, but were formed before it; and the first gave it as his opinion, that it would be a death-blow to the art. He considered an Academy as a school for servile mediocrity, a hotbed for cabal and dirty competition, and a vehicle for the display of idle pretensions and empty parade.

Secondly, we agree with the writer as to the deplorable state of the art and of the public taste in general, which, at the period in question, was as gross as it was insipid: but we do not think that it has been improved so much since, as Mr. Farington is willing to suppose; nor that the Academy has taken more than _half-measures_ for improving or refining it.

‘They found it poor at first, and kept it so.’

They have attended to their own interests, and flattered their customers, while they have neglected or cajoled the public. They may indeed look back with triumph and pity to ‘the cat and canary-bird, the dead mackarel and Deal board;’ but they seem to rest satisfied with this conquest over themselves, and, ‘leaving the things that are behind, have not pressed forward (with equal ardour) to the things that are before.’ Theirs is a very moderate, not a Radical Reform in this respect. We do _not_ find, even in the latest Exhibitions at Somerset House, ‘innumerable examples of truth of imitation, combined with the high qualities of beauty, grandeur, and taste.’ The mass of the pictures exhibited there are _not_ calculated to give the English people a true notion, not merely of high art (as it is emphatically called), but of the genuine objects of art at all. We do not believe—to take a plain test of the progress we have made—that nine-tenths of the persons who go there annually, and who go through the Catalogue regularly, would know a Guido from a daub—the finest picture from one not badly executed perhaps, but done in the worst taste, and on the falsest principles. The vast majority of the pictures received there, and hung up in the most conspicuous places, are pictures painted to please the natural vanity or fantastic ignorance of the artist’s sitters, their friends and relations, and to lead to more commissions for half and whole lengths—or else pictures painted purposely to be seen in the Exhibition, to strike across the Great Room, to catch attention, and force admiration, in the distraction and dissipation of a thousand foolish faces and new-gilt frames, by gaudy colouring and meretricious grace. We appeal to any man of judgment, whether this is not a brief, but true summary, of ‘the annual show’ at the Royal Academy? And is this the way to advance the interests of art, or to fashion the public taste? There is not one head in ten painted as a study from nature, or with a view to bring out the real qualities of the mind or countenance. If there is any such improvident example of unfashionable sincerity, it is put out of countenance by the prevailing tone of _rouged_ and smiling folly, and affectation all around it.

The only pictures painted in any quantity as studies from nature, free from the glosses of sordid art and the tincture of vanity, are _portraits of places_; and it cannot be denied that there are many of these that have a true and powerful look of nature: but then, as if this was a matter of great indifference, and nobody’s business to see to, they are seldom anything more than bare sketches, hastily got up for the chance of a purchaser, and left unfinished to save time and trouble. They are not, in general, lofty conceptions or selections of beautiful scenery, but mere common out-of-door views, relying for their value on their literal fidelity; and where, consequently, the exact truth and perfect identity of the imitation is the more indispensable.—Our own countryman, Wilkie, in scenes of domestic and familiar life, is equally deserving of praise for the arrangement of his subjects, and care in the execution: but we have to lament that he too is in some degree chargeable with that fickleness and desultoriness in the pursuit of excellence, which we have noticed above as incident to our native artists, and which, we think, has kept him stationary, instead of being progressive, for some years past. He appeared at one time as if he was near touching the point of perfection in his peculiar department; and he _may_ do it yet! But how small a part do his works form of the Exhibition, and how unlike all the rest!

It was the panic-fear that all this daubing and varnishing would be seen through, and the scales fall off from the eyes of the public, in consequence of the exhibition of some of the finest specimens of the Old Masters at the British Institution, that called into clandestine notoriety that disgraceful production, the _Catalogue Raisonné_. The concealed authors of that work conceived, that a discerning public would learn more of the art from the simplicity, dignity, force and truth, of these admired and lasting models, in a short season or two, than they had done from the Exhibitions of the Royal Academy for the last fifty years: that they would see that it did not consist entirely in tints and varnishes and megilps and washes for the skin, but that all the effects of colour, and charms of expression, might be united with purity of tone, with articulate forms, and exquisite finishing. They saw this conviction rapidly taking place in the public mind, and they shrunk back from it ‘with jealous leer malign.’ They persuaded themselves, and had the courage to try to persuade others, that to exhibit approved specimens of art in general, selected from the works of the most famous and accomplished masters, was to destroy the germ of native art; was cruelly to strangle the growing taste and enthusiasm of the public for art in its very birth; was to blight the well-earned reputation, and strike at the honest livelihood of the liberal professors of the school of painting in England. They therefore set to work to decry these productions as worthless and odious in the sight of the true adept: they smeared over, with every epithet of low abuse, works and names sacred to fame, and to generations to come: they spared no pains to heap ridicule and obloquy on those who had brought these works forward: they did every thing to disgust and blind the public to their excellence, by showing in themselves a hatred and a loathing of all high excellence, and of all established reputation in art, in which their paltry vanity and mercenary spite were not concerned. They proved, beyond all contradiction, that to keep back the taste of the town, and the knowledge of the student, to the point to which _the Academy_ had found it practicable to conduct it by its example, was the object of a powerful and active party of professional intriguers in this country. If the Academy had any hand, directly or indirectly, in this unprincipled outrage upon taste and decency, they ought to be disfranchised (like Grampound) to-morrow, as utterly unworthy of the trust reposed in them.

