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HOGARTH excepted, we produy one painter within the last fifty years, or sihe humour of exhibiting began, that has treated a story imaginatively? By this we mean, upon whom his subject has so acted, that it has seemed to direct him -- not to be arranged by him? Any upon whom its leading or collateral points have impressed themselves so tyrannically , that he dared not treat it otherwise, lest he should falsify a revelation? Any that has imparted to his positions, not merely so much truth as is enough to vey a story with clearness, but that individualising property, which should keep the subject so treated distin feature from every other subject, however similar, and to on apprehensions almost identical; so as that we might say, this and this part could have found an appropriate pla no other picture in the world but this? Is there anything in modern art -- we will not demand that it should be equal -- but in any way analogous to what Titian has effected, in that wonderful bringing together of two times in the "Ariadne," iional Gallery? Precipitous, with his reeling Satyr rout about him, repeopling and re-illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk with a new fury beyond the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, fire-like flings himself at the Cretan. This is the time present. With this telling of the story an artist, and no ordinary one, might remain richly proud. Guido, in his harmonio<mark>..</mark>us version of it, saw no further. But from the depths of the imaginative spirit Titian has recalled past time, and laid it tributory with the present to one simultaneous effect. With the desert all ringing with the mad cymbals of his followers, made lucid with the presend new offers of a god, -- as if unscious of Bacchus, or but idly casting her eyes as upon some uning pageant -- her soul undistracted from Theseus -- Ariadne is still pag the solitary shore, in as much heart-silence, and in almost the same local solitude, with which she awoke at daybreak to catch the forlorn last glances of the sail that bore away the Athenian.Here are two points miraculously iting; fierce society, with the feeling of solitude still absolute; noon-day revelations, with the acts of the dull grey dawn unquenched and lingering; the present Bacchus, with the past Ariadwo stories, with double Time; separate, and harmonising. Had the artist made the woman one shade less indifferent to the God; still more, had she expressed a rapture at his advent, where would have beeory of the mighty desolation of the heart previous? merged in the insipid act of a flattering offer met with a wele acceptahe broke for Theseus was not lightly to be pieced up by a God.
We have before us a fine rough print, from a picture by Raphael ii. It is the Presentation of the new-boro Adam by the Almighty. A faire<dfn></dfn>r mother of mankind we might imagine, and a goodlier sire perhaps of men since born. But these are matters subordio the ception of the situation, displayed in this extraordinary produ. A tolerably modern artist would have been satisfied with temperiain raptures of ubial anticipation, with a suitable aowledgement to the Giver of the blessing, in the tenance of the first bridegroom; something like the divided attention of the child (Adam was here a child maween the given toy, and the mother who had just blest it with the bauble. This is the obvious, the first-sight view, the superficial. An artist of a higher grade, sidering the awful presehey were in, would have taken care to subtraething from the expression of the more human passion, and to heighten the more spiritual ohis would be as much as an exhibition-goer, from the opening of Somerset House to last years show, has been enced to look for. It is obvious to hint at a lower expressio in a picture, that for respects of drawing and c, might be deemed not wholly inadmissible within these art-f walls, in which the raptures should be as y-he gratitude as one, or perhaps Zero! By her the one passion nor the other has Raphael expouhe situation of Adam. Singly on his brow sits the abs sense of wo the created miracle. The moment is seized by the intuitive artist, perhaps not self-scious of his art, in whieither of the flig emotions moment how abstract -- have had time t up, or to battle for indeastery. -- We have seen a landscape of a justly admired eri which he aimed at deliing a fi, one of the most severely beautiful in antiquity -- the gardens of the Hesperides. To do Mr. ----- justice, he bad painted laudable orchard, with fitting seclusion, and a veritable dragon (of which a Polypheme by Poussin is somehow a fac-simile for the situation), looking over into the world shut out backwards, so that a "still-climbing Hercules" could hope to catch a peep at the admired Ternary of Recluses. No ventual porter could keep his keys better than this custos with the "lidless eye" He not only sees that none do intrude into that Privacy, but, as clear as daylight, that Hercules aut Diabolus by any manner of means . So far all is well. We have absolute solitude here or nowhere. Ab extra the damsels are snug enough. But here the artists ce seems to have failed him. He began to pity his pretty charge, and, to fort the irksomeness, has peopled their solitude with a bevy of fair attendants, maids of honour, or ladies of the bed-chamber, acc to the approved etiquette at a court of the eenth tury; giving to the whole se the air of a fete champetre, if we will but excuse the absence of the gentlemen. This is well, and Watteauish. But what is bee of the solitary mystery-the
Daughters three,
That sing around the golden tree ?
