Chapter VI: Part 6

In his personal character D’Alembert was simple, benevolent, warm in his attachments, a sworn foe to servility and adulation, and no follower of great men. This temper stood in the way of his progress to riches. It was his maxim, that a man should be very careful in his writings, careful enough in his actions, and moderately careful in his words; and the latter clause was probably that which he best observed. In more than one instance his plain drollery gave offence to persons of influence at court, and frustrated the exertions of his friends to improve his fortunes. Fortunately he united simple tastes with an independent, fearless, and benevolent mind; and it is said that he gave away one half of his income, when it did not amount to £350. His own account of his own character, written in the third person, runs in the following terms, and is confirmed by the testimony of his friends:—“Devoted to study and privacy till the age of twenty-five, he entered late into the world, and was never much pleased with it. He could never bend himself to learn its usages and language, and perhaps even indulged a sort of petty vanity in despising them. He is never rude, because he is neither brutal nor severe; but he is sometimes blunt, through inattention or ignorance. Compliments embarrass him, because he never can find a suitable answer immediately; when he says flattering things, it is always because he thinks them. The basis of his character is frankness and truth, often rather blunt, but never disgusting. He is impatient and angry, even to violence, when any thing goes wrong, but it all evaporates in words. He is soon satisfied and easily governed, provided he does not see what you aim at; for his love of independence amounts to fanaticism, so that he often denies himself things which would be agreeable to him, because he is afraid that they would put him under some restraint; which makes some of his friends call him, justly enough, the slave of his liberty.” In his religious opinions D’Alembert was, in the true meaning of the word, a sceptic, and his name has obtained an unenviable notoriety as co-editor, with Diderot, of the celebrated Encyclopédie. His superintendence, however, extended only to the end of the second volume, after which the work was stopped by the French Government; and on its resumption D’Alembert confined himself strictly to the mathematical department. In one respect his conduct may be advantageously contrasted with that of some of his colleagues; he intruded his own opinions on no man, and he took no pleasure in shocking others, by insulting what they hold sacred. “I knew D’Alembert,” says La Harpe, “well enough to say that he was sceptical in every thing but mathematics. He would no more have said positively that there was no religion, than that there was a God; he only thought that the probabilities were in favour of theism, and against revelation. On this subject he tolerated all opinions: and this disposition made him think the intolerant arrogance of the Atheists odious and unbearable. I do not think that he ever printed a sentence, which marks either hatred or contempt of religion.”

We proceed to mention the most remarkable of D’Alembert’s mathematical works. He published in 1743 a treatise on Dynamics, in which he enunciated the law now known under the name of D’Alembert’s principle, one of the most valuable of modern contributions to mechanical science. In the following year appeared a treatise on the Equilibrium and Motion of Fluids; and in 1746, Reflections on the general Causes of Winds, which obtained the prize of the Academy of Berlin. This work is remarkable as the first which contained the general equations of the motion of fluids, as well as the first announcement and use of the calculus of partial differences. We may add to the list of his discoveries, the analytical solutions of the problem of vibrating chords, and the motion of a column of air; of the precession of the equinoxes, and the nutation of the earth’s axis, the phenomenon itself having been recently observed by Bradley. In 1752 he completed his researches into fluids, by an Essay on the Resistance of Fluids. We have to add to the list his Essay on the Problem of Three Bodies, as it is called by astronomers, an investigation of the law by which three bodies mutually gravitating affect each other; and Researches on various points connected with the system of the Universe: the former published in 1747, and the latter in 1754–6. His Opuscules, or minor pieces, were collected in eight volumes, towards the end of his life.

Of his connexion with the Encyclopédie, we have already spoken. He is said to be singularly clear and happy in his expositions of the metaphysical difficulties of abstract science. He is also honourably known in less abstruse departments of literature by his Mélanges de Philosophie, Memoirs of Christina of Sweden, Essay on the Servility of Men of Letters to the Great, Elements of Philosophy, and a work on the Destruction of the Jesuits. On his election to the office of perpetual Secretary to the Academy, he wrote the Eloges of the members deceased from 1700 up to that date. His works and correspondence were collected and published in eighteen volumes 8vo. Paris, 1805, by M. Bastien, to whose first volume we refer the reader for complete information on this subject.

HOGARTH.

“I was born,” says Hogarth in his Memoirs of himself, “in the city of London, November 10, 1697. My father’s pen, like that of many authors, did not enable him to do more than put me in a way of shifting for myself. As I had naturally a good eye, and a fondness for drawing, shows of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when an infant; and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me. An early access to a neighbouring painter drew my attention from play; and I was, at every possible opportunity, employed in making drawings. I picked up an acquaintance of the same turn, and soon learnt to draw the alphabet with great correctness. My exercises when at school were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned them, than for the exercise itself. In the former I soon found that blockheads with better memories could much surpass me; but for the latter I was particularly distinguished.”

To this account of Hogarth’s childhood we have only to add, that his father, an enthusiastic and laborious scholar, who like many of his craft owed little to the favour of fortune, consulted these indications of talent as well as his means would allow, and bound his son apprentice to a silver-plate engraver. But Hogarth aspired after something higher than drawing cyphers and coats-of-arms; and before the expiration of his indentures he had made himself a good draughtsman, and obtained considerable knowledge of colouring. It was his ambition to become distinguished as an artist; and not content with being the mere copier of other men’s productions, he sought to combine the functions of the painter with those of the engraver, and to gain the power of delineating his own ideas, and the fruits of his acute observation. He has himself explained the nature of his views in a passage which is worth attention.

