Hence the temptation to paint down to the gaudiest pictures, instead of up or into the pure intensity of nature. Why should there not be some large public hall to which artists may send their pictures at any time when they are perfected? but, better still, let purchasers frequent the studios, as they did of old, full of love and knowledge. Why will we insist in pressing our Art and our taste, as we did long ago our religion and our God, upon our neighbours? Why not trust to time, and to cultivating our own tastes earnestly, thoroughly, humbly, and for ourselves, filling our houses with the best of everything, and making all welcome to see them, and believing that the grandchildren of those who come to see our Turners and Wilkies and Hogarths will be wiser and more refined than we? It is most lamentable to witness the loss of money, of energy, and in a measure of skill, and, above all, of time, on those engravings, which no one but a lodging-keeper frames, and those Parian statuettes and Etruscan pitchers and tazzas of all sorts, which no one thinks half so much of, or gets half so much real pleasure and good from, as from one of John Leech's woodcuts. One true way to encourage Art is to buy and enjoy Punch. There is more fun, more good drawing, more good sense, more beauty in John Leech's Punch pictures, than in all the Art-Union illustrations, engraving, statuettes, etc. etc., put together. Could that mighty Potentate have been got up, think you, by a committee of gentlemen, and those drawings educed by proffered prizes? No; they came out, and have flourished according to a law as natural and as effective as the law of seed-time and harvest; and Art, as a power to do good, will never reach its full perfection till it is allowed to walk at liberty, and follow the course of all other productions, that of supply and demand, individual demand and voluntary supply. It is not easy to tell how far back these well-meaning, zealous, deluded men who have managed these "encouragements," have put the progress of the nation in its power of knowing and feeling true Art.
One other heresy I must vent, and that is to protest against the doctrine that scientific knowledge is of much direct avail to the artist; it may enlarge his mind as a man, and sharpen and strengthen his nature, but the knowledge of anatomy is, I believe, more a snare than anything else to an artist as such. Art is the tertium quid resulting from observation and imagination, with skill and love and downrightness as their executors; anything that interferes with the action of any of these, is killing to the soul of Art. Now, painting has to do simply and absolutely with the surfaces, with the appearances of things; it knows and cares nothing for what is beneath and beyond, though if it does its own part aright it indicates them. Phidias and the early Greeks, there is no reason to believe, ever dissected even a monkey, much less a man, and yet where is there such skin, and muscle, and substance, and breath of life? When Art became scientific, as among the Romans, and lost its heart in filling its head, see what became of it: anatomy offensively thrust in your face, and often bad anatomy; men skinned and galvanized, not men alive and in action. In the same way in landscape, do you think Turner would have painted the strata in an old quarry, or done Ben Cruachan more to the quick, had he known all about geology, gneiss, and greywacke, and the Silurian system? Turner might have been what is called a better-informed man, but we question if he would have been so good, not to say a better representer of the wonderful works of God, which were painted on his retina, and in his inner chamber—the true Camera lucida, the chamber of imagery leading from the other,—and felt to his finger-tips. No; science and poetry are to a nicety diametrically opposed, and he must be a Shakspere and a Newton, a Turner and a Faraday all in one, who can consort much with both without injury to each. It is not what a man has learned from others, not even what he thinks, but what he sees and feels, which makes him a painter.
The moral from all this is, love Art, and if you choose, practise Art. Purchase Art for itself alone, and in the main for yourself alone. If you so do, you will encourage Art to more purpose than if you spent thousands a year in Art-Unions, and in presenting the public with what pleased you; just as a man does most good by being good. Goldsmith puts it in his inimitable way—"I was ever of opinion that the honest man, who married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population."
I have said those things strongly, abruptly, and perhaps rudely; but my heart is in the matter. Art is part of my daily food, like the laughter of children, and the common air, the earth, the sky; it is an affection, not a passion to come and go like the gusty wind, nor a principle cold and dead; it penetrates my entire life, it is one of the surest and deepest pleasures, one of the refuges from "the nature of things," as Bacon would say, into that enchanted region, that "ampler æther," that "diviner air," where we get a glimpse not only of a Paradise that is past, but of a Paradise that is to come.
