Mengs. Anton Rafael Mengs (1728–1779), of Bohemian birth, best known by his fresco paintings.
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204. The sense aches at them. Othello, Act IV. Sc. 2.
205. John of Bologna. Born at Douai about 1524, died 1608, the greatest Italian sculptor, architect, and worker in bronze, after the death of Michael Angelo.
Professor Mezzofanti. Joseph Caspar Mezzofanti (1771–1848), who was created Cardinal in 1838, and who claimed to be able to express himself in seventy-eight languages.
Giotto. Giotto di Bondone (1266–76—1337), the inspirer of naturalistic painting in Italy.
Ghirlandaio. Domenico Bigordi (1449–1494), generally called Ghirlandaio, the Garland-maker (his father was a goldsmith), one of the greatest artists in his time, and the teacher of Michael Angelo.
206. Note. Dr. Gall. John Joseph Gall, the phrenologist (1758–1828). See vol. VII. The Plain Speaker, pp. 17 et seq. and 137 et seq.
207. By their works [fruits]. S. Matthew vii. 20.
July 22. Numbered XVII
And when she spake. The Faerie Queene, II., II. 24.
209. Cloud-clapt. Cf. ‘Cloud-capp’d towers.’ The Tempest, Act IV. Sc. 1.
211. My friend L. H. Leigh Hunt.
The rival families of the Gerardeschi and the ——. The missing word should be Visconti.
Enriched. Burns, Tam o’ Shanter, 16.
212. Enchants the world. Thomson, The Seasons, Summer, 1347.
Lord Burghersh. John Fane, eleventh Earl of Westmorland (1784–1859) was appointed minister plenipotentiary to Florence in 1814.
214. Alien Bill. In consequence of the flight from France during the Revolution, Alien Bills were passed in 1792–1793 giving the crown power to banish foreigners.
Molière’s Tartuffe. For the ordinance of the Archbishop of Paris see MM. Despois and Mesnard’s edition of Molière, vol. IV. p. 322.
Fishy fume. Paradise Lost, IV. 168.
215. Paved with good intentions. An old saying: Hazlitt probably had in mind Dr. Johnson’s use of it. (See Boswell’s Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, vol. II. p. 360.)
216. Omne tulit punctum. Horace, Ars Poet., 343.
218. Otiosa Æternitas. Milton’s Sylvæ, De Ideâ Platonicâ Quemadmodum Aristoteles Intellexit.
Redi. Francesco Redi (1626–1698), Italian physician, naturalist and poet. He helped in the compilation of the dictionary of the Academia Della Crusca. See Masson’s Life of Milton, 1881, vol. I. p. 786.
July 26. Numbered XVIII
219. Bandinello. Bartolommeo Bandinelli, sculptor, of Florence (1493–1560).
The Perseus of Benvenuto Cellini. See Roscoe’s translation of Cellini’s Memoirs, chapters 41, 43, etc.
220. Men of no mark or likelihood. 1 King Henry IV., Act III. Sc. 2.
221. Even in death there is animation too. Cf. ‘That were a theme might animate the dead,’ Cowper, Table Talk, 202.
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221. Forsyth. Joseph Forsyth (1763–1815), whose Remarks on Antiquities, Arts, and Letters, during an Excursion in Italy in the years 1802 and 1803, were published in 1813.
222. Elegant Extracts. Elegant Extracts in Prose, in Verse, and Epistles, 1789, and often reprinted later. Compiled by Vicesimus Knox (1752–1821), Master of Tonbridge School, 1778–1812.
223. Trim’s story of the sausage-maker’s wife. Tristram Shandy, Book II. 17.
Labour of love. 1 Thessalonians i. 3.
As Rousseau prided himself. Les Confessions, Partie II. Livre ix.
224. Just washed in the dew. The Taming of the Shrew, Act II. Sc. 1.
Strange child-worship. Lamb, Lines on the celebrated picture by Leonardo da Vinci; called the Virgin of the Rocks.
Luini. Bernardino Luini (c. 1460–70–c. 1530), whose style so resembles that of Leonardo da Vinci that it is difficult to distinguish their works.
225. Bronzino. A name applied to a family of Florentine painters, Angiolo Allori (1502–1572), Alessandro Allori (1535–1607), and Cristofano Allori (1577–1621).