_Engraved by J. Mollison._

HOGARTH.

_From the original Picture by Himself
in the National Gallery._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall
East._
]

“Many reasons led me to wish that I could find the shorter path,—fix forms and characters in my mind,—and instead of copying the lines try to read the language, and, if possible, find the grammar of the art by bringing into one focus the various observations I had made, and then trying by my power on the canvass how far my plan enabled me to combine and apply them to practice. For this purpose I considered what various ways, and to what different purposes, the memory might be applied; and fell upon one most suitable to my situation and idle disposition; laying it down first as an axiom, that he who could by any means acquire and retain in his memory perfect ideas of the subjects he meant to draw, would have as clear a knowledge of the figure as a man who can write freely hath of the twenty-five letters of the alphabet and their infinite combinations.” Acting on these principles, he improved by constant exercise his natural powers of observation and recollection. In his rambles among the motley scenes of London he was ever on the watch for striking features or incidents; and not trusting entirely to memory, he was accustomed, when any face struck him as peculiarly grotesque or expressive, to sketch it on his thumb-nail, to be treasured up on paper at his return home.

For some time after the expiration of his apprenticeship, Hogarth continued to practise the trade to which he was bred; and his shop-bills, coats-of-arms, engravings upon tankards, &c., have been collected with an eagerness quite disproportionate to their value. Soon he procured employment in furnishing frontispieces and designs for the booksellers. The most remarkable of these are the plates to an edition of Hudibras, published in 1726: but even these are of no distinguished merit. About 1728 he began to seek employment as a portrait painter. Most of his performances were small family pictures, containing several figures, which he calls “Conversation Pieces,” from twelve to fifteen inches high. These for a time were very popular, and his practice was considerable, as his price was low. His life-size portraits are few; the most remarkable are that of Captain Coram in the Foundling Hospital, and that of Garrick as King Richard III. But his practice as a portrait painter was not lucrative, nor his popularity lasting. Although many of his likenesses were strong and characteristic, in the representation of beauty, elegance, and high-breeding, he was little skilled. The nature of the artist was as uncourtly as his pencil; he despised, or affected to despise, what is called embellishment, forgetting that every great painter of portraits has founded his success upon his power of giving to an object the most favourable representation of which it is susceptible. When Hogarth obtained employment and eminence of another sort, he abandoned portrait painting, with a growl at the jealousy of his professional brethren, and the vanity and blindness of the public.

March 23, 1729, Hogarth contracted a stolen marriage with the only daughter of the once fashionable painter, Sir James Thornhill. The father, for some time implacable, relented at last; and the reconciliation, it is said, was much forwarded by his admiration of the “Harlot’s Progress,” a series of six prints, commenced in 1731, and published in 1734. The novelty as well as merit of this series of prints won for them extraordinary popularity; and their success encouraged Hogarth to undertake a similar history of the “Rake’s Progress,” in eight prints, which appeared in 1735. The third, and perhaps the most popular, as it is the least objectionable of these pictorial novels, “Marriage Alamode,” was not engraved till 1745.

The merits of these prints were sufficiently intelligible to the public: their originality and boldness of design, the force and freedom of their execution, rough as it is, won for them an extensive popularity and a rapid and continued sale. The Harlot’s Progress was the most eminently successful, from its novelty rather than from its superior excellence. Twelve hundred subscribers’ names were entered for it; it was dramatized in several forms; and we may note, in illustration of the difference of past and present manners, that fan-mounts were engraved, containing miniature copies of the six plates. The merits of the pictures were less obvious to the few who could afford to spend large sums on works of art; and Hogarth, too proud to let them go for prices much below the value which he put upon them, waited for a long time, and waited in vain, for a purchaser. At last he determined to commit them to public sale; but instead of the common method of auction, he devised a new and complex plan, with the intention of excluding picture-dealers, and obliging men of rank and wealth, who wished to purchase, to judge and bid for themselves. The scheme failed, as might have been expected. Nineteen of Hogarth’s best pictures, the Harlot’s Progress, the Rake’s Progress, the Four Times of the Day, and Strolling Actresses dressing in a Barn, produced only 427_l._ 7_s._, not averaging 22_l._ 10_s._ each. The Harlot’s Progress was purchased by Mr. Beckford, at the rate of fourteen guineas a picture; five of the series perished in the fire at Fonthill. The Rake’s Progress averaged twenty-two guineas a picture; it has passed into the possession of Sir John Soane, at the advanced price of five hundred and seventy guineas. The same eminent architect became the proprietor of the four pictures of an Election, for the sum of 1732_l._ Marriage Alamode was disposed of in a similar way in 1750; and on the day of sale one bidder appeared, who became master of the six pictures, together with their frames, for 115_l._ 10_s._ Mr. Angerstein purchased them, in 1797, for 1381_l._, and they now form a striking feature in our National Gallery.