There is one man amongst us who has done more to breathe the breath of life into the literature and the philosophy of Art, who has "encouraged" it ten thousand times more effectually than all our industrious Coles and anxious Art-Unions, and that is the author of Modern Painters. I do not know that there is anything in our literature, or in any literature, to compare with the effect of this one man's writings. He has by his sheer force of mind, and fervour of nature, the depth and exactness of his knowledge, and his amazing beauty and power of language, raised the subject of Art from being subordinate and technical, to the same level with Poetry and Philosophy. He has lived to see an entire change in the public mind and eye, and, what is better, in the public heart, on all that pertains to the literature and philosophy of representative genius. He combines its body, and its soul. Many before him wrote about its body, and some well; a few, as Charles Lamb and our great "Titmarsh," touched its soul: it was left to John Ruskin to do both. *
Of this picture it is not easy to speak. We do not at first care to say much about feelings such as it produces. It is, to our liking, Wilkie's most perfect picture. If they were all to be destroyed but one, we would keep this. His "Blind Man's Buff," his "Penny Wedding," his "Village Politicians," and many others, have more humour,—his "John Knox preaching," more energy,—his "John Knox at the Sacrament," more of heaven and victorious faith; but there is more of human nature, more of the human heart, in this, than in any of the others. It is full of
"The still, sad music of humanity
still and sad, but yet musical, by reason of its true ideality, the painter acting his part as reconciler of men to their circumstances. This is one great end of poetry and painting. Even when painful and terrible in their subjects, "they are of power, by raising pity and fear or terror, to purge the mind of suchlike passions,—that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight or, in the words of Charles Lamb, "they dispose the mind to a meditative tenderness."
But to return to this most touching and impressive picture. What an immediate hold it took of us! How that sad family was in our mind for days after, and how we found ourselves wondering if nothing could be done for them! It is just about as difficult to bring the mind to criticise it, as it would be to occupy ourselves in thinking why and how we were affected, if we were ourselves to witness the scene in actual life. We would be otherwise occupied. Our eyes first fell on what is the immediate occasion of it all, the paper warrant; you feel its sharp parallelogram cutting your retina, it is the whitest, and therefore the first thing you see; and then on the husband. What utter sadness,—what a sober certainty of misery,—how uncomplaining, as if he could not speak, his firm mouth keeping it to himself! His eyes are all but shut,—how their expression is given, seems to us quite marvellous; and his attitude cast down, but not abject—bearing it like a man. How his fingers are painted, and his careless, miserable limbs, his thin cheek, with that small hungry hollow mark in its centre! What a dignity and beauty in his face! This is to us a finer head than the wonderful one in Retzsch's "Man playing at Chess with the Devil for his Soul," and this is not saying little. Reason and steady purpose are still uppermost.
Not so with his poor wife: her heart is fast failing; she is silent too; but she is fainting, and just about to slip off her chair in utter unconsciousness; her eyes are blind; the bitterness of death is gathering on her soul. She is forgetting her sucking child, as she is all outward things; it is rolling off her knee, and is caught by her motherly daughter; while her younger brother, whose expressive back is only seen, is pulling his father's coat, as if to say, "Look at mother!" Behind are two neighbours come in, and sympathizing both, but differently; the meek look of the one farthest away, what can be finer than that! The paleness of the fainting mother is rendered with perfect truth. What an eye the painter must have had!—how rapid, how true, how retentive of every impression! Behind these silent sufferers goes on the action of the story. The brother, a young, good-looking, fearless fellow, is shaking his fist and fixing his angry eyes on the constable, who returns the look as resolutely, but without anger. This figure of the constable is in many respects as astonishing as anything in the picture. He is "a man with a presence"—inexorable, prompt, not to be trifled with; but he is not, as many other artists would have made him, and wished us to call him, "the brutal Bailiff." He is doing his duty, as he is plainly saying, pointing to his warrant, and nothing more: he cannot help it, and the law must have its course. What a fine figure he is, the only one standing erect, and what rich colour in his waistcoat! Seated on the bed is the smart, indifferent clerk, with his pale, smug countenance. A man of business, and of nothing else, he seems to be running up the value of these bedclothes,—that bed, with its sad-coloured curtains, and all its memories of births and deaths. Behind is a man whose face we don't exactly make out: he has a sleepy, tipsy, altogether unknowable sort of expression. We don't think this a defect in the painter: it is the most likely thing in the world that such a person would be there.