The alarm indeed (in one sense) was not unfounded: for many persons who had long been dazzled, not illumined, by the glare of the most modern and fashionable productions, began to open their eyes to the beauties and loveliness of painting, and to see reflected there as in a mirror those hues, those expressions, those transient and heavenly glances of nature, which had often charmed their own minds, but of which they could find the traces nowhere else, and became true worshippers at the shrine of genuine art. Whether this taste will spread beyond the immediate gratification of the moment, or stimulate the rising generation to new efforts, and to the adoption of a new and purer style, is another question; with regard to which, for reasons above explained, we are not very sanguine.

We have a great respect for _high_ art, and an anxiety for its advancement and cultivation; but we have a greater still for the advancement and encouragement of _true_ art. That is the first, and the last step. The knowledge of what is contained in nature is the only foundation of legitimate art; and the perception of beauty and power, in whatever objects or in whatever degree they subsist, is the test of real genius. The principle is the same in painting an archangel’s or a butterfly’s wing; and the very finest picture in the finest collection may be one of a very common subject. We speak and think of Rembrandt as Rembrandt, of Raphael as Raphael, not of the one as a portrait, of the other as a history painter. Portrait may become history, or history portrait, as the one or the other gives the soul or the mask of the face. ‘_That_ is true history,’ said an eminent critic, on seeing Titian’s picture of Pope Julius II. and his two nephews. He who should set down Claude as a mere landscape painter, must know nothing of what Claude was in himself; and those who class Hogarth as a painter of low life, only show their ignorance of human nature. High art does not consist in high or epic subjects, but in the manner of treating those subjects; and that manner among us, as far as we have proceeded, has we think been false and exceptionable. We appeal from the common cant on this subject to the Elgin marbles. They are high art, confessedly: But they are also true art, in our sense of the word. They do not deviate from truth and nature in order to arrive at a fancied superiority to truth and nature. They do not represent a vapid abstraction, but the entire, undoubted, concrete object they profess to imitate. They are like casts of the finest living forms in the world, taken in momentary action. They are nothing more: and therefore certain great critics who had been educated in the ideal school of art, think nothing of them. They do not conform to a vague, unmeaning standard, made out of the fastidious likings or dislikings of the artist; they are carved out of the living, imperishable forms of nature, as the marble of which they are composed was hewn from its native rock. They contain the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We cannot say so much of the general style of history-painting in this country, which has proceeded, as a first principle, on the determined and deliberate dereliction of living nature, both as means and end. Grandeur was made to depend on leaving out the details. Ideal grace and beauty were made to consist in neutral forms, and character and expression. The first could produce nothing but slovenliness; the second nothing but insipidity. The Elgin marbles have proved, by oracular demonstration, that the utmost freedom and grandeur of style is compatible with the minutest details,—the variety of the subordinate parts not destroying the masses in the productions of art more than in those of nature. Grandeur without softness and precision, is only another name for grossness. These invaluable fragments of antiquity have also proved, beyond dispute, that ideal beauty and historic truth do not consist in middle or _average_ forms, &c. but in harmonious outlines, in unity of action, and in the utmost refinement of character and expression. We there see art following close in the footsteps of nature, and exalted, raised, refined with it to the utmost extent that either was capable of. With us, all this has been reversed; and we have discarded nature at first, only to flounder about, and be lost in a Limbo of Vanity. With them invention rose from the ground of imitation: with us, the boldness of the invention was acknowledged in proportion as no traces of imitation were discoverable. Our greatest and most successful candidates in the epic walk of art, have been those who founded their pretensions to be history-painters on their not being portrait-painters. They could not paint that which they had seen, and therefore they must be qualified to paint that which they had not seen. There was not any one part of any one of their pictures good for any thing; and therefore the whole was grand, and an example of lofty art! There was not, in all probability, a single head in an acre of canvas, that, taken by itself, was more than a worthless daub, scarcely fit to be hung up as a sign at an alehouse door: But a hundred of these bad portraits or wretched caricatures, made, by numerical addition, an admirable historical picture! The faces, hands, eyes, feet, had neither beauty nor expression, nor drawing, nor colouring; and yet the composition and arrangement of these abortive and crude materials, which might as well or better have been left blanks, displayed the mind of the great master. Not one tone, one line, one look for the eye to dwell upon with pure and intense delight, in all this endless scope of subject and field of canvas.