The late Mr. Opie. John Opie (1761–1807), portrait painter. See vol. VI. Mr. Northcote’s Conversations, p. 343 and note.
A thing of life. Byron’s Corsair, Canto I. 3.
226. Deliberation sits and public care. Paradise Lost, II. 303.
Julio Romano. See ante, note to p. 18.
Andrea del Sarto. See ante, note to p. 25.
Giorgioni. See ante, note to p. 26.
Schiavoni. ?Andrea Meldolla, or Il Schiavone (1522–1582), of Dalmatian birth, a follower of Titian.
Cigoli. Lodovico Cardi, otherwise called Cigoli (1559–1613), Florentine painter, a follower of Andrea del Sarto and Michael Angelo.
Fra Bartolomeo. Bartolommeo di Pagholo del Fattorino, generally called Fra Bartolommeo (1475–1517). Some of his earliest sketches he committed to the flames under the influence of Savonarola in 1489 and, later, became a monk.
Shardborne beetle. Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 2.
Lady Morgan. Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan (1783?-1859), the novelist. Her Life of Salvator Rosa was published in 1823; see Hazlitt’s review of it, vol. X., Edinburgh Review Articles, pp. 276 et seq.
July 29. Numbered XIX
229. Old Burnet. Thomas Burnet (1635?-1715), Master of the Charterhouse (1685–1715). See Telluris Theoria Sacra, lib. I. cap. 9.
A thousand storms, a thousand winters. Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster, Act V. Sc. 3.
232. A house that had belonged to Milton. See vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, pp. 189, 190 and note; and the frontispiece to vol. III.
August 12. Numbered XX
234. Though Mr. Hobhouse has written Annotations. John Cam Hobhouse, Baron Broughton de Gifford (1786–1869). See his Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of ‘Childe Harold,’ containing Dissertations on the Ruins of Rome, PAGE
and an Essay on Italian Literature, 1818, and the Notes to the Canto in Byron’s Poetical Works.
234. He hears it not. Byron, Childe Harold, IV. cxli. with sundry alterations.
236. So sit two Kings of Brentford. Cowper, The Task, I. 78.
237. Youthful poets dream of [fancy] when they love. Rowe’s Fair Penitent, Act III. Sc. 1.
Julia de Roubigne. A novel by Henry Mackenzie, the ‘Man of Feeling,’ (1745–1831), published 1777.
Miss Milner. The heroine of Mrs. Elizabeth Inchbald’s (1753–1821) novel, A Simple Story (1791).
238. Guercino. See ante, note to p. 25.
Garofolo. Benvenuto Tisi, called Garofolo from his birth-place (1481–1559). His best works are to be seen at Ferrara.
239. Gaspar Poussin. See ante, note to p. 14.
Ariosto. Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533), the author of Orlando Furioso.
Pietro da Cartona. Pietro Berrettini of Cartoni (1596–1669). The ceiling of the grand saloon of the Palazzo Barberini is his; it is generally recognised as one of the greatest accomplishments of decorative art.
240. Andrea Sacchi. A Roman painter (d. 1661). His greatest work is the ‘St. Romuald with his Monks’ in the Vatican.
242. Scribe. Eugène Scribe (1791–1861).
Cribb. Tom Cribb (1781–1848), the champion pugilist. See vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, note to p. 223.
244. A tub to a whale. The tradition is an old one, but Hazlitt may have had in mind the Preface to Swift’s Tale of a Tub. The allusion is undoubtedly to Canning’s recognition of the independence of the Spanish American Colonies in 1823.
Fænum in cornu. Horace, Sat. I. iv. 33.
245. Lily-livered. Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 3 and King Lear, Act II. Sc. 2.
But that two-handed engine at the door. Lycidas, 130.
246. Finds a taint in the Liberal. See vol. VII. The Plain Speaker, p. 379 and note.
Mr. Waithman. Robert Waithman (1764–1833), linen-draper, pamphleteer, Lord Mayor of London (1823), and M.P. for London (1818–1820, 1826–1833).
Dr. E. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt states that the name should be Edwards. This incident forms a singular parallel with Johnson’s meeting with his fellow-collegian, Edwards. See Boswell, ed. G. B. Hill, III. 302 et seq.
Note. A Mr. Law. Probably a son of Thomas Law (1759–1834), of Washington, writer on finance, whose brother was Edward Law, first Baron Ellenborough (1750–1818).