Then comes the cobbler, straight from his stall, where, as from a throne, he dispenses his "think,"—and a strong think it is,—to all comers, upon all subjects. He has opinions of his own about most things, but chiefly upon civil, ecclesiastical, and marital jurisdiction, "with a power of law" in him. He is enjoining submission and composure upon all onlookers. His hands, how they speak! the one to the bailiff, deferential, confidential, gently deprecatory; the other, to the company in general, imperative, final, minatory. He is vindicating the law, and laying it down somewhat unseasonably, and is even hinting that they should rejoice at its arrangements. That brave old woman, inspired by anger, is bearing down upon both cobbler and bailiff, with occasional darts of her furious eye at the unconscious clerk. This woman's face is expressive beyond all description. Look at her fore-finger, as straight, as well-aimed, as unmistakably deadly in intention, as a sword, or rather pistol; and, could intensity of will have made a fire, we may reckon on its shot having been soon into the stately bailiff. But she has a sword in her tongue: how it is plying its work from behind these old straggling teeth!—no man can tame it; and her cruel, furious eyes, aiming every word, sending it home.
How well Shakspere describes this brilliant old lady!—"She is misusing him past the endurance of a block: an oak with but one green leaf would have answered her. She huddles jest upon jest, with such impossible conveyance, that he stands like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at him!"
What a contrast to her, the woman behind, "her face foul with weeping," crying her very eyes and soul out, like a child!
What a picture! so simple, so great, so full (to use a word of Wilkie's own) of intellectuality—and the result, though sad, salutary. How strange! We never saw these poor sufferers, and we know they have no actual existence; and yet our hearts go out to them,—we are moved by their simple sorrows. We shall never forget that enduring man and that fainting mother.
There is another personage yet to speak of. Some of our readers may never have seen him: we can assure them he has seen them. This is the dog,—the family dog,—the friend of them all, from baby upwards. We find him just where he should be, and at his own proper work. He is under his master's chair, and at his feet, looking out from between his legs. His master, as Burns has with wonderful meaning expressed it, is his god. "Man is the god of the dog." * How much may we learn from this!
With that fine instinct, compounded of curiosity, experience, and affection, he has made his observations on the state of things! All is not right, he sees,—something very far wrong. He never before saw her look in that way, or him so quiet and strange. Accordingly, as he is eminently practical, and holds with Hume and many great men, that all we know of causation is one thing following upon another (being a dog, and not a philosopher, he pays no attention to the qualification "invariably"), and, putting two things together, he finds this dismal, unintelligible state of matters following upon the entrance of these three strange men. He has been doing diligence, and serving and executing warrants, in his own wild and vigorous way, upon their six legs—specially, we doubt not, upon the tight pantaloons of that cold-blooded clerk. They are so tempting! Having been well kicked by all for his pains, he has slunk into his den, where he sits biding his time. What a pair of wide awake, dangerous eyes! No "speculation" in them— no looking before or after; but looking into the present—the immediate. Poor fellow, his spare diet for some time back—his half-filled bicker—have not lessened his natural acuteness, his sharpness of teeth and temper. Our readers will, we fear, be tired of all this about a dog, and "such a vulgar little dog." We happen to hold high views on the moral and social bearings of dogs, especially of terriers, those affectionate and great-hearted little ruffians; but as our friends consider us not sane on this point, and as we (as is common in such cases) think quite the reverse, we shall not now dispute the matter. One thing wre may say, that we are sure Wilkie would have taken our side. He has a dog, and often more, in almost everyone of his pictures; and such dogs! not wee men in hairy skins, pretending to be dogs. His dogs are dogs in expression, as well as in body. Look, in his engravings, at the dog in the "Rent Day," in "Blind Man's Buff," that incomparable one, especially, who is flattened hopelessly and ludicrously under the weight of a chair and a man—how utterly quenched, and yet how he is giving a surly grin at his own misery; and the dog in the Gentle Shepherd, as gentle as his master; and that great-headed mastiff under the gun-carriage—a very "dog of war"—in "The Maid of Saragossa"—to us the hero of the picture; and, above all, the little pet dog in the "Only Daughter"—its speaking, imploring ways, as it looks to its dying mistress. What a wonderful art! We cannot leave this inestimable picture, without expressing our personal gratitude to our public-spirited Academy for furnishing us every year with some of this great master's works. We trust we shall have one of his, and one of Turner's every year. They elevate public feeling-; they tend, like all productions of high and pure genius, to the glory of God, and the good of mankind; they are a part of the common wealth. We end our notice of this picture by bidding our readers return to it, and read it over and over, through and through. Let them observe its moral effect—not to make the law and its execution hateful or unsightly, or vice or improvidence interesting or picturesque. Wilkie takes no side but that of our common nature, and does justice to the bailiff as well as to the distressed family. We have here no hysterical passions—no shaking of fists against the heavens, and sending up thither mingled blasphemy and prayer, as some melodramatic genius might have done. Let them remark the stillness of the great sufferers, and how you know what they have come through—the consummate art in arranging the parts of the subject—its simplicity at first—its fulness afterwards when looked into—more in it than meets the eye. Mind must be exercised upon it to bring out its mind. The white table-cloth, leading the eye at once to the heart of the picture; the table dividing the two groups, and preventing its being a crowd; the figure of the father given entire, indicating his total dejection from head to foot,—his hands, his finger-nails,—the dignity and self-containment of his sorrow: all the hands are wonderful, and above all, as we have noticed, the cobbler's;—the general air of the house not squalid—no beggarly elements—no horrors of actual starvation—all respectable, and poverty-stricken and scrimp;—the bone lying on the floor, on which our small four-footed Spartan may have been rehearsing his "'Pleasures of Memory," and whiling and whittling away his idle hours, and cheating his angry hunger:—the bed—its upright posts—the stately Bailiff alone as erect and firm;—the colour of the curtains—their very texture displayed; the colouring sober, powerful, not loud (to borrow from the ear);—the absence of all effort, or mere cleverness, or pretension; no trace of handicraft; you know it to be painted—you do not feel it; the composition as fine, as musical, as Raphael's;—the satisfying result; your whole nature, moral and affectionate—your inward and outward eye—fed with food convenient for them.