We cannot say that we in general like very large pictures; for this reason, that, like overgrown men, they are apt to be bullies and cowards. They profess a great deal, and perform little. They are often a contrivance not to display magnificent conceptions to the greatest advantage, but to throw the spectator to a distance, where it is impossible to distinguish either gross faults or real beauties.

The late Mr. West’s pictures were admirable for the composition and grouping. In these respects they could not be better: as we see in the print of the death of General Wolfe: but for the rest, he might as well have set up a parcel of figures in wood, and painted them over with a sign-post brush, and then copied what he saw, and it would have been just as good. His skill in drawing was confined to a knowledge of mechanical proportions and measurements, and was not guided in the line of beauty, or employed to give force to expression. He, however, laboured long and diligently to advance the interests of art in this his adopted country; and if he did not do more, it was the fault of the coldness and formality of his genius, not of the man.—Barry was another instance of those who scorn nature, and are scorned by her. He could not make a likeness of any one object in the universe: when he attempted it, he was like a drunken man on horseback; his eye reeled, his hand refused its office,—and accordingly he set up for an example of _the great style_ in art, which, like charity, covers all other defects. It would be unfair at the same time to deny, that some of the figures and groupes in his pictures of the Olympic Games in the Adelphi, are beautiful designs after the antique, as far as outline is concerned. In colour and expression they are like wild Indians. The other pictures of his there, are not worthy of notice; except as warnings to the misguided student who would scale the high and abstracted steep of art, without following the path of nature. Yet Barry was a man of genius, and an enthusiastic lover of his art. But he unfortunately mistook his ardent aspiration after excellence for the power to achieve it; assumed the capacity to execute the greatest works instead of acquiring it; supposed that ‘the bodiless creations of his brain’ were to start out from the walls of the Adelphi like a dream or a fairy tale;—and the result has been, that all the splendid illusions of his undigested ambition have, ‘like the baseless fabric of a vision, left not a wreck behind.’ His name is not a light or beacon, but a by-word and an ill omen in art. What he has left behind him in writing on the subject, contains much real feeling and interesting thought.—Mr. Fuseli is another distinguished artist who complains that nature puts him out. But _his_ distortions and vagaries are German, and not English: they lie like a night-mare on the breast of our native art. They are too recondite, obscure, and extravagant for us: we only want to get over the ground with large, clumsy strides, as fast as we can; and do not go out of our way in search of absurdity. We cannot consider his genius as naturalized among us, after the lapse of more than half a century: and if in saying this we do not pay him a compliment, we certainly do not intend it as a very severe censure. Mr. Fuseli has wit and words at will; and, though he had never touched a pencil, would be a man of extraordinary pretensions and talents.

Mr. Haydon is a young artist of great promise, and much ardour and energy; and has lately painted a picture which has carried away universal admiration. Without wishing to detract from that tribute of deserved applause, we may be allowed to suggest (and with no unfriendly voice) that he has there, in our judgment, laid in the groundwork, and raised the scaffolding, of a noble picture; but no more. There is spirit, conception, force, and effect: but all this is done by the first going over of the canvas. It is the foundation, not the superstructure of a first-rate work of art. It is a rude outline, a striking and masterly sketch.

Milton has given us a description of the growth of a plant—

——‘So from the root
Springs lighter the green stalk; from thence the leaves
More airy; last the bright consummate flower.’