247. The John Bull. Theodore Hook’s paper. See vol. IV., The Spirit of the Age, p. 217 and note.
Mr. Shee’s tragedy. Sir Martin Arthur Shee (1769–1850), one of the founders of the British Institution, portrait painter, and President of the Royal Academy, 1830–50. See ante, p. 434. His play, Alasco, on the partition of Poland, was accepted by Charles Kemble for Covent Garden, but prohibited by the examiner of plays, George Colman the younger. It was published in 1824.
To be direct and honest is not safe. Othello, Act III. Sc. 3.
Can these things be. Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 4.
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247. Note. Mr. Barrow. Sir John Barrow (1764–1848) was second secretary of the Admiralty, 1804–1806 and 1807–1845. Croker of course was the other secretary of the Admiralty as well as a contributor to the Quarterly.
248. Very stuff o’ the conscience. Othello, Act I. Sc. 2.
Note. Chief Justice Holt. Sir John Holt (1642–1710), Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench (1689–1710), the Verus of The Tatler. See No. 14, May 12, 1709.
249. Man seldom is.
There’s no such thing. Merry Wives of Windsor, Act III. Sc. 3.
250. M. Beyle ... De l’Amour. Marie Henri Beyle’s (1783–1842) work was published in 1822. He is better known under his pseudonym of Stendhal. His best works are Le Rouge et le Noir (1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (1839).
September 6. Numbered XXII
Number XXIV., Sept. 9, begins with the paragraph ‘Tivoli is an enchanting,’ etc., on p. 257.
253. Native to the manner here.
Forsyth. See ante, note to p. 221. He speaks of the butcher sticking gold-leaf on his mutton’ (ed. 1813, p. 298).
254. Maria Cosway. Maria Cecilia Louisa Cosway (fl. 1820), miniature painter, of Florentine birth and English extraction. She married Richard Cosway in 1781.
Charlemagne. Lucien Bonaparte (1775–1840), Napoleon’s second brother, published his epic in 1814. Its full title was Charlemagne ou L’Eglise sauvée. Hazlitt reviewed it in The Champion, Dec. 25, 1814. See in Lockhart’s Scott (1st ed., vol. II., p. 351), the letter from Scott to Morritt, 26th September 1811, respecting Scott’s refusal to translate the poem. An English version by the Rev. S. Butler and the Rev. F. Hodgson was published, apparently, in 1815.
255. Poor Bowdich. Thomas Edward Bowdich (1791–1824).
The primrose path of dalliance. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 3.
257. Where all is strength below. Dryden, Epistle to Congreve.
258. Lord Byron has described the Fall of Terni. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto IV. 70.
Poured it out as plain. Pope, Imit. of Hor., Sat. I. 51–2.
260. Sees and is seen. An old phrase.
262. Pietro Perugino. Pietro Vannucci, generally called Pietro Perugino (1446–1523), who had Raphael for a pupil.
Honest as the skin. Much Ado About Nothing, Act III. Sc. 5.
September 13. Numbered XXV
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265. The busy hum of men. L’Allegro, 118.
Where buttress wall and tower. Altered from Peter Bell, 856–60.
266. Palladio. Andrea Palladio, Italian writer and architect (1508–1580).
267. Lord Byron and Lady Morgan. See note to The Two Foscari.
And Ocean smil’d.
268. And now from out the watery floor. Barry Cornwall, A Vision, ll. 59–75.
September 15. Numbered XXVI
From ‘The Picture of the Assumption,’ p. 273, to the end of this chapter, formed No. XXVIII., Sept. 23, in the newspaper, the Sept. 15 article concluding with what is now the first paragraph of Chapter XXIV.
269. Canaletti. Antonio Canal, or Canaletto (1697–1768), painter of Venetian landscapes and London views.
Longhena. Baldassare Longhena, Venetian architect and sculptor (died after 1680).
Sansovino. Andrea Contucci, otherwise Sansovino (1460–1529) one of the greatest sculptors of the Renaissance.
272. Where no crude surfeit reigns. Comus, 480.
Foregone conclusions. Othello, Act III. Sc. 3.
In my mind’s eye. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 2.
See ante, note to p. 268. From ‘we reached Verona’ to the end of the chapter formed No. XXVII., Sept. 20.