It has long been a question in the ethics of fiction, whether sympathy with ideal sorrows be beneficial or mischievous. That it is pleasurable we all know. And a distinction has been made between pity as an emotion ending with its own gratification, and pity as a motive, a moving power, passing, by a necessity of its nature, into action and practical performance.
But, without going into the subject, we may give, as a good practical rule, let your moral sense be so clear and healthy as to discern at once the genuine objects of pity; and then, let them be fictitious or real, you may pity them safely with all your might. In either case you will get good, and the good will not end with yourself, even in the first case.
The story of Joseph, for instance, is to us fictitious, or rather, it is ideal; and in weeping over him, or over his heart-broken father, we know we can do them no good, or give them no sympathy; but where will you find a merely human story more salutary, more delightful, more appropriate, to every one of our intellectual, moral, and, let us add, our imaginative and æsthetical faculties?
We are inclined to rank Hogarth and Wilkie as the most thoughtful of British painters, and two of the greatest of all painters.
Some people, even now, speak of Hogarth as being at best a sort of miraculous caricaturist, and a shockingly faithful delineator of low vice, and misery, and mirth, but deficient in knowledge of the human figure, and in academical skill, and as having fallen short of the requirements of "high art."
We thought Charles Lamb had disposed of this untruth long ago; and so he did. But some folks don't know Charles Lamb, and we shall, for their sakes, give them a practical illustration of his meaning, and of ours. If Hogarth did not know the naked human figure (and we deny that he did not), he knew the human face and the naked human heart—he knew what of infinite good and evil, joy and sorrow, life and death, proceeded out of it. Look at the second last of the series of "Mariage à la Mode."
If you would see what are the wages of sin, and how, after being earned, they are beginning to be paid, look on that dying man,—his body dissolving, falling not like his sword, firm and entire, but as nothing but a dying thing could fall, his eyes dim with the shadow of death, in his ears the waters of that tremendous river, all its billows going over him, the life of his comely body flowing out like water, the life of his soul!—who knows what it is doing? Fleeing through the open window, undressed, see the murderer and adulterer vanish into the outer darkness of night, anywhere, rather than remain; and that guilty, beautiful, utterly miserable creature on her knee, her whole soul, her whole life, in her eyes, fixed on her dying husband, dying for and by her! What is in that poor desperate brain, who can tell! Mad desires for life, for death,—prayers, affections, infinite tears,—the past, the future,—her maiden innocence, her marriage, his love, her guilt,—the grim end of it all,—the night-watch with their professional faces,—the weary wind blowing Through the room, the prelude, as it were, of that whirlwind in which that lost soul is soon to pass away. The man who could paint so as to suggest all this, is a great man and a great painter.
Wilkie has, in like manner, been often misunderstood and misplaced. He is not of the Dutch school,—he is not a mere joker upon canvas,—he can move other things besides laughter; and he rises with the unconscious ease of greatness to what ever height he chooses. Look at John Knox's head in "The Administering the Sacrament in Calder House." Was the eye of faith ever so expressed, the seeing things that are invisible?
Hogarth was more akin to Michael Angelo: they both sounded the same depths, and walked the same terrible road. Wilkie has more of Raphael,—his affectionate sweetness, his pleasantness, his grouping, his love of the beautiful.