And we think this image might be transferred to the slow and perfect growth of works of imagination. We have in the present instance the rough materials, the solid substance and the glowing spirit of art; and only want the last finishing and patient working up. Does Mr. Haydon think this too much to bestow on works designed to breathe the air of immortality, and to shed the fragrance of thought on a distant age? Does he regard it as beneath him to do what Raphael has done? We repeat it, here are bold contrasts, distinct grouping, a vigorous hand and striking conceptions. What remains then, but that he should add to bold contrasts fine gradations,—to masculine drawing nice inflections,—to vigorous pencilling those softened and trembling hues which hover like air on the canvas,—to massy and prominent grouping the exquisite finishing of every face and figure, nerve and artery, so as to have each part instinct with life and thought and sentiment, and to produce an impression in the spectator not only that he can touch the actual substance, but that it would shrink from the touch? In a word, Mr. Haydon has strength: we would wish him to add to it refinement. Till he does this, he will not remove the common stigma on British art. Nor do we ask impossibilities of him: we only ask him to make that a leading principle in his pictures, which he has followed so happily in parts. Let him take his own Penitent Girl as a model,—paint up to this standard through all the rest of the figures, and we shall be satisfied. His Christ in the present picture we do not like, though in this we have no less an authority against us than Mrs. Siddons. Mr. Haydon has gone at much length into a description of his _idea_ of this figure in the Catalogue, which is a practice we disapprove: for it deceives the artist himself, and may mislead the public. In the idea he conveys to us from the canvas, there can be no deception. Mr. Haydon is a devoted admirer of the Elgin marbles; and he has taken advantage of their breadth and size and masses. We would urge him to follow them also into their details, their involved graces, the texture of the skin, the indication of a vein or muscle, the waving line of beauty, their calm and motionless expression; into all, in which they follow nature. But to do this, he must go to nature and study her more and more, in the greatest and the smallest things. In short, we wish to see this artist paint a picture (he has now every motive to exertion and improvement) which shall not only have a striking and imposing effect in the aggregate, but where the impression of the whole shall be the joint and irresistible effect of the value of every part. This is our notion of fine art, which we offer to him, not by way of disparagement or discouragement, but to do our best to promote the cause of truth and the emulation of the highest excellence.

We had quite forgotten the chief object of Mr. Farington’s book, Sir Joshua’s dispute with the Academy about Mr. Bonomi’s election; and it is too late to return to it now. We think, however, that Sir Joshua was in the right, and the Academy in the wrong; but we must refer those who require our reasons to Mr. Farington’s account; who, though he differs from us in his conclusion, has given the facts too fairly to justify any other opinion. He has also some excellent observations on the increasing respectability of artists in society, from which, and from various other passages of his work, we are inclined to infer that, on subjects not relating to the Academy, he would be a sensible, ingenious, and liberal writer.

THE PERIODICAL PRESS

VOL. XXXVIII.] [_May 1823._

We often hear it asked, _Whether Periodical Criticism is, upon the whole, beneficial to the cause of literature?_ And this question is usually followed up by another, which is thought to settle the first, _Whether Shakespeare could have written as he did, had he lived in the present day?_ We shall not attempt to answer either of these questions: But we will be bold to say, that we have at least one author at present, whose productions spring up free and numberless, in the very hotbed of criticism—a large and living refutation of the chilling and blighting effects of such a neighbourhood. ‘But would not the author of Waverley himself,’ resumes our tritical querist, ‘have written better, if he had not had the fear of the periodical press before his eyes?’ We answer, that he has no fear of the periodical press; and that we do not see how, in any circumstances, he could have written better than he does. ‘But a single exception does not disprove the rule.’ But he is not a single exception. Is there not Lord Byron? Are there not many more?—only that we are too near them to scan the loftiness of their pretensions, or to guess at their unknown duration. Genius carries on an unequal strife with Fame; nor will our bare word (if we durst presume to give it) make the balance even. Time alone can show who are the authors of mortal or immortal mould; and it is the height of wilful impertinence to anticipate its award, and assume, because certain living authors are new, that they never can become old.

Waving, however, any answer to these ingenious questions, we will content ourselves with announcing a truism on the subject, which, like many other truisms, is pregnant with deep thought,—_viz. That periodical criticism is favourable—to periodical criticism_. It contributes to its own improvement—and its cultivation proves not only that it suits the spirit of the times, but advances it. It certainly never flourished more than at present. It never struck its roots so deep, nor spread its branches so widely and luxuriantly. Is not the proposal of this very question a proof of its progressive refinement? And what, it may be asked, can be desired more than to have the perfection of one thing at any one time? If literature in our day has taken this decided turn into a critical channel, is it not a presumptive proof that it ought to do so? Most things find their own level; and so does the mind of man. If there is a preponderance of criticism at any one period, this can only be because there are subjects, and because it is the time for it. We complain that this is a Critical age; and that no great works of Genius appear, because so much is said and written about them; while we ought to reverse the argument, and say, that it is because so many works of genius _have appeared_, that they have left us little or nothing to do, but to think and talk about them—that if we did not do that, we should do nothing so good—and if we do this well, we cannot be said to do amiss!