This is not the way in which Poussin would have treated this subject.
The paintings or rather the stupendous architectural designs, of a modern artist, have been urged as objes to the theory of our motto. They are of a character, we fess, to stagger it. His towered structures are of the highest order of the material sublime. Whether they were dreams, or transcripts of some elder workmanship -- Assyrian ruins old -- restored by this mighty artist, they satisfy our most stretched and craving ceptions of the glories of the antique world. It is a pity that they were ever peopled. On that side, the imagination of the artist halts, and appears defective. Let us examihe point of the story in the "Belshazzars Feast." We will introduce it by an apposite ae.
The court historians of the day record, that at the first dinner given by the late King (then Prince Regent) at the Pavilion, the following characteristic frolic layed off. The guests were seled admiring; the ba profuse and admirable; the lights lustrous and oriental; the eye erfectly dazzled with the display of plate, among which the great gold salt-cellar, brought from the regalia iower for this especial purpose, itself a tower! stood spicuous for its magnitude. And now the Rev. * * * * the then admired court Chaplain, roceeding with the grace, when, at a signal given, the lights were suddenly overcast, and a huge transparency was discovered, in which glittered in goldeer-
&quhtohquake--Swallow-up-alive!"
Imagihe fusion of the guests; the Gees and garters, jewels, bracelets, moulted upon the occasion! The fans dropt, and picked up the m by the sly court pages. Mrs. Fitzwhats-her-name fainting, and the tess of * * * * holding the smelling bottle, till the good-humoured Prince caused harmony to be restored by calling in fresh dles, and declaring that the whole was nothing but a pantomime hoax, got up by the ingenious Mr. Farley, of t Garden, from hints which his Royal Highness himself had furhen imagihe infinite applause that followed, the mutual rallyings, the declarations that "they were not much frightened," of the assembled galaxy.
The point of time in the picture exactly ao the appearance of the transparen the ae. The huddle, the flutter, the bustle, the escape, the alarm, and the mock alarm; the prettinesses heightened by sternation; the courtiers fear which was flattery, and the ladys which was affectation; all that we may ceive to have taken pla a mob hton courtiers, sympathising with the well-acted surprise of their sn all this, and no more, is exhibited by the well-dressed lords and ladies in the Hall of Belus. Just this sort of sternation we have seen among a flock of disquieted wild geese at the report only of a gun having gone off!
But is this vulgar fright, this mere animal ay for the preservation of their persons,such as we have wit a theatre, when a slight alarm of fire has been given -- ae expo of a supernatural terror? the way in which the finger of God, writing judgments, would have bee by the withered sce There is a human fear, and a divine fear. The one is disturbed, restless, a upon escape. The other is bowed down, effortless, passive. When the spirit appeared before Eliphaz, in the visions of the night, and the hair of his flesh stood up, was it ihoughts of the Tema the bell of his chamber, or to call up the servants? But let us see iext what there is to justify all this huddle of vulgar sternation.
From the words of Da appears that Belshazzar had made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. The golden and silver vessels are geously eed, with the prihe kings es, and his wives. Then follows --
"In the same hour came forth fingers of a mans hand, and wrote ainst the dlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the kings palace; and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the kings tenance was ged, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosened, and his knees smote one against another."