277. Motes that people the sun-beam. Il Penseroso, 8.
278. Mr. Beyle. See ante, note to p. 250.
A pyramid of sweetmeats. See Richter’s Titan, vol. I. chap, i., where ‘the blooming pyramid, the island,’ is described in ‘heavy German conceits.’
279. Star-ypointing pyramids. Milton, On Shakespeare.
Chiffinch entertained Peveril of the Peak. See vol. II. chap. viii.
280. Chaos and old [ancient] Night. Paradise Lost, II. 970.
November 9. Numbered XXVIII
281. In spite of Mr. Burke’s philippic. A Letter to a member of the National Assembly, 1791.
Mr. Moore’s late Rhymes on the Road. See vol. VII. The Plain Speaker, p. 365, et seq.
Mais vois la rapidité de cet astre. La Nouvelle Héloïse, Première Partie, Lettre XXVI.
282. Forbade us to interpret them such. Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 3.
Simplex munditiis. Horace, Odes I. 5.
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283. The pauper lad. See vol. VII. The Plain Speaker, pp. 366–7.
Fables for the Holy Alliance. Published 1823.
Secretary to the Venetian Ambassador. Rousseau was Secretary to the French Ambassador to Venice, M. de Montaign, from August 1743 to August 1744.
Milton’s house. See ante, note to p. 232.
Mr. Washington Irvine. See vol. VII. The Plain Speaker, p. 311 and note.
284. Mr. Hobhouse ... Westminster. John Cam Hobhouse was elected M.P. for Westminster in 1820.
285. Upland swells. ‘The grassy uplands’ gentle swells.’ Coleridge, Ode to the Departing Year, 125.
The peasant’s nest. Cowper, The Task, I. 227 and 247.
287. Oh! for a lodge in some vast wilderness. Cowper, The Task, II. 2: [contiguity].
And disappointed still.
But the season’s difference. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 1.
Apparent queen [of night]. Paradise Lost, IV. 608.
November 14. Numbered XXIX
From ‘We had an excellent supper,’ p. 293, formed No. XXX., November 15, together with the first part of Chapter XXVII. to ‘detached points and places,’ on p. 298.
291. Nor Alps nor Apennines. John Dennis, Ode on the Battle of Aghrim, St. 3. See vol. VI. Table Talk, note to p. 66.
292. Built a fortress for itself. King Richard II., Act II. Sc. 1.
294. All silver white. Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V. Sc. 2.
With kindliest interchange. Cf. ‘with kindliest change.’ Paradise Lost, V. 336, and ‘sweet interchange.’ Ibid., IX. 115.
Live a man forbid. Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 3.
See ante, note to p. 288. From ‘Basle’ on p. 298 to the end is the article for November 16, headed ‘Concluded.’
296. In shape and station [gesture] proudly eminent. Paradise Lost, I. 590.
Torrents of delight. La Nouvelle Héloïse, Quatrième Partie, Lettre VI.
297. Reveries of a Solitary Walker. Written after October 1776.
299. Cologne ... Rubens. Rubens was born at Siegen in Westphalia. His parents came to Cologne when he was a year old.
Striking fat its thick rotundity. King Lear, Act III. Sc. 2.
301. Paul Potter. See ante, p. 63 and note.
302. With eyes of youth. Merry Wives of Windsor, Act III. Sc. 2.
303. An English Minister handing the keys. Perhaps Hazlitt refers to John Fane, eleventh Earl of Westmorland (1784–1859), known as Lord Burghersh until 1841, who signed the Convention of Caza Lanza by which Naples was restored to the Bourbons. He was sent on a mission to Naples, 1825, to congratulate Francis I. on succeeding his father to the throne of the Two Sicilies, the Constitution of which country had been abrogated by Ferdinand I. in 1821, and a reign of despotism substituted for it.
ON HAYDON’S SOLOMON
From The Morning Chronicle, May 4 and 5, 1814. See Memoirs of W. Hazlitt, vol. I. p. 211, for an account of the circumstances under which this article was written.
PAGE
309. Glover. John Glover, landscape painter in water-colours (1767–1849). He was President of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1815, and was one of the founders of the Society of British Artists in 1824.
Cristall. Joshua Cristall (1767–1847), china-dealer’s apprentice in Rotherhithe, later President of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours.