It has been stated as a kind of anomaly in the history of the Fine Arts, that periods of the highest civilization are not usually distinguished by the greatest works of original genius. But, instead of a remote or doubtful deduction, this, if closely examined, will be found a self-evident proposition. Take the case, for example, of ancient Greece. The time of its greatest splendour, was when its first statues, pictures, temples, tragedies, had been produced, when they existed in the utmost profusion, and the taste for them had become habitual and universal. But the time of the greatest Genius was undoubtedly the time that produced them,—which was necessarily antecedent to the other: So that if we were to wait till the era of the most general refinement, for the production of the highest models of excellence, we should never arrive at them at all; since it is these very models themselves, that, by being generally studied, and diffused through social life, give birth to the last degrees of taste and civilization. When the edifice is raised and finished in all its parts, we have nothing to do but to admire it; and invention gives place to judicious applause, or, according to the temper of the observers, to petty cavils. While the niches are empty, every nerve is strained, every faculty is called into play, to supply them with the masterpieces of skill or fancy: when they are full, the mind reposes on what has been done, or amuses itself by comparing one excellence with another. Hence a masculine boldness and creative vigour is the character of one age, a fastidious and effeminate delicacy that of a succeeding one. This seems to be the order of nature: and why should we repine at it? Why insist on combining all sorts of advantages (even the most opposite) forcibly together; or refuse to cultivate those that we possess, because there are others that we think more highly of, but which are placed out of our reach? ‘We are nothing, if not critical.’ Be it so: but then let us be critical, or we shall be nothing.

The demand for works of original genius, the craving after them, the capacity for inventing them, naturally decay, when we have models of almost every species of excellence already produced to our hands. When this is the case, why call out for more? When art is a blank, then we want genius, enthusiasm, and industry to fill it up: when it is teeming with beauty and strength, then we want an eye to gaze at it, hands to point out its striking features, leisure to luxuriate in, and be enamoured of, its divine spirit. When we have Shakespeare, we do not want more Shakespeares: one Milton, one Pope or Dryden, is enough. Have we not plenty of Raphael’s, of Rubens’s, of Rembrandt’s pictures in the world? _Terra plena nostri laboris_, is almost literally true of them. Who has seen all the fine pictures, or read all the fine poetry, that already exists?—and yet till we have done this, what do we want with more? It is like leaving our own native country unexplored, to travel into foreign lands. Do we not neglect the standard works to hunt after mere novelty? This is not wisdom, but affectation or caprice. Learning becomes, by degrees, an undigested heap, without pleasure or use. We do not see the absolute necessity why another work should be written, or another picture painted, till those that we already have are becoming worm-eaten, or mouldering into decay. We can hardly expect a new harvest till the old crop is off the ground. If we insist on absolute originality in living writers or artists, we should begin by destroying the works of their predecessors. We want another Osmyn to burn and spare not—and then the work of extermination and the work of regeneration would go on kindly together. Are we to learn all that is already known, and, at the same time, to invent more? This would indeed be the ‘large discourse of reason looking before and after.’ Who is there that can boast of having read all the books that have been written, and that are worth reading? Who is there that can read all those with which the modern press teems, and which, did they not daily disappear and turn to dust, the world would not be able to contain them? Are we to blame for despatching the most worthless of these from time to time, or for abridging the process of getting at the marrow of others, and thus leaving the learned at leisure to contemplate the time-hallowed relics, as well as the ephemeral productions, of literature?