The number and variety of Hogarth’s moral and satiric works preclude our naming any but the more remarkable. To those already mentioned we would add the March to Finchley, Southwark Fair, the Distressed Poet, the Enraged Musician, Modern Midnight Conversation, Gin Lane and Beer Street, the four prints of an Election, and two entitled “The Times,” which would hardly require notice, except for having produced a memorable quarrel between himself on one side, and Wilkes and Churchill on the other. The satire of the first, published in 1762, was directed, not against Wilkes himself, but his political friends, Pitt and Temple; nor is it so biting as to have required Wilkes, in defence of his party, to retaliate upon one with whom he had lived in familiar and friendly intercourse. He did so, however, in a number of the North Briton, containing not only abuse of the artist, but unjust and injurious mention of his wife. Hogarth was deeply wounded by this attack, and he retorted by the well-known portrait—it ought not to be called a caricature—of Wilkes with the cap of liberty. “I wished,” he says, “to return the compliment, and turn it to some advantage. The renowned patriot’s portrait, drawn as like as I could, as to features, and marked with some indications of his mind, answered every purpose. A Brutus, a saviour of his country, with such an aspect, was so arrant a farce, that though it gave rise to much laughter in the lookers-on, it galled both him and his adherents. This was proved by the papers being crammed every day with invectives against the artist, till the town grew sick of thus seeing me always at full length. Churchill, Wilkes’s toad-eater, put the North Briton into verse in an epistle to Hogarth; but as the abuse was precisely the same, except a little poetical heightening, it made no impression, but perhaps effaced or weakened the black strokes of the North Briton. However, having an old plate by me, with some parts ready sunk, as the back-ground and a dog, I began to consider how I could turn so much work laid aside to some account; and so patched up a print of Master Churchill in the character of a bear.” The quarrel was unworthy of the talents either of the painter or poet. “Never,” says Walpole, “did two angry men of their abilities throw dirt with less dexterity.” It is the more to be regretted, because its effects, as he himself intimates, were injurious to Hogarth’s declining health. The summer of 1764 he spent at Chiswick, and the free air and exercise worked a partial renovation of his strength. The amendment, however, was but temporary; and he died suddenly, October 26, the day after his return to his London residence in Leicester Square.

If we have dwelt little upon Hogarth’s merits in his peculiar style of art, it is still less necessary to say much concerning his historical pictures. Of their merits he himself formed a high and most exaggerated estimate, not hesitating to give out that nothing but envy and ignorance prevented his own pictures from commanding as much admiration, and as high prices, as the most esteemed productions of foreign masters. Posterity has confirmed the judgment of his contemporaries, and Hogarth’s serious compositions are very generally forgotten. The only one which merits to be excepted from this observation is his Sigismunda, painted in 1759, in competition with the well-known and beautiful picture, ascribed by some to Correggio, by others to Furino. Our painter’s vanity and plain dealing had raised up a host of enemies against him among painters, picture-dealers, and connoisseurs; and all whose self-love he had wounded, or whose tricks he had denounced, eagerly seized this opportunity to vent their anger in retaliation. The picture is well known, both by engravings and by Walpole’s severe criticism. We abstain from quoting it: we have passed lightly over a great artist’s excellences, and it would be unfair to expatiate on his defects and errors. Besides this, Hogarth’s chief historical works are the Pool of Bethesda and the Good Samaritan, executed in 1736 as a specimen of his powers, and presented to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital; Paul before Felix, painted for the Hall of Lincoln’s Inn, in 1749; and Moses brought before Pharaoh’s daughter, painted in 1752, and presented to the Foundling Hospital.

Hogarth was not a mere painter: he used the pen as well as the pencil, and aspired to teach as well as to exercise his art. He has left a memoir of his own life, which contains some curious and interesting and instructive matter concerning his own modes and motives of thought and action. He wrote verses occasionally in a rough and familiar style, but not without some sparkles of his humorous turn. But his most remarkable performance is the “Analysis of Beauty,” composed with the ambitious view of fixing the principles of taste, and laying down unerring directions for the student of art. Its leading principle is, that the serpentine line is the foundation of all that is beautiful, whether in nature or art. To the universality of this assertion we should be inclined to demur; Nature works by contrast, and loves to unite the abrupt and angular with the flowing and graceful, in one harmonious whole. The work, however, unquestionably contains much that was original and valuable. But when it was found that Hogarth, a man unpolished in conversation, not regularly trained either to the use of the pen or the pencil, and, above all, a profound despiser of academics, of portrait painters, and of almost all things conventionally admired, had written a book professing to teach the principles of art, the storm of criticism which fell upon him was hot and furious. It was discovered that Hogarth was not the author of the book, that the principle was false and ridiculous, and that every body had been in possession of it long before. The last objection, certainly, is so far true, that every one instinctively must feel a line of easy curvature to be more graceful than one of abrupt and angular flexure. But the merit of first enunciating this as a rule of art belongs to Hogarth; and it is recorded to have been the opinion of West, uttered after the author’s death, that the Analysis is a work of the highest value to the student of art, and that, examined after personal enmity and prejudice were laid to sleep, it would be more and more read, studied, and understood. We doubt whether this judgment of the President is altogether sanctioned by the practice of the present day; but time, without altogether establishing the author’s theory, has at least laid asleep the malicious whispers which denied to Hogarth the merit of it, whatever that may be.