Duncan possessed certain primary qualities of mind, without which no man, however gifted, can win and keep true fame. He had a vigorous and quick understanding, invincible diligence, a firm will, and that combination, in action, of our intellectual, moral, and physical natures, which all acknowledge, but cannot easily define, manliness.
As an artist, he had true genius, that incommunicable gift, which is born and dies with its possessor, never again to reappear with the same image and superscription. The direction of this faculty in him was towards beauty of colour and form,—its tendency was objective rather than subjective; the outward world came to him, and he noted with singular vigilance and truth all its phenomena. His perception of them was immediate, intense, and exact, and he could reproduce them on his canvas with astonishing dexterity and faithfulness. This made his sketches from nature quite startling, from their direct truth. There are two of them in Mr. Hay's gallery,—one, a girl with her bonnet on, sitting knitting at a Highland fireside; the other, a quaint old vacant room in George Heriot's Hospital.
But his glory, his peculiar excellence, was his colouring; there was a charm about it, a thing that could not be understood, but was felt. How transparent its depth,—how fresh,—how rich to gorgeousness,—how luminous, as from within!
His power over expression was inferior to his colouring. Not that he can be justly said to have failed in his exercise of this faculty; he rather did not attempt its highest range. His mind lingered delighted, at his eye; and if his mind did proceed inwards, it soon returned, and contented itself with that form of expression which, if we may so speak, lies in closest contact with material beauty. Therefore it is that he often brought out, with great felicity and force, some simple feeling, some fixed type of character common to a class, but did not care to ascend to the highest heaven of invention, or stir the depths of imagination and passion. Nature was perceived by him, rather than imagined; and he transferred rather than transfigured her likeness. As a consequence, his works delight more than move, interest more than arrest. In a remarkable sketch left behind him of an intended picture of Wishart administering the Sacrament before his execution, there is one truly ideal head,—a monk, who is overlooking the touching solemnity, and in whose pinched, withered face are concentrated the uttermost bigotry, malice, and vileness of nature, his cruel small eyes gleaming as if "set on fire of hell." Duncan's mind was romantic, rather than historical. We see this in his fine picture of "Prince Charles's Entry into Edinburgh." He brings that great pageant out of its own time into ours, rather than sends us back to it. This arose, as we have said, from the objective turn of his mind; and would have rendered him unsurpassed in the representation of contemporaneous events. What a picture, had he lived, would he have made of the Queen at Taymouth! the masterly, the inimitable sketch of which is now in the Exhibition. We have an ancient love of one of his early pictures,—"Cuddy Headrig and Jenny Dennistoun." Cuddy has just climbed up with infinite toil; and, breathless with it and love, he is resting on the window-sill on the tips of his toes and fingers, in an attitude of exquisite awkwardness, staring, with open mouth and eyes, and perfect blessedness, on his buxom, saucy Jenny. Duncan's fame will, we are sure, rest chiefly on his portraits. They are unmatched in modern times, except by one or two of Wilkie's, and that most noticeable "Head of a Lady," by Harvey, in the inner octagon. Duncan's portraits are liker than their originals. He puts an epitome of a man's character into one look. The likeness of Dr. Chalmers has something of everything in him,—the unconsciousness of childhood,—the fervour of victorious manhood,—the wise contemplativeness of old age,—the dreamy inexpressive eye of genius, in which his soul lies, "like music slumbering on its instrument," ready to awake when called—the entire loveableness of the man—the light of his countenance,—his heavenly smile,—are all there, and will carry to after times the express image of his person. How exquisite the head of D. O. Hill's daughter! so full of love and simpleness, the very realization of Wordsworth's lines:—
"Loving she is, and tractable, though wild,
And innocence hath privilege in her
To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes,
And feats of cunning."
There was something mournful and touching in the nature and progress of the last illness of this great artist. His unresting energy, his manly diligence, urged him beyond his powers; his brain gave way, and blindness crept slowly on him. It was a sort of melancholy consolation that, as the disease advanced, his intense susceptibility and activity were subdued, when their exercise must have only produced misery and regret. What is now infinitely more important is, that those who knew him best have little doubt, that while the outward world, with its cares, its honours, its wondrous beauty, its vain shows, was growing dim, and fast vanishing away, the eyes of his understanding became more and more enlightened, and that he died in the faith of the truth. If so, he is, we may rest assured, in a region where his intense perception of beauty, his delight in all lovely forms, and in the goodliness of all visible things, will have full exercise and satisfaction, and where that gift which he carries with him as a part of himself will be dedicated to the glory of its Giver,—the Father of Lights.