This is the plai. By no hint it be otherwise inferred, but that the appearance was solely fio the fancy of Belshazzar, that his single brain was troubled. Not a word is spoken of its being seen by any else there present, not even by the queen herself, who merely uakes for the interpretation of the phenomenon, as related to her, doubtless, by her husband. The lord are simply said to he astonished; i.e. at the trouble and the ge of tenan their sn. Even the prophet does not appear to have seen the scroll, which the king saw. He recalls it only, as Joseph did the Dream to the King of Egypt. "Then was the part of the ha from him [the Lord] and this writing was written." He speaks of the phantasm as past.
Then what bees of this needless multiplication of the miracle? this message to a royal sce, singly expressed -- for it was said, "thy kingdom is divided," simultaneously impressed upon the fancies of a thousand courtiers, who were implied in it her directly nrammatically?
But admitting the artists own version of the story, and that the sight was seen also by the thousand courtiers -- let it have been visible to all Babylon -- the knees of Belshazzar were shaken, and his teroubled, even so would the knees of every man in Babylon, and their tenances, as of an individual maroubled; bowed, bent down, so they would have remained, stupor-fixed, with no thought of struggling with that iable judgment.
Not all that is optically possible to be seen, is to be shown in every picture. The eye delightedly dwells upon the brilliant individualities in a "Marriage at a," by Veronese, or Titian, to the very texture and colour of the wedding garments, the ring glittering upon the brides fingers, the metal and fashion of the wis; for at such seasons there is leisure and luxury to be curious. But in a "day of judgment," or in a "day of lesser horrors yet divine," at the impious feast of Belshazzar, the immediate se, as the actual eye of a or patient in the immediate se would see, only in masses and indistin. Not only the female attire and jewelry exposed to the critical eye of the fashion, as minutely as the dresses in a ladys magazine, in the criticised picture,-- but perhaps the curiosities of anatomical sce, and studied diversities of posture in the falling angels and sinners of Michael Angelo, -- have no business in their great subjects. There was no leisure of them.
By a wise falsification, the great masters of painting got at their true clusions; by not showing the actual appearahat is, all that was to be seen at any given moment by an indifferent eye, but only what the eye might be supposed to see in the doing or suffering of some portentous a. Suppose the moment of the swallowing up of Pompeii. There they were to be seen -- houses, ns, architectural proportions, differences of publid private buildings, men and women at their standing occupations, the diversified thousand postures, attitudes, dresses, in some fusion truly, but physically they were visible. But what eye saw them at that eclipsing moment, which reduces fusion to a kind of unity, and when the senses are upturned from their proprieties, when sight and hearing are a feeling only? A thousand years have passed, and we are at leisure to plate the weaver fixed standing at his shuttle, the baker at his oven, and to turn over with antiquarian ess the pots and pans of Pompeii.
"Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeah, and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon." Who, in reading this magnifit Hebraism, in his ception, sees aught but the heroi of Nun, with the out-stretched arm, and the greater and lesser light obsequious? Doubtless there were to be seen hill and dale, and chariots and horsemen, on open plain, or winding by secret defiles, and all the circumstances and stratagems of war. But whose eyes would have been scious of this array at the interposition of the synic miracle? Yet in the picture of this subject by the artist of the "Belshazzars Feast" no ignoble work either -- the marshalling and landscape of the war is everything, the miracle sinks into ae of the day; and the eye may "dart through rank and file traverse" for some minutes, before it shall discover, among his armed followers, which is Joshua! Not modern art alone, but a, where only it is to be found if anywhere, be detected erring, from defect of this imaginative faculty. The world has nothing to show of the preternatural in painting, transding the figure of Lazarus bursting his grave-clothes in the great picture at Aeins. It seems a thiween two beings. A ghastly horror at itself struggles with nerehending gratitude at sed life bestowed. It ot fet that it was a ghost. It has hardly felt that it is a body. It has to tell of the world of spirits. Was it from a feeling, that the crowd of half-impassioned by-standers, and the still more irrelevant herd of passers-by at a distance, who have not heard or but faintly have been told of the passing miracle, admirable as the are in design and hue -- for it is a glorified work -- do not respond adequately to the a -- that the single figure of the Lazarus has been attributed to Michael Angelo, and the mighty Sebastian unfairly robbed of the fame of the greater half of the i? Now that there were not indifferent passers-by within actual scope of the eyes of those present at the miracle, to whom the sound of it had but faintly, or not at all, reached, it would be hardihood to deny; but would they see them? or the mind in the ception of it admit of suing objects? it think of them at all? or what associating league to the imagination there be between the seers, and the seers not, of a prebbr>藏书网</abbr>sential miracle?