De Wint. Peter de Wint (1784–1849), of Dutch extraction and Staffordshire birth, a pupil of John Raphael Smith. His subjects are chiefly from the flat lands of Lincolnshire.
Mr. Richter. Henry James Richter (1772–1857), an exhibitor at the Water-Colour Society from 1813 onwards.
Disjecta [disjecti] membra poetæ. Horace, Sat. I. 4.
From The Examiner, November 3, 1816. See vol. I. The Round Table, pp. 140 et seq. and notes thereto. The article here reprinted is the first of the series of three ‘Literary Notices’ dealing with the Catalogue. Instead of reprinting the second and third of these papers entirely as promised in vol. I., it has been deemed sufficient to insert here the passages omitted from the two articles as given in their Round Table form.
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Damned in a fair face. Cf. ‘damned in a fair wife.’ Othello, Act I. Sc. 1.
Madame de ——. Staël.
Lived in the rainbow. Comus, 298.
312. In the presence of these divine guests. An erratum in the following number of The Examiner (Nov. 10, 1816), states that these words should precede ‘the nauseous tricks,’ instead of preceding ‘like a blackguard.’
313. Sent to their account. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 5.
314. To the Jews a stumbling-block. 1 Cor. i. 23.
A quantity of barren spectators. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.
Hold the mirror up to nature. Ibid., Act III. Sc. 2.
The glass of fashion. Ibid., Act III. Sc. 1.
Numbers without number. Paradise Lost, III. 346.
315. Lavater. Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801), the student of physiognomy. Holcroft translated his Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschen-Kenntniss und Menschenliebe (1775–1778) into English (1793). See vol. II. The Life of Thomas Holcroft, p. 115.
Spurzheim. See vol. VII. The Plain Speaker, pp. 17 et seq., and 137 et seq.
Mr. Perry of the Chronicle. James Perry (1756–1821), proprietor and editor of The Morning Chronicle. See vol. II. The Life of Thomas Holcroft, p. 89, etc.
With most admired disorder. Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 4.
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316. To let I dare not. Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 7.
Service sweat for duty. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 3.
317. This, this is the unkindest blow [most unkindest cut] of all. Julius Caesar, Act III. Sc. 2.
Own gained knowledge. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.
Turner. Joseph Mallard William Turner (1775–1851).
That’s a feeling disputation. 1 King Henry IV., Act III. Sc. 1.
318. To some men their graces serve them but as enemies. As You Like It, Act. II. Sc. 3.
The Second of the Catalogue Raisonné papers was published in The Examiner, November 10, 1816, and proceeds as in The Round Table to ‘the marring of Art is the making of the Academy’ (vol. I. p. 142); then add: ‘He would have the Directors keep the old Masters under, by playing off upon them the same tricks of background, situation, &c. which they play off upon one another’s pictures so successfully at the Academy Great Room. [Note.] The Academicians having out-done nature at home, wait till their pictures are hung up at the Academy to outdo one another. When they know their exact situation in the Great Room, they set to work with double diligence to paint up to their next neighbours, or to keep them under. Sometimes they leave nearly the whole unfinished, that they may have a more ad libitum opportunity of annoying their friends, and of shining at their expense.—had placed a landscape, consisting of one enormous sheet of white lead, like the clean white napkin depending from the chin to the knees of the Saturday night’s customers in a barber’s shop, under a whole length of a lady by ——, in a white chalk dress, which made his Cleopatra look like a dowdy. Our little lively knight of the brush goes me round the room, crying out, “Who has any vermilion, who has any Indian yellow?” and presently returns, and by making his whole length one red and yellow daub, like the drop-curtain at Covent-Garden, makes the poor Academician’s landscape look “pale as his shirt.”[62] Such is the history of modern Art. It is no wonder that “these fellows, who thus o’er-do Termagant,”[63] should look with horror at the sobriety of ancient Art. It is no wonder that they carry their contempt, hatred, and jealousy of one another, into the Art itself.’