To instance in our own language only, is there not many a sterling old author that lies neglected on solitary, unexplored shelves, or tottering bookstalls, unknown to, or passed over by, the idle and the diligent, the republication of which would be the greatest service that could be performed by the modern man of letters? To master the Old English Dramatic Writers, the most esteemed novelists, the good old comedies and periodical works alone, would occupy the leisure of a life devoted to taste and study. If we look at the rise and progress, the maturity and decay, of each of these classes of excellence, we shall find that they were limited in duration, and successive. The deep rich tragic vein of Shakespeare, Webster, Ford, Deckar, Marlow, Beaumont and Fletcher, was discovered and worked out in the time of Elizabeth and the two first Stuarts. All that the heart of man could feel, all that the wit of man could express on the most striking and interesting occasions, had been exhausted by half a dozen great writers, who left little to their successors but pompous turgidity or smooth common-place,—the art of swelling trifles into importance, or taming rough boldness into insipidity. But Comedy rose as Tragedy fell; and, in the age of Charles II. and Queen Anne, Congreve, Wycherley and Vanburgh, were contemporary with Dryden, Lee and Rowe. Otway, it is true, belonged to the same period, a straggler from the veteran corps of tragic writers:—as, in a range of lofty mountains, we generally see one green hill thrown to a distance from the rest, and breaking the abrupt declivity into the level plain. But at each of the periods here spoken of, the Tragic or the Comic Muse was attended by a group of writers such as we can scarcely hope to see again, and such as we have no right to complain of seeing unrivalled, while _they_ are themselves suffered to remain undisturbed in old collections and odd volumes. These probed the follies, as those unveiled the passions, of men: depicted jealousy, rage, ambition, love, madness, affectation, ignorance, conceit, in their most striking forms and picturesque contrasts: took possession of the strongholds, the ‘vantage points of vice or vanity: filled the Stage with the mask of living manners, or ‘the pomp of elder days:’ shook it with laughter, or drowned it with tears—poured out the wine of life, the living spirit of the drama, and left the lees to others. Little could afterwards be made of the subject, except by resorting to inferior branches of it, or to a second-hand imitation. No doubt, nature is exceedingly various; but the capital eminences, the choicest points of view, are limited; and when these have been once seized upon, we must either follow in the steps of others, or turn aside to humbler and less practicable subjects. When the highest places have been occupied, when the happiest strokes have been anticipated, the ambition of the poet flags: without the stimulus of novelty, the rapidity or eagerness of his blows ceases; and as soon as he can avail himself of common-place and conventional artifices, he shrinks from the task of original invention. Or, if he is bent on trying his native strength, and adding to the stock of what has been effected by others, it must be by striking into a new path, and cultivating some neglected plot of ground. So, the Periodical Essayists, Steele and Addison, succeeded to our great Comic Writers, and the Novelists, Fielding, Sterne, Smollett, to these; and each left works superior to any thing of the kind before, and unrivalled in their way by any thing since. Thus genius, like the sun, seems not to rise higher and higher, but from its first dawn to ascend to its meridian, and then decline; and art, like life, may be said to have its stated periods of infancy, manhood, and old age. Alas! the miracles of art stand often like proud monuments in the waste of time. The age of Leo the Tenth is like a rock rising out of the abyss,—with nothing before it, with nothing behind it! As art rose high then, so did it sink low afterwards: and the Vatican overlooks modern Italian art, stagnant, puny, steril, unwholesome, ague-struck, as Rome itself overlooks the marshes of the Campagna. What then? Does not the Vatican remain, the wonder of succeeding ages and surrounding nations? And when it yields (as yield it must) to time’s destructive rage, and its glories crumble into dust, a new Vatican will arise, and other Raphaels and Michael Angelos will breathe the inspiration of genius upon its walls! As fires kindled in the night send their light to a vast distance, so Taste, an emanation from Genius, lingers long after it; and when its mild radiance is extinguished, then comes night and barbarism. Modern art, which took its rise in Italy, was transplanted indeed elsewhere, and flourished in Holland, Spain, and Flanders—it never took root in France, nor has it yet done so in England—but the soil, where it first sprung up, became effete soon after, and has produced scarcely any thing worth naming since.

Not only are literature and art circumscribed by the limits of nature or the mind of man, but each age or nation has a standard of its own, which cannot be trespassed upon with impunity. Tragedy was at its height in France, when it was on the decline with us; but then it was in a totally different style of composition, which could never be successfully naturalized in this country. Popularity can only be insured by the sympathy of the audience with any given mode of representing nature. The English genius excludes sententious and sentimental declamations on the passions; and Shakespeare, were he alive, would be ‘cabin’d, cribbed, confined,’ to say the least, on that very stage where his plays still flourish, by the change of feeling and circumstances. He would not have scope for his fancy: the passion would often seem groundless and overwrought. To produce any thing new and striking at present, it is necessary to shift the scene altogether, to take new subjects, an entire new set of _Dramatis Personæ_,—to pitch the interest in the Heart of Mid-Lothian, or suspend it in air with the Children of the Mist. We see what Sir Walter Scott has done in this way, by turning up again to the day the rich accumulated mould of ancient manners and wild unexplored scenery of his native land; and we already see what some of his imitators have done. In a word, literature is confined not only within certain _natural_, but also within _local_ and _temporary_ limits, which necessarily have fewer available topics; and when these are exhausted, it becomes a _caput mortuum_, a shadow of itself. Nothing is easier, for instance, than to show how, from the alteration of manners, the brilliant dialogue of the older comedy has gradually disappeared from the stage. The style of our common conversation has undergone a total change from the personal and _piquant_ to the critical and didactic; and, instead of aiming at elegant raillery or pointed repartee, the most polished circles now discuss general topics, or analyze abstruse problems. Wit, unless it is exercised on an indiscriminate subject, is considered as an impertinence in civil life: yet we complain that the stage is dull and prosaic.