Were an artist to paint upon demand a picture of a Dryad, we will ask whether, in the present low state of expectation, the patron would not, ht not to be fully satisfied with a beautiful naked figure recumbent under wide-stretched oaks? Disseat those woods, and place the same figure among fountains, and falls of pellucid water, and you have a -- Naiad! Not so in a rough print we have seen after Julio Romano, we think -- for it is long since -- there, by no process, with mere ge of se, could the figure have reciprocated characters. Long, grotesque, fantastic, yet with a grace of her owiful in volution and distortion, lio her atural tree, co-twisting with its limbs her own, till both seemed either -- these, animated brahose, disanimated members -- yet the animal aable lives suffitly kept distinct -- his Dryad lay -- -an approximation of two natures, which to ceive, it must be seen; analogous to, not the same with, the delicacies of Ovidian transformations.
To the lowest subjects, and, to a superficial prehension, the most barren, the Great Masters gave loftiness and fruitfulness. The large eye of genius saw in the meanness of present subjects their capabilities of treatment from their relations to some and Past or Future. How has Raphael -- we must still linger about the Vati -- treated the humble craft of the ship-builder, in his "Building of the Ark?" It is in that scriptural series, to which we have referred, and which, judging from some fine rough old graphic sketches of them which we possess, seem to be of a higher and more poetic grade thahe Cartoons. The dim of sight are the timid and the shrinking. There is a cowardi modern art. As the Fren, of whom Ces friend made the prophetic guess at Rome, from the beard and horns of the Moses of Michael Angelo collected no inferences beyond that of a He Goat and uto; so from this subjeere meiise, it would instinctively turn away, as from one incapable of iure with any grandeur. The dock-yards at Woolwich would object derogatory associations. The depot at Chatham would he the mote and the beam in its intellectual eye. But not to the nautical preparations in the shipyards of Civita Vecchia did Raphael look for instrus, when he imagihe Building of the Vessel that was to be servatory of the wrecks of the species of drowned mankind. Iensity of the a, he keeps ever out of sight the meanness of the operation. There is the Patriarch, in calm forethought, and with holy presce, giving dires. And there are his agents -- the solitary but suffit Three hewing, sawing, every oh the might and earness of a Demiurgus; under some instinctive rather than teical guidance; giant-muscled; every one a Hercules, or liker to those Vulian Three, that in sounding caverns under Mongibellht in fire -- Brontes, and black Steropes, and Pyra, So work the workmen that should repair a world!