In the executive part of his art, either as painter or engraver, Hogarth did not attain to first-rate excellence. His engravings are spirited, but rough; but they have the peculiar merit (one far above mechanical delicacy and correctness of execution) of representing accurately, by a few bold touches, the varied incidents and expression which he was so acute and diligent in observing. A faithful copier, his works are invaluable as records of the costume and spirit of the time; and they preserve a number of minute illustrative circumstances, which his biographers and annotators have laboured to explain, with the precision used by critics in commenting upon Aristophanes. Wit and humour are abundant in all of them, even in accessories apparently insignificant; and they require to be studied before half the matter condensed in them can be perceived and apprehended. “It is worthy of observation,” says Mr. Lamb, “that Hogarth has seldom drawn a mean or insignificant countenance.” This is so far true, that there are few of his faces which do not contribute to the general effect. Mean and insignificant in the common sense of the words they often are, and the fastidious observer will find much to overcome in the general want of pleasing objects in his compositions. But the vacancy or expression, the coarseness or refinement of the countenance, are alike subservient to convey a meaning or a moral; and in this sense it may justly be said, that few of Hogarth’s faces are insignificant. Through the more important of his works, a depth and unity of purpose prevails, which sometimes rises into high tragic effect, the more striking from the total absence of conventional objects of dignity, as in the two last plates of the “Rake’s Progress.” “Gin Lane” has been included by Mr. Lamb in the same praise, and its power cannot be denied; but it contains too much that is purely disgusting, mixed with much that is in the nature of caricature, to be a general favourite.

The nationality of Hogarth’s prints has given to them a more lasting and extensive popularity than any class of engravings has ever enjoyed. Not to mention the large impressions from the original plates, which were touched and retouched again and again, they have been frequently engraved on a smaller scale, accompanied with an historical and descriptive text; and there is scarcely a library of any pretensions which has not a “Hogarth Illustrated,” in some shape or other, upon its shelves. Of these works, the first was Dr. Trusler’s “Hogarth Moralized,” republished lately in a very elegant shape; the most complete is the quarto edition of Hogarth’s works, by Nichols and Stevens. There is a long and valuable memoir of the artist in Rees’s “Cyclopædia,” by Mr. Phillips, R.A., and an extended life by Allan Cunningham in the “Family Library.” The works of Walpole, Gilpin, Hazlitt, and others, will furnish much of acute criticism; and we especially recommend the perusal of an Essay by Charles Lamb on the “Genius and Character of Hogarth,” published originally in the “Reflector,” No. 3. It is chiefly occupied by a minute criticism upon the “Rake’s Progress,” and though, in our opinion, somewhat partial and excessive in praise, is admirably calculated to show the reader in what spirit the moral works of Hogarth should be studied.

_Engraved by Rob^t. Hart._

GALILEO.

_From a picture by Ramsay
in Trinity College, Cambridge._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall
East._
]

GALILEO.

The great Tuscan astronomer is best known as the first telescopic observer, the fortunate discoverer of the Medicean stars (so Jupiter’s satellites were first named): and what discovery more fitted to immortalize its author, than one which revealed new worlds, and thus gave additional force to the lesson, that the universe, of which we form so small a part, was not created only for our use or pleasure! Those, however, who consider Galileo only as a fortunate observer, form a very inadequate estimate of one of the most meritorious and successful of those great men who have bestowed their time for the advantage of mankind in tracing out the hidden things of nature.

Galileo Galilei was born at Pisa, February 15, 1564. In childhood he displayed considerable mechanical ingenuity, with a decided taste for the accomplishments of music and painting. His father formed a just estimate of his talents, and at some inconvenience entered him, when nineteen years old, at the university of his native town, intending that he should pursue the medical profession. Galileo was then entirely ignorant of mathematics; and he was led to the study of geometry by a desire thoroughly to understand the principles of his favourite arts. This new pursuit proved so congenial to his taste, that from thenceforward his medical books were entirely neglected. The elder Galilei, a man of liberal acquirements and enlarged mind, did not require the devotion of his son’s life to a distasteful pursuit. Fortunately the young man’s talents attracted notice, and in 1589 he was appointed mathematical lecturer in the University of Pisa. There is reason to believe that, at an early period of his studentship, he embraced, upon inquiry and conviction, the doctrines of Copernicus, of which through life he was an ardent supporter.