Farther, the Fine Arts, by their spread, interfere with one another, and hinder the growth of originality. All the greatest things are done by the division of labour—by the intense concentration of a number of minds, each on a single and chosen object. But by the progress of cultivation, different arts and exercises stretch out their arms to impede, not to assist one another. Politics blend with poetry, painting with literature; fashion and elegance must be combined with learning and study: and thus the mind gets a smattering of every thing, and a mastery in none. The mixing of acquirements, like the _mixing of liquors_, is no doubt a bad thing, and _muddles_ the brain; but in a certain stage of society, it is in some degree unavoidable. Rembrandt lived retired in his cell of gorgeous light and shade. Night and Day waited upon him by turns, or together: his eye gazed on the dazzling gloom, nor did he ask for any other object. He existed wholly in this part of his art, which he has stamped on his canvas with such vast and wondrous power. He was not distracted or diverted from his favourite study by other things, by penning a Sonnet, or reading the Morning’s Paper. Had he lived in our time, or in a state of manners like ours, he would have been a hundred other things, but not Rembrandt—a polite scholar, an imitator probably of the antique, a pleasing versifier, ‘a chemist, statesman, fiddler, and buffoon,’—every thing but what he was, the great master of light and shade! Michael Angelo, again, had diversity of genius enough, and grasped more arts than one with hallowed hands. Yet did he not use to say, that ‘Painting was jealous, and required the whole man to herself?’ How many modern accomplishments would it take to make a Michael Angelo? Yet perhaps the flutter of idle pretensions, the glitter of fashion, the cant of criticism, with the sense of his own deficiencies in frivolous pursuits, might have dismayed the dauntless Youth who, with a blow of his chisel, repaired the Meleager; who afterwards carved the Moses, painted the Prophets and Sybils, reared the dome of St. Peter’s, and fortified his native city against a foreign foe! The little might have turned aside, in his triple career of renown, him whom the great could not intimidate.

One effect of the endowment of Institutions for the Fine Arts is, to make the union of the accidents of fortune and fashion, that is, of the extrinsic and meretricious, indispensable to the artist. He is violently taken out of his own sphere, and thrust into one for which he is qualified neither by nature nor habit. He must be able to make speeches to assembled multitudes, to hold conversation with Princes. He climbs to the highest honours of his profession by arts which have nothing to do with it—by frivolous or servile means. He must have the ear of committees, the countenance of the great. He takes precedence as a matter of etiquette or costume. He rises, as he would at college or at court. The chair of a Royal Academy for the Fine Arts must be filled by a gentleman and scholar. So Sir Thomas Lawrence (_absit invidia_) is chosen President, not more because he is the best portrait-painter in existence, than because he is one of the finest gentlemen of the day. This is confounding the essential differences of things, and weakening the solid superstructure of art at its foundations.—A scholar was formerly another name for a sloven, an artist was known only by his works. Now, a professional man, who should come into the world, relying on his genius or learning for his success, without other advantages, would be looked upon as a pedant, a barbarian, or a poor creature. ‘Though he should have all knowledge, and could speak with the tongues of angels, yet, without _affectation_, he would be nothing.’ He who is not acquainted with the topic, who is not fashioned in the mode of the day, is no better than a brute. We will not have the arts and sciences ‘relegated to obscure cloisters and villages: no, we will have them to lift up their sparkling front in courts and palaces,’—in drawing-rooms and booksellers’ shops. ‘The toe of the scholar must tread so close on the heel of the courtier, that it galls his kibe.’

This is also a consequence of the approximation and amalgamation of different ranks and pretensions from the more general diffusion of knowledge. Each takes something of the colour, or borrows some of the advantages, of its neighbour. A reflected light is thrown on all parts of society. The polite affect literature: the literary affect to be polite. Such a state of things, no doubt, produces a great deal of mock-patronage and mock-gentility. What then? It cannot be prevented: and is it not better to make the most of this florid and composite style of manners, than to proscribe and stigmatize it altogether, or insist on going back to the simple Doric or pure Gothic—to barbaric wealth or cynical knowledge? ‘Take the good the Gods provide ye’—is our motto, and our advice. The impulse that sways the human mind cannot be created by a _fiat_ of captious discontent: it floats on the tide of mighty CIRCUMSTANCE. By resisting this natural bias, and peevishly struggling against the stream, we shall only lose the favourable opportunities we possess, both for enjoyment and for use. It is not sufficient to say, ‘Let there be Shakespeares, and there were Shakespeares:’—but we have writers in great numbers, respectable in their way, and suited to the mediocrity of the age we live in: And, by cultivating sound principles of taste and criticism, we can still point out the beauties of the old authors, and improve the style of the new. There is a change in the world, and we must conform to it. Instead of striving to revive the spirit of old English literature, which is impossible, unless we could restore the same state of things, and push the world back two centuries in its course, let us add the last polish and fine finish to the modern _Belles-Lettres_. Instead of imitating the poets or prose writers of the age of Elizabeth, let us admire them at a distance. Let us remember, that there is a great gulf between them and us—the gulf of ever-rolling years. Let them be something sacred, and venerable to the imagination: But let us be contented to serve as priests at the shrine of ancient genius, and not attempt to mount the pedestal ourselves, or disturb the sanctuary with our unwarranted pretensions.