We believe it to be more than a pleasant dream, that in the regions of the blessed each man shall retain for ever his innate gifts, and shall receive and give delight by their specific exercise. Such a thought gives, as it ought, to this life an awful, but not undelightful significance. He who, in his soul, and by a necessity of his nature, is a poet or a painter, will, in a spiritual sense, remain so for ever.
We miss Turner's great landscape, "Palestrina," with its airy fulness and freedom,—its heaven and earth making one imagery,—its daylight, its sunlight, its magical shadows,—that city set upon a hill, each house clinging to the rocks like swallows' nests,—its waters murmuring on for ever, and sending up their faint steam into the fragrant air, that oblique bridge, so matchlessly drawn,—those goats browsing heedless of us,—in one word, its reality, and its something more!
One day last year, while waiting for a friend, we sat down in the rooms, and were thinking of absent things; some movement made us raise our eyes, and for that instant we were in Italy. We were in the act of wondering what we should see, when we reached the other end of that cool and silent avenue; and if one of these goats had looked up and stared at us, we should have hardly been surprised. It had, while it lasted, "the freshness and the glory of a dream."
We shall never forget this picture. It gave us a new sensation, a new and a higher notion of what the mind of man can put into, and bring out of, landscape painting; how its representative and suggestive truthfulness may be perfect, forming the material elements,—the body, as it were, of the picture,—while, at the same time, there may be superadded that fine sense of the indefinable relation of the visible world to mental emotion, which is its essence and vivifying soul.
How original, how simple, its composition! That tall tree, so inveterately twisted on itself, dividing the scene into two subjects, each contrasting with and relieving the other; the open country lying under the full power of the flaming mid-day sun; and that long alley, with its witchery of gleam and shadow, its cool air, a twilight of its own, at noon!
Nothing is more wonderful about Turner than the resolute way in which he avoids all imitation, even when the objects are in the foreground and clearly defined. He gives you an oak, or a beech, or an elm, so as to be unmistakable, and yet he never thinks of giving their leaves botanically, so as that we might know the tree from a leaf. He gives us it not as we know it, but as we should see it from that distance; and he gives us all its characteristics that would carry that length, and no more. He is determined to give an idea, not a copy, of an oak. This is beautifully seen in his "Ivy Bridge,"—a picture, the magical simplicity of which grows upon every look. There is a birch there, the lady of the wood, which any nurseryman would tell you was a birch; and yet look into it, and what do you see? Turner sets down results of sight, not the causes of these results. His way is the true æsthetic,—the other is the scientific.
We plead guilty to an inveterate, and, it may be, not altogether rational, antipathy to Mr. Maclise's pictures. As vinegar to the teeth, as smoke to the eyes, or as the setting of a saw to the ears, so are any productions of his pencil we have met with to our æsthetic senses. We get no pleasure from them except that of hearty anger and strong contrast. Their hot, raw, garish colour—the chalky dry skin of his women—the grinning leathern faces of his men—and the entire absence of toning—are as offensive to our eyesight as the heartlessness, the grimace, the want of all naturalness in expression or feeling, in his human beings, are to our moral taste.
There is, no doubt, wonderful cleverness and facility in drawing legs and arms in all conceivable positions, considerable dramatic power in placing his figures, and a sort of striking stage effect, that makes altogether a smart, effective scene; and if he had been able to colour like Wilkie, there would have been a certain charm about them. But you don't care—at least we don't care—to look at them again; they in no degree move us out of ourselves into the scene. They are so many automata, and no more. To express shortly, and by example, what we feel about his picture of "Hunt the Slipper," we would say it is in all points the reverse of Wilkie's picture opposite, "The Distraining for Rent," in colour, conception, treatment, bodily expression, spiritual meaning, moral effect. Mr. Maclise's women are pretty, not beautiful; prim, not simple: their coyness, as old Fuller would say, is as different from true modesty as hemlock is from parsley—there is a meretriciousness about them all, which, as it is entirely gratuitous, is very disagreeable. The vicar is not Oliver Goldsmith's Dr. Primrose.
The best thing in the picture is the mantelpiece, with its odds and ends: the china cups and saucers, and that Hindu god, sitting in dropsical dignity—these are imitated marvellously, as also is the old trunk in the right corner. As far as we have seen, Mr. Maclise's gift lies in this small fancy line. We remember some game and a cabinet in his "Robin Hood," that would have made Horace Walpole or our own Kirkpatrick Sharpe's mouth water; the nosegays of the two London ladies are also cleverly painted, but too much of mere fac-similes. Nothing can be worse in colour or in aerial perspective than the quaint old shrubbery seen through the window; it feels nearer our eye than the figures. As to the figures, perhaps the most life-like in feature and movement are the two bad women, Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs and Lady Blarney.