Galileo and his colleagues did not long remain on good terms. The latter were content with the superstructure which _à priori_ reasoners had raised upon Aristotle, and were by no means desirous of the trouble of learning more. Galileo chose to investigate physical truths for himself; he engaged in experiments to determine the truth of some of Aristotle’s positions, and when he found him in the wrong, he said so, and so taught his pupils. This made the “paper philosophers,” as he calls them, very angry. He repeated his experiments in their presence; but they set aside the evidence of their senses, and quoted Aristotle as much as before. The enmity arising from these disputes rendered his situation so unpleasant, that, in 1592, at the invitation of the Venetian commonwealth, he gladly accepted the professorship of mathematics at Padua. The period of his appointment being only six years, he was re-elected in 1598, and again in 1606, each time with an increase of salary; a strong proof of the esteem in which he was held, even before those astronomical discoveries which have immortalized his name. His lectures at this period were so fully attended, that he was sometimes obliged to adjourn them to the open air. In 1609 he received an invitation to return to his original situation at Pisa. This produced a letter, still extant, from which we quote a catalogue of the undertakings on which he was already employed. “The works which I have to finish are principally two books on the ‘System or Structure of the Universe,’ an immense work, full of philosophy, astronomy, and geometry; three books on ‘Local Motion,’ a science entirely new, no one, either ancient or modern, having discovered any of the very many admirable accidents which I demonstrate in natural and violent motions, so that I may, with very great reason, call it a new science, and invented by me from its very first principles; three books of mechanics, two on the demonstration of principles, and one of problems; and although others have treated this same matter, yet all that has been hitherto written, neither in quantity nor otherwise, is the quarter of what I am writing on it. I have also different treatises on natural subjects—on Sound and Speech, on Light and Colours, on the Tides, on the Composition of Continuous Quantity, on the Motions of Animals, and others besides. I have also an idea of writing some books relating to the military art, giving not only a model of a soldier, but teaching with very exact rules every thing which it is his duty to know, that depends upon mathematics, as the knowledge of castrametation, drawing up of battalions, fortification, assaults, planning, surveying, the knowledge of artillery, the use of instruments, &c.” Out of this comprehensive list, the treatises on the universe, on motion and mechanics, on tides, on fortification, or other works upon the same subjects, have been made known to the world. Many, however, of Galileo’s manuscripts, through fear of the Inquisition, were destroyed, or concealed and lost, after the author’s death.

In the same year, 1609, Galileo heard the report, that a spectacle-maker of Middleburg, in Holland, had made an instrument by which distant objects appeared nearer. He tasked his ingenuity to discover the construction, and soon succeeded in manufacturing a telescope. His telescope, however, seems to have been made on a different construction from that of the Dutch optician. It consisted of a convex and concave glass, distant from each other by the difference of their focal lengths, like a modern opera-glass; while there is reason to believe that the other was made up of two convex lenses, distant by the sum of their focal lengths, the common construction of the astronomical telescope. Galileo’s attention naturally was first turned to the moon. He discovered that her surface, instead of being smooth and perfectly spherical, was rough with mountains, and apparently varied, like the earth, by land and water. He next applied to Jupiter, and was struck by the appearance of three small stars, almost in a straight line, and close to him. At first he did not suspect the nature of these bodies; but careful observation soon convinced him that these three, together with a fourth, which was at first invisible, were in reality four moons revolving round their primary planet. These he named the Medicean stars. They have long ceased to be known by that name; but so highly prized was the distinction thus conferred upon the ducal house of Florence, that Galileo received an intimation, that he would “do a thing just and proper in itself, and at the same time render himself and his family rich and powerful for ever,” if he “named the next star which he should discover after the name of the great star of France, as well as the most brilliant of all the earth,” Henry IV. These discoveries were made known in 1610, in a work entitled “Nuncius Sidereus,” the Newsman of the Stars: in which Galileo farther announced that he had seen many stars invisible to the naked eye, and ascertained that the nebulæ scattered through the heavens consist of assemblages of innumerable small stars. The ignorant and unprejudiced were struck with admiration; indeed, curiosity had been raised so high before the publication of this book, as materially to interfere with the convenience of those who possessed telescopes. Galileo was employed a month in exhibiting his own to the principal persons in Venice; and one unfortunate astronomer was surrounded by a crowd who kept him in durance for several hours, while they passed his glass from one to another. He left Venice the next morning, to pursue his inquiries in some less inquisitive place. But the great bulk of the philosophers of the day were far from joining in the general feeling. They raised an outcry against the impudent fictions of Galileo, and one, a professor of Padua, refused repeatedly to look through the telescope, lest he should be compelled to admit that which he had predetermined to deny. In the midst of this prejudice and envy, Kepler formed a brilliant exception. He received those great discoveries with wonder and delight, though they overturned some cherished theories, and manifested an honest and zealous indignation against the traducers of Galileo’s fame.

In particular his wrath broke out against a _protégé_ of his own, named Horky; who, under the mistaken notion of gaining credit with his patron, wrote a violent attack on Galileo, and asserted, among other things, that he had examined the heavens with Galileo’s own glass, and that no such thing as a satellite existed near Jupiter. The conclusion of the affair is curious and characteristic. Horky begged so hard to be forgiven, that, says Kepler, “I have taken him again into favour, upon this preliminary condition, to which he has agreed,—that I am to show him Jupiter’s satellites, _and he is to see them, and to own that they are there_.”

It was not long before Galileo had new, and equally important matter to announce. He observed a remarkable appearance in Saturn, as if it were composed of three stars touching each other; his telescope was not sufficiently powerful to resolve into them Saturn and his ring. Within a month he ascertained that Venus exhibits phases like those of the moon,—a discovery of great importance in confirming the Copernican system. The same phenomenon he afterwards detected in Mars. We close the list with the discovery of the revolution of the sun round his axis, in the space of about a lunar month, derived from careful observation of the spots on his surface.