Artists again err in the founding of poetic with pictorial objects. Iter, the exterior acts are nearly every thing, the unseen qualities as nothing. Othellos color -- the infirmities and corpulence of a Sir John Falstaff -- do they haunt us perpetually in the reading? or are they obtruded upon our ceptions oime for y-hat we are lost in admiration at the respective moral or intellectual attributes of the character? But in a picture Othello is always a Blackamoor; and the other only Plump Jack. Deeply corporealised and ened hopelessly in the grovelliers of externality, must be the mind, to which, in its better moments, the image of the high-souled, high-intelligenced Quixote -- the errant Star of Knighthood, made more tender by eclipse -- has never preseself, divested from the unhallowed apa of a Sancho, or a rabblement at the heels of Rosihat man has read his book by halves; he has laughed mistaking his authors purport, which was -- tears. The artist that pictures Quixote (and it is in this degrading point that he is every season held up at our Exhibitions) in the shallow hope of exg mirth, would have joihe rabble at the heels of his starved steed. We wish not to see that terfeited, which we would not have wished to see in the reality. scious of the heroiside of the noble Quixote, who, on hearing that his withered person assing, would have stepped over his threshold to gaze upon his forlorn habiliments, an the "strange bedfellows which misery brings a man acquainted with?" Shade of Cervantes! who in thy Sed Part could put into the mouth of thy Quixote those high aspirations of a super-chivalrous gallantry, where he replies to one of the shepherdesses, apprehehat he would spoil their pretty -works, and inviting him to be a guest with them, in ats like these: "Truly, fairest Lady, Actaeon was not more astonished when he saw Diana bathing herself at the fountain, than I have been in beholding your beauty: I end the manner of your pastime, and thank you for your kind offers; and, if I may serve you, so I may be sure you will be obeyed, you may and me: for my profession is this, To shew myself thankful, and a doer of good to all sorts of people, especially of the rank that your person shows you to be; and if those s, as they take up but a little piece of ground, should take up the whole world, I would seek out new worlds to pass through, rather thahem: and (he adds,) that you may give credit to this my exaggeration, behold at least he that promiseth you this, is Don Quixote de la Mancha, if haply this h e to your hearing." Illustrious Romancer! were the "fine frenzies," which possessed the brain of thy own Quixote, a fit subject, as in this Sed Part, to be exposed to the jeers of Duennas and Servio be monstered, and shown up at the heartless bas of great men? Was that pitiable infirmity, whi thy First Part misleads him, always from within, into half-ludicrous, but more than half-passionable and admirable errors, not infli enough from heaven, that men by studied artifices must devise and practise upon the humour, to inflame where they should soothe it? Why, Goneril would have blushed to practise upon the abdicated king at this rate, and the she-wan not have eo play the pranks on his fled wits, which thou hast made thy Quixo<dfn></dfn>te suffer in Duchesses halls, and at the hands of that unworthy nobleman.*
In the First Adventures, even, it needed all the art of the most mate artist in the Book way that the world hath y<big></big>et seen, to keep up in the mind of the reader the heroic attributes of the character without relaxing; so as absolutely that they shall suffer no alloy from the debasing fellowship of the . If it ever obtrudes itself as a disharmony, are we ined to laugh; or not, rather, to indulge a trary emotion? Cervantes, stung, perce, by the relish with which his Reading Public had received the fooleries of the man, more to their palates than the generosities of the master, in the sequel let his pen run riot, lost the harmony and the balance, and sacrificed a great idea to the taste of his poraries. We know that in the present day the Knight has fewer admirers than the Squire. Anticipating, what did actually happen to him -- as afterwards it did to his scarferior follower, the Author of "Guzman de Alfarache "-that some less knowing hand would prevent him by a spurious Sed Part: and judging, that it would be easier for his petitor to out -- bid him in the icalities, than in the romance, of his work, he abandoned his Knight, and has fairly set up the Squire for his Hero. For what else has he unsealed the eyes of Sancho; and instead of that twilight state of semi-insanity -- the madness at sedhand -- the tagion, caught from a stronger mind ied -- that war between native ing, and hereditary deference, with which he has hitherto apanied his master -- two for a pair almost -- does he substitute a dht Knave, with open eyes, for his own ends only following a fessed Madman; and at oime to lay, if not actually laying hands upon him! From the moment that Sancho loses his reverence, Don Quixote is bee a -- treatable lunatic. Our artists handle him accly.
* Yet from this Sed Part, our cried-up pictures are mostly selected; the waiting-women with beards, &c.
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