After the end of the first Round Table paper (‘British Growth and Manufacture’) add: ‘To what absurdities may we be reduced by the malice of folly! The light of Art, like that of nature, shines on all alike; and its benefit, like that of the sun, is in being seen and felt. Our Catalogue-makers, like the puffers to the Gas-light Company, consider it only as a matter of trade, or what they can get by the sale and monopoly of it; they would extinguish all of it that does not come through the miserable chinks and crannies of their patriotic sympathy, or would confine it in the hard unfeeling sides of some body corporate, as Ariel was shut up in a cloven pine by the foul witch Sycorax. The cabal of Art in this country would keep it on the other side of the Channel. They would keep up a perpetual quarantine against it as infectious. They would subject it to new custom-house duties. They would create a right of search after all works of genuine Art as contraband. They would establish an alien-office[64] under the Royal Academy, to send all the finest pictures out of the country, to prevent unfair and invidious competition. The genius of modern Art does not bathe in the dews of Castalie, but rises like the dirty goddess of Gay’s Trivia out of the Thames, just opposite Somerset-House, and armed with a Grub-street pen in one hand, and a sign-post brush in the other, frightens the Arts from advancing any farther. They would thus effectually suppress the works of ancient genius and the progress of modern taste at one and the same time; and if they did not sell their pictures, would find ease to their tortured minds by not seeing others admired.’
The Second of the Examiner articles includes the first paragraph of the second of the Round Table articles and ends with ‘encouragement of the Fine Arts?’ (vol. I. p. 147). A letter follows, signed H. R., protesting against being pointed out as the author of the Catalogue Raisonné, to which the following paragraph is added in square brackets:—
‘We insert the above letter as in duty bound; for it is a sad thing to labour under the imputation of being the author of the Catalogue—“that deed without a name.”[65] But we hardly know how to reply to our Correspondent, unless by repeating what Mr. Brumell said of the Regent—“Who is our fat friend?” We do not know his person or address, or by what marks he identifies himself with our description of him—Whether he answers to his name as a cheese-curd, or a piece of whitleather, or as a Shrewsbury Cake; or as a stocking, or a joint-stool; or as a little round man, or as a fair squab man? If he claims any or all of these marks as his property, he is welcome to them. We shall believe him. We shall also believe him, when he says he is not the anonymous author of the Catalogue Raisonné; and in that case, we can have no farther fault to find with him, even though he were the beautiful Albiness.’
The Third of the Catalogue Raisonné articles was published in The Examiner, Nov. 17, 1816, and proceeds as in The Round Table with the following additions.
The quotation from Burke to Barry (vol. I. p. 148) has the following footnote:—
‘Yet Mr. Burke knew something of Art and of the world. He thought the Art should be encouraged for the sake of Artists. They think it should be destroyed for their sakes. They would cut it up at once, as the boy did the goose with golden eggs.’
After such heavy drollery (vol. I. p. 150) add: ‘with the stupid, knowing air of a horse-jockey or farrier, and in the right slang of the veterinary art.’
After will speak more (Ibid.) add: ‘We concluded our last with some remarks on Claude’s landscapes. We shall return to them here; and we would ask those who have seen them at the British Institution, “Is the general effect,”’ etc. [here Hazlitt inserted the criticism on Claude he used later in the article on Fine Arts for the Encyclopædia Britannica, see p. 394 of the present volume, ending with ‘What landscape-painter does not feel this of Claude?’]
‘It seems the author of the Catalogue Raisonné does not; for he thus speaks of him:—
“David Encamped.—Claude. Rev. W. H. Carr:—If it were not for the horrible composition of this landscape—the tasteless hole in the wall—the tents and daddy-long-legs, whom Mr. Carr has christened King David, we should be greatly offended by its present obtrusion on the public; as it is, we are bound to suppose the possessor sees deeper into the mill-stone than ourselves; and if it were politic, could thoroughly explain the matter to our satisfaction. Be this as it may, we cannot resist expressing our regret at the absence of Claude Gillee’s Muses.—The Public in general merely know, by tradition, that this painter was a pastry-cook: had this delectable composition to which we now allude been brought forward, they would have had the evidence of his practice to confirm it. It is said to represent Mount Parnassus; and no one, who for a moment has seen the picture, can entertain the smallest doubt of its having been taken from one of his own Plateaux. The figures have all the character and drawing which they might be expected to derive from a species of twelfth-cake casts. The swans are of the truest wax-shapes, while the water bears every mark of being done from something as right-earnest as that at Sadler’s Wells, and the Prince’s Fete of 1814.”