About this time (1610–11) Galileo took up his abode in Tuscany, upon the invitation of the Grand Duke, who offered to him his original situation at Pisa, with a liberal salary, exemption from the necessity of residence, and complete leisure to pursue his studies. In 1612 he published a discourse on Floating Bodies, in which he investigates the theory of buoyancy, and refutes, by a series of beautiful and conclusive experiments, the opinion that the floating or sinking of bodies depends on their shape.

Neither Copernicus nor his immediate followers suffered inconvenience or restraint on account of their astronomical doctrines: nor had Galileo, until this period of his life, incurred ecclesiastical censure for any thing which he had said or written. But the Inquisition now took up the matter as heretical, and contrary to the express words of Scripture; and in 1616, Copernicus’s work ‘De Revolutionibus,’ Kepler’s Epitome, and some of Galileo’s own letters, were placed on the list of prohibited books; and he himself, being then in Rome, received formal notice not to teach that the earth revolves round the sun. He returned to Florence full of indignation; and considering his hasty temper, love of truth, and full belief of the condemned theory, it is rather wonderful that he kept silence so long, than that he incurred at last the censures of the hierarchy. He did, however, restrain himself from any open advocacy of the heretical doctrines, even in composing his great work, the ‘Dialogue on the Ptolemaic and Copernican Systems.’ This was completed in 1630, but not printed till 1632, under licence from officers of the church, both at Rome and Florence. It is a dialogue between Simplicio, an Aristotelian, Salviati, who represents the author, and Sagredo, a half convert to Salviati’s opinions. It professes “indeterminately to propose the philosophical arguments, as well on one side as on the other:” but the neutrality is but ill kept up, and was probably assumed, not with any hope that the court of Rome would be blinded as to the real tendency of the book, but merely that it would accept this nominal submission as a sufficient homage to its authority. If this were so, the author was disappointed; the Inquisition took cognizance of the matter, and summoned him to Rome to undergo a personal examination. Age and infirmity were in vain pleaded as excuses; still, through the urgent and indignant remonstrances of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, he was treated with a consideration rarely shown by that iniquitous tribunal. He was allowed to remain at the Florentine ambassador’s palace, with the exception of a short period, from his arrival in February, until the passing of sentence, June 21, 1633. He was then condemned, in the presence of the Inquisitors, to curse and abjure the “false doctrines,” which his life had been spent in proving; to be confined in the prison of the Holy Office during pleasure, and to recite the seven penitential psalms once a week during three years. The sentence and the abjuration are given at full length in the Life of Galileo, in the ‘Library of Useful Knowledge.’ “It is said,” continues the biographer, “that Galileo, as he rose from his knees, stamped on the ground, and whispered to one of his friends, ‘_e pur si muove_,’ (it does move though.”)

Galileo’s imprisonment was not long or rigorous; for after four days he was reconducted to the Florentine ambassador’s palace: but he was still kept under strict surveillance. In July he was sent to Sienna, where he remained five months in strict seclusion. He obtained permission in December to return to his villa at Arcetri, near Florence: but there, as at Sienna, he was confined to his own premises, and strictly forbidden to receive his friends. It is painful to contemplate the variety of evils which overcast the evening of this great man’s life. In addition to a distressing chronic complaint, contracted in youth, he was now suffering under a painful infirmity which by some is said to have been produced by torture, applied in the prisons of the Inquisition to extort a recantation. But the arguments brought forward to show that the Inquisitors did resort to this extremity do not amount to anything like direct proof. In April, 1634, Galileo’s afflictions were increased by the death of a favourite, intelligent, and attached daughter. He consoled his solitude, and lightened the hours of sickness, by continuing the observations which he was now forbidden to publish to the world; and the last of his long train of discoveries was the phenomenon known by the name of the moon’s libration. In the course of 1636–7 he lost successively the sight of both his eyes. He mentions this calamity in a tone of pious submission, mingled with a not unpleasing pride. “Alas, your dear friend and servant Galileo has become totally and irreparably blind; so that this heaven, this earth, this universe, which with wonderful observations I had enlarged a hundred and thousand times beyond the belief of by-gone ages, henceforward for me is shrunk into the narrow space which I myself fill in it. So it pleases God: it shall therefore please me also.” In 1638 he obtained leave to visit Florence, still under the same restrictions as to society; but at the end of a few months he was remanded to Arcetri, which he never again quitted. From that time, however, the strictness of his confinement was relaxed, and he was allowed to receive the friends who crowded round him, as well as the many distinguished foreigners who eagerly visited him. Among these we must not forget Milton, whose poems contain several allusions to the celestial wonders observed and published by the Tuscan astronomer. Though blind and nearly deaf, Galileo retained to the last his intellectual powers; and his friend and pupil, the celebrated Torricelli, was employed in arranging his thoughts on the nature of percussion, when he was attacked by his last illness. He died January 8, 1642, aged seventy-eight.

It was disputed, whether, as a prisoner of the Inquisition, Galileo had a right to burial in consecrated ground. The point was conceded; but Pope Urban VIII. himself interfered to prevent the erection of a monument to him in the church of Santa Croce, in Florence, for which a large sum had been subscribed. A splendid monument now covers the spot in which his remains repose with those of his friend and pupil, the eminent mathematician Viviani.