The introduction of them into the story is almost the only blemish of that exquisite piece, and we have still less pleasure in seeing their portraits. How different from Hogarth's terrible pictures of the same miserable class! There you see the truth; you can imagine the past and the future, as well as perceive the present. Beauty, grace, often tenderness, sinking into ruin under the steady influence of a life of sin, make them objects at once of our profoundest compassion—and of our instant reprobation. But we must stay our quarrel with Mr. Maclise. We have perhaps been unlucky in the specimens of his genius that we have seen—the only other two being the "Bohemians" and "Robin Hood the first a picture of great but disagreeable power—a sort of imbroglio of everything sensual and devilish—the very superfluity of naughtiness —as bad, and not so good as the scene in the Brocken in Goethe's Faust. Mr. Maclise may find a list of subjects more grateful to the moral sense, more for his own good and that of his spectators, and certainly not less fitted to bring into full play all the best powers of his mind, and all the craft of his hand, in Phil. iv. 8.
"Robin Hood" was rather better, because there were fewer women in it; but we could never get beyond that universal grin which it seemed the main function of Robin and his "merrie men" to sustain. Of the landscape we may say, as we did of his figures and Wilkie's, that it was in every respect the reverse of Turner's.
We have been assured by those whose taste we know in other matters to be excellent, that Mr. Maclise is a great genius, a man of true imagination; and that his "Sleeping Beauty," his scene from Macbeth, and some others, are the proofs of this. We shall wait till we see them, and hope to be converted when we do; but, meanwhile, we suspect that his Imagination may turn out to be mere Fancy, which are as different, the one from the other, as word-wit is from deep humour, or as Queen Mab (a purely fanciful description) is from Miranda or Ariel. Fancy is aggregative and associative,—Imagination is creative, motive. As Wordsworth in one of his prefaces beautifully says,—"The law under which the processes of Fancy are carried on is as capricious as the accidents of things, and the effects are surprising, playful, ludicrous, or pathetic, as the objects happen to be appositely produced or fortunately combined. Fancy depends upon the rapidity and profusion with which she scatters her thoughts and images, trusting that their numbers, and the felicity with which they are linked together, will make amends for the want of individual value; or she prides herself upon the curious subtlety, and the successful elaboration, with which she can detect their lurking affinities. If she can win you over to her purpose, she cares not how unstable or transitory maybe her influence, knowing that it will not be out of her power to resume it on apt occasion. But Imagination is conscious of an indestructible dominion,—the soul may fall away from it, not being able to sustain its grandeur; but if once felt and acknowledged, by no other faculty of the mind can it be relaxed, impaired, or diminished. Fancy is given to quicken and beguile the temporal parts of our nature,—Imagination to awaken and to support the eternal." The one is the plaything, the other the food, the elixir of the soul. All great poets, as Homer, Shakspere, Milton, and Burns, have both faculties, and find fit work for each; and so have the great painters, Titian, Veronese, Albert Durer, Hogarth, Wilkie. We suspect Mr. Maclise has little else than fancy, and makes it do the work of both. There must be something radically defective in the higher qualities of poetic sensibility and ideality in any man who could, as he has done in the lately published edition of Moore's Melodies, execute some hundreds of illustrations, without above three or four of them being such as you would ever care to see again, or, indeed, would recognise as having ever seen before.
We would not give such sweet humour, such maidenly simpleness, such exquisite mirth, such "quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles," as we can get in most of the current numbers of "Punch," from the hand of young Richard Doyle (1846), with drawing quite as astonishing, and far more expression,—for this sumptuous three-guinea quarto. Have our readers six-and-sixpence to spare?—then let them furnish wholesome fun and "un-reprovèd pleasure" for the eyes and the minds of the small men and women in the nursery, by buying "The Fairy Ring," illustrated by him.
It would not be easy to say which of these three delightful pictures gives the most delight; only, if we were forced to name which we should best like to possess, we would say, "Uncle Tom and his Wife for Sale,"—one of the most wonderful bits of genius and its handiwork we ever had the pleasure of enjoying and being the better of.