‘This is the way in which the Catalogue-writer aids and abets the Royal Academy in the promotion and encouragement of the Fine Arts in this country. Now, what if we were to imitate him, and to say of the “ablest landscape-painter now living,” that.... No, we will not; we have blotted out the passage after we had written it—Because it would be bad wit, bad manners, and bad reasoning. Yet we dare be sworn it is as good wit, as good manners, and as good reasoning, as the wittiest, the most gentlemanly, and the most rational passage, in the Catalogue Raisonné. Suppose we were to put forth voluntarily such a criticism on one of Mr. Turner’s landscapes? What then? we should do a great injustice to an able and ingenious man, and disgrace ourselves: but we should not hurt a sentiment, we should not mar a principle, we should not invade the sanctuary of Art. Mr. Turner’s pictures have not, like Claude’s, become a sentiment in the heart of Europe; his fame has not been stamped and rendered sacred by the hand of time. Perhaps it never will.[66]
‘We have only another word to add on this very lowest of all subjects. The writer calls in the cant of morality to his aid. He was quite shocked to find himself in the company of some female relations, vis-à-vis with a naked figure of Annibal Caracci’s. Yet he thinks the Elgin Marbles likely to raise the morals of the country to a high pitch of refinement. Good. The fellow is a hypocrite too.’
Instead of ‘return? nothing‘, the paper ends thus:—‘return; the low buffoonery of a mechanic scribbler, a Bart’lemy-fair puppet-shew, Mrs. Salmon’s Royal Wax-work, or the exhibition of the Royal Academy, King George the Third on horseback, or his son treading in his steps on foot, or Prince Blucher, or the Hetman Platoff,[67] or the Duke with the foolish face, or the great Plenipotentiary[68]? God save the mark!’
WEST’S PICTURE OF DEATH ON THE PALE HORSE
From The Edinburgh Magazine, December 1817.
The full title was—Remarks on Mr. West’s Picture of Death on the Pale Horse and on his Descriptive Catalogue which accompanies it.
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318. It sets on a quantity of barren spectators. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.
High endeavour and the glad success. Cowper, The Task, V. 901.
319. So shall my anticipation. Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.
319. Like Bayes in the ‘Rehearsal.’ A farce by George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, 1671.
320. Spoken with authority and not as the scribes. S. Mark i. 22.
321. Another enemy of the human race. The phrase is applied to Buonaparte. See vol. VIII. A View of the English Stage, p. 284.
Grin horrible a ghastly smile. Paradise Lost, II. 146.
Monarch of the universal world. Romeo and Juliet, Act III. Sc. 2.
322. Multum abludit imago. Horace, Sat. II. 3. 320.
From The London Magazine, May 1822.
324. Mr. Hugh Williams. Hugh William Williams (1773–1829), of a Welsh family, but Scotland was his adopted country. His various sketches gained him the name of Grecian Williams.
325. Close to the gate. Pope, Odyssey, Book VII., 142 et seq.
326. The last paragraph of the essay is a ‘N.B.,’ following the initials W. H.
Two papers from The London Magazine, February and May 1822. The second article began with the paragraph at the foot of p. 331. On p. 344, l. 9 from foot, the following sentence in the Magazine is inserted after the words ‘The Ilissus or River-god’:—‘(of which we have given a print in a former number).’ The frontispiece to the February number was an engraving of the Ilissus by J. Shury.
In 1816 Hazlitt contributed two ‘Literary Notices’ to The Examiner (June 16 and 30), on the Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Elgin Marbles.—Murray. The second of these two ‘notices’ formed the basis of the London Magazine article. Certain paragraphs not given in the later London Magazine form (the text adopted here) are given below. The first of The Examiner ‘notices’ will be found in the Appendix to the present volume.
The Examiner article, June 30, begins with the quotation from Cowley and then adds, before the paragraph beginning ‘The true lesson,’ etc., the following: ‘According to the account of Pliny, it does not appear certain that Phidias ever worked in marble. He mentions indeed a marble Venus at Rome, conjectured to be his; and another at Athens, without the walls, done by his scholar Alcamenes, to which Phidias was said to have put the last hand. His chief works, according to this historian, were the Olympian Jupiter, and the Minerva in the Parthenon, both in ivory: he executed other known works in brass. The words of Pliny, in speaking of Phidias, are remarkable:—[“That the name of Phidias is illustrious ... magnificence even in small things.”—Natural History, Book xxxvi.].
‘It appears, by the above description, that Phidias did