In 1618, Galileo published, through the medium of Mario Guiducci, an Essay on the Nature of Comets. His opinions (which, in fact, were erroneous) were immediately attacked under the feigned signature of Lotario Sarsi. To this antagonist he replied in a work entitled ‘Il Saggiatore,’ the Assayer, which we select for mention, not so much for the value of its contents, though, like the rest of his works, it has many remarkable passages, as for the high reputation which it enjoys among Italian critics as a model of philosophical composition. The “Dialogues on Motion,” the last work of consequence which Galileo published, contain investigations of the simpler branches of dynamics, the motion of bodies falling freely or down inclined planes, and of projectiles; determinations of the strength of beams, and a variety of interesting questions in natural philosophy. The fifth and sixth are unfinished; the latter was intended to comprise the theory of percussion, which, as we have said, was the last subject which occupied the author’s mind. For a full analysis of this and the other treatises here briefly noted, and for an account of Galileo’s application of the pendulum to the mensuration of time; his invention of the thermometer, though in an inaccurate and inconvenient form; his methods of discovering the longitude, and a variety of other points well worth attention, we must refer to the Life of Galileo already quoted. The numerous extracts from Galileo’s works convey a lively notion of the author’s character, and are distinguished by a peculiar tone of quaint humour. For older writers we may refer to the lives of Viviani, Gherardini, and Nelli; and to the English one by Salusbury, of which however the second volume is so rare that the Earl of Macclesfield’s copy is the only one known to exist in England. Venturi has given to the world some unpublished manuscripts, and collected much curious and scattered information in his “Memorie e Lettere de Gal. Galilei.” Of Galileo’s works several editions exist: the most complete are those of Padua, in four volumes quarto, 1744, and of Milan, in thirteen volumes octavo, 1811.

In conclusion, we quote the estimate of Galileo’s character, from the masterly memoir from which this sketch is derived. “The numberless inventions of his acute industry; the use of the telescope, and the brilliant discoveries to which it led; the patient investigation of the laws of weight and motion, must all be looked upon as forming but a part of his real merits, as merely particular demonstrations of the spirit in which he everywhere withstood the despotism of ignorance, and appealed boldly from traditional opinions to the judgment of reason and common sense. He claimed and bequeathed to us the right of exercising our faculties in examining the beautiful creation which surrounds us. Idolised by his friends, he deserved their affection by numberless acts of kindness; by his good humour, his affability, and by the benevolent generosity with which he devoted himself, and a great part of his limited income, to advance their talents and fortunes. If an intense desire of being useful is everywhere worthy of honour; if its value is immeasurably increased when united to genius of the highest order; if we feel for one, who, notwithstanding such titles to regard, is harassed by cruel persecution, then none deserve our sympathy, our admiration, and our gratitude, more than Galileo.”

]

_Engraved by R. Woodman._

REMBRANDT.

_From the original Picture by himself
in his Majesty’s Collection._

Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

_London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street, & Pall Mall
East._
]

REMBRANDT.

Born June 15, 1606. His father was a miller, named Gerretz, who lived near Leyden, on the banks of the Rhine. Hence Rembrandt assumed the higher-sounding title of Van Ryn, in exchange for his paternal appellation. The miller was sagacious enough to perceive that his son had talent, but not to discover the direction in which it lay; and sent him to study Latin, and qualify himself for one of the learned professions at the University of Leyden. He had no turn for scholarship; indeed, through life, his literary acquirements were decidedly below par: but he showed great expertness in drawing any object which caught his notice. The miller wisely yielded to what appeared the natural bent of his son’s genius, and suffered him to pursue painting as a profession. He studied first for three months at Amsterdam, in the school of Jacob Van Swannenberg, then six months with Peter Lastman, and six with Jacob Pinas. It is somewhat surprising that he should have continued so long with these masters, from whom he could learn no more than the rudiments of execution. Had they been better, he would have gained little but manual skill from them; for, from the first, his style was essentially his own. Nature was his preceptress, and his academy was his father’s mill. There he found those unique effects of light and shadow which distinguish his pictures from all others. The style of art which astonished his contemporaries by its novelty and power, and will ever continue to influence the practice of later artists, was founded on and formed out of the brilliant contrasts exhibited by a beam of light admitted through a narrow aperture, and rapidly subsiding into darkness: a spectacle which, familiar to his childhood, seems to have left an indelible impression on his imagination. He studied with great assiduity, but seems to have scarcely been conscious of his own strength until the commendation of his fellow-students roused him. At the suggestion of one of them he took a painting which he had just finished to an amateur at the Hague, who gave the best proof of his approbation by paying a hundred florins for it on the spot. The sudden acquisition of so much wealth almost turned the young artist’s head. He went on foot to the Hague; but he posted home to his father’s mill in a chariot. Extravagance, however, was not one of his characteristics, and this was his last, as it was his first act of ostentatious disbursement.

He remained for some time in his native village, induced, perhaps, by the facilities which the banks of the Rhine presented to him for the study of landscape. Even in that department of art he selected those phases of nature which harmonized with his usual management of _chiar’ oscuro_: such as effects of twilight, or the setting sun, or any combinations of clouds, rocks, trees, or other objects, which formed large masses of shade relieved by light concentrated in one spot. But being frequently summoned to Amsterdam by commissions for portraits, he settled in that city in 1630. At the same time he married a pretty peasant girl from Ramsdorp, whose portrait he has often introduced in his pictures. He received several pupils into his house, who paid largely for his instructions.