This is the course dictated no less by modesty than wisdom. Half the cant of criticism (on the other side of the question) is envy of the moderns, rather than admiration of the ancients. It is not that we really wish our contemporaries to rival their predecessors in grandeur, in force and depth; but that we wish them to fall short of themselves in elegance, in taste, in ingenuity, and facility. The exclusive outcry in favour of ancient models, is a _diversion_ to the exercise of modern talents, and a misdirection to the age. If we cannot produce the great and lasting works of former times, we may at least improve our knowledge of the principles on which they were raised, and of the distinguishing characteristics of each. If we have nothing to show equal to some of these, let us make it up (to the best of our power) by a taste susceptible of the beauties of all. If we do not succeed in solid folio, let us excel in light duodecimo. If we are superficial, let us be brilliant. If we cannot be profound, let us at least be popular.

Why should we dismiss _the reading public_ with contempt, when we have so little chance with the next generation? Literature formerly was a sweet Heremitress, who fed on the pure breath of Fame, in silence and in solitude; far from the madding strife, in sylvan shade or cloistered hall, she trimmed her lamp or turned her hourglass, pale with studious care, and aiming only to ‘make the age to come her own!’ She gave her life to the perfecting some darling work, and bequeathed it, dying, to posterity! Vain hope, perhaps; but the hope itself was fruition—calm, serene, blissful, unearthly! Modern literature, on the contrary, is a gay Coquette, fluttering, fickle, vain; followed by a train of flatterers; besieged by a crowd of pretenders; courted, she courts again; receives delicious praise, and dispenses it; is impatient for applause; pants for the breath of popularity; renounces eternal fame for a newspaper puff; trifles with all sorts of arts and sciences; coquettes with fifty accomplishments—_mille ornatus habet, mille decenter_; is the subject of polite conversation; the darling of private parties; the go-between in politics; the directress of fashion; the polisher of manners; and, like her winged prototype in Spenser,

‘Now this now that, she tasteth tenderly,’

glitters, flutters, buzzes, spawns, dies,—and is forgotten! But the very variety and superficial polish show the extent and height to which knowledge has been accumulated, and the general interest taken in letters.

To dig to the bottom of a subject through so many generations of authors, is now impossible: the concrete mass is too voluminous and vast to be contained in any single head; and therefore we must have essences and samples as substitutes for it. We have collected a superabundance of raw materials: the grand _desideratum_ now is, to fashion and render them portable. Knowledge is no longer confined to the few: the object therefore is, to make it accessible and attractive to the many. The _Monachism_ of literature is at an end; the cells of learning are thrown open, and let in the light of universal day. We can no longer be churls of knowledge, ascetics in pretension. We must yield to the spirit of change (whether for the better or worse); and ‘to beguile the time, look like the time.’ A modern author may (without much imputation of his wisdom) declare for a short life and a merry one. He may be a little gay, thoughtless, and dissipated. Literary immortality is now let on short leases, and he must be contented to succeed by rotation. A scholar of the olden time had resources, had consolations to support him under many privations and disadvantages. A light (that light which penetrates the most clouded skies) cheered him in his lonely cell, in the most obscure retirement: and, with the eye of faith, he could see the meanness of his garb exchanged for the wings of the Shining Ones, and the wedding-garment of the Spouse. Again, he lived only in the contemplation of old books and old events; and the remote and future became habitually present to his imagination, like the past. He was removed from low, petty vanity, by the nature of his studies, and could wait patiently for his reward till after death. WE exist in the bustle of the world, and cannot escape from the notice of our contemporaries. We must please to live, and therefore should live to please. We must look to the public for support. Instead of solemn testimonies from the learned, we require the smiles of the fair and the polite. If princes scowl upon us, the broad shining face of the people may turn to us with a favourable aspect. Is not this life (too) sweet? Would we change it for the former if we could? But the great point is, that _we cannot_! Therefore, let Reviews flourish—let Magazines increase and multiply—let the Daily and Weekly Newspapers live for ever! We are optimists in literature, and hold, with certain limitations, that, in this respect, whatever is, is right!