The others are "The Maid and the Magpie," and "The Pen, the Brush, and the Chisel,"—the latter presented by Lady Chantrey to Her Majesty, and having for its subjects Chantrey's well-known bust of Sir Walter in the clay, with the sculptor's tools lying beside it, and his finger prints, fresh and soft, full of thought and will, giving a fine realization of work going on. The expression of the then Great Unknown is very noble—he looks like a mighty shade; beside the bust is a terrier, such as only Sir Edwin can give, with a keen look, as if he too smelt some one. Two woodcocks are resting in front in a fold of the table-cloth; doubtless the two famous birds which Sir Francis brought down at one shot, and immortalized in marble. At the corner of the picture, and stealthily peering from behind the table-cloth, is a cat's head, not yet seeing the game, but nosing it. You can easily imagine the lively scrimmage when puss makes herself and her ends known, and when the unsuspected "Dandie" comes down upon her. The feeling and workmanship of this beautiful conceit is such as no one else could originate and express.
"The Maid and the Magpie" is a rustic tragedy told at a glance. It is milking-time, in a dreamy summer-day. Phillis,
"So buxom, blithe, and debonair,"
is filling her pail, her meek-eyed, lady-like cow—she is a high-bred Alderney—enjoying herself as cows know why during this process of evacuation and relief. Her glum, unsatisfied calf, who has been all the morning protesting and taking instruments, and craving extracts, and in vain, is looking and listening, hungry and sulky; he never can understand why he gets none of his mother's, of his own milk;—the leather muzzle, all bristling with sharp rusty nails, tells his miseries and his mother's too. Thestylis is leaning forward, awkward and eager, at the door, making love to Phillis in his own clumsy and effective way, whittling all the while destructively at the door-post with his knife. It is the old, old story. She has her back turned to him, and is pretending to be very deep in the milking, while her eye—which you see, and he doesn't—says something quite else. In the right corner are two goats, one a magnificent rugged billy. On the green beyond, in the sunshine, may be seen the geese making off on feet and wings to the well-known "henwife," who is at the wicket with her punctual mess. Among the trees, and up in the cloudless, sunny air, is the village spire, whose bells Thestylis doubtless hopes some day soon to set a ringing. All very pretty and innocent and gay. But look in the left corner,—as if he had this moment come in, he is just hopping into their paradise,—is that miscreant magpie, wrho, we all know, was a pilferer from the beginning, and who next moment, you know, will have noiselessly grabbed that fatal silver spoon in the posset-cup,—which Phillis can't see, for her heart is in her eye,—this same spoon, as we all know, bringing by and by death into that little world, and all their woe. We never remember the amari aliquid coming upon us so unawares, ugly and fell, like that old Toad squat at the ear of Eve. The drawing, the expression, the whole management of this little story, is exquisite. Perhaps there is a little overcrowding and huddling together in the byre; but it is a delicious picture, as wholesome and sweet as a cow's breath. You hear the music of the milk playing in the pail; you feel the gentle, rural naturalness of the whole scene.
Of "Uncle Tom and his Wife for Sale," it is not easy to speak in moderation, as assuredly it is impossible to look at it, and keep from bursting into tears and laughter all at once. Anything more saturated, more insufferably overflowing with the best fun and misery, with the oddest, homeliest humour and despair, we never before encountered.
"Uncle Tom" is a small, old, dusky bull-dog, with bandy legs and broad chest, and an amazing look of a nigger. His eyes are crunched up in an ecstasy of woe, the crystal tears hailing down his dark and knobby cheeks, "which witness huge affliction;" his mouth is open to the full, and one black stump is all we see of teeth; his tongue, out to the utmost, quivering with agitation and panting,—a tongue, the delicate, moist pink of which, like the petal of some tropical flower, is in wonderful contrast to the cavern—the jaws of darkness—out of which it is flung. And what is all this for? Is he in pain? No. Is he afraid? Not he; that is a sensation unknown to Tom. He is plainly as full of pluck, as "game" as was ever Crib or Molyneux. He is in this state of utter woe, because he is about to be sold, and his wife, "Aunt Chloe," the desire of his old eyes, may be taken from him, the mere idea of which has put him into this transport, so that he is written all over with lamentation, utterly begrutten, and done for. It is this touching combination of immense affection and ugliness, which brings out the pathetic-comic effect instantly, and to the uttermost. We never saw anything like it except Mr. Robson's Medea. Why is it that we cannot but laugh at this? It is no laughing matter with the honest and ugly and faithful old beast.
Chloe, who is chained to Tom, is, with the trick of her sex, sinking her own grief in sorrow for his. She is leaning fondly towards him, and looking up to him with a wonderful eye, anxious to comfort him, if she knew how. Examine the painting of that congested, affectionate organ, and you will see what true work is. And not less so the bricks which form the background; all represented with the utmost modesty and truth, not only of form and colour, but of texture.