One of Rembrandt’s earliest and most steadfast patrons was the burgomaster Six, for whom he painted the celebrated picture now in the National Gallery, of ‘The Woman taken in Adultery.’ If this be an average specimen of his style at this time, no wonder can be felt that his reputation rose to a prodigious height, and that he obtained large prices for his performances. The style of this picture, though approaching to the elaborate finishing of Mieris or Gerard Dow, is yet as broad as in any of his subsequent works, after he had adopted a bolder method of execution. Refinement of character we never must expect in Rembrandt; but in this picture we are not shocked by that uncalled-for coarseness which debases many of his later works. In the figure of Christ especially, there is some attempt to rise above the level of common life, which he usually contents himself with copying. The picture exhibits his usual grandeur and solemnity of light and shade, and is remarkable for brilliancy of colouring.

As Rembrandt’s practice became more and more lucrative, he gave way to a vice which certainly is not the besetting one of artists, and grew insatiably avaricious. His engravings were sought with even more avidity than his pictures; and he left unemployed no artifice by which their popularity might be turned to account. Impressions were taken off and circulated when the plates were half finished, then the work was completed, and the sale recommenced. Alterations were then made in the perfect engraving, and these botched prints were again sent into the market. Impressions of the same plate in all these stages of transformation were eagerly sought by the idle foppery of collectorship; and it was held a serious impeachment of taste not to possess proofs of the little Juno with and without a crown; the young Joseph with the face light, and the same Joseph with his face dark; the woman with the white bonnet, and the same woman without a bonnet; the horse with a tail, and a horse without a tail, &c. Ungentlemanly tricks were practised to enhance the price of his works. He often expressed an intention of quitting Amsterdam altogether. Once he was announced to be dangerously ill; at another time he was reported to be dead. It is strange that he should not have felt these petty artifices to be unworthy of his genius, and unnecessary to his fame or fortune; but it seems not improbable that some of his eccentricities were played off to attract attention. Being occupied one day in painting the picture of a burgomaster and his family, word was brought that his favourite monkey was dead. He made great parade of his distress, and as some alleviation of it, proceeded to paint the monkey into the picture. The civic dignitary remonstrated in vain against this extraordinary addition to the family group: Rembrandt refused to finish the picture unless the monkey kept his place, and accordingly it was allowed to remain. That he was not unconscious of the absurdity of such caprices, may be inferred from his quick turn for humour, and the shrewdness and sagacity of his remarks.

The roughness and apparent negligence in the execution of his works astonished many of the Dutch connoisseurs, who had been so used to minute delicacy of finish as to consider it essential to excellence. To these critics he replied in a tone of irony, requesting that when they perceived anything particularly wrong in his works, they would believe that he had a motive for it. To others who examined his pictures too closely, he observed, that the smell of the paint was unwholesome, adding a very just observation, that the picture is finished when the painter has expressed his intention.

Numerous copies of Rembrandt’s pictures were made by his pupils, which he retouched and sold as originals. Sandraart asserts that he gained one thousand two hundred florins yearly by this commerce. It is proper, however, to state that most of the great masters have, more or less, availed themselves of the labour of their scholars.

In one respect, however, Rembrandt acted worthily of his genius. He never allowed the love of gain to interfere with or limit the time and labour which were required to give excellence to his paintings. The bravura of hand by which his later works are distinguished, has led to an idea that he painted them carelessly and with great dispatch. No doubt he wrought with firmness and decision when his plan was fixed; but various studies are extant, which show that, before commencing a picture, he constructed and reconstructed his design with indefatigable attention. This was especially the case with his historical works; yet in portrait painting he was scarcely less particular. Frequently when the picture was considerably advanced, struck by some new arrangement, an effect of light, a happy turn of drapery, a better position of the head, he would begin again; and the patience of the sitter was sometimes so much tried by a succession of these alterations, that works would have been left unfinished on the artist’s hands, but for that confidence in the ultimate excellence of the pictures, which rendered his employers anxious to possess them at any outlay of time, patience, or money.

Descamps, the French biographer of the Flemish painters, enlarges on Rembrandt’s misfortune in not having been born in Italy, or, at least, not having spent some years there. “How different a painter would he have been,” he says, “had he been familiar with the works of Raphael and Titian.” That he would have been a different painter may be doubted; that he would have been a better one is still less probable. Descamps adds, that he owed his genius to nature and instinct alone; a much more rational remark, and so true, that it appears almost demonstrable that no system of discipline or education would have materially altered his turn of mind. He was sufficiently well acquainted, through the medium of prints, casts, and marbles, with the leading works both of ancient and modern art; but he had no taste for refinement, and he knew that what is called high art was not his vocation. He had collected quantities of old armour, rich draperies, grotesque ornaments, and military weapons, which he jocularly called his antiques; and he made no scruple of deriding the exclusive claims to taste set up by particular schools. He felt that he had no occasion to ask his passport to reputation from others; but that, as Fuseli expresses it, he could enter the temple of fame by forging his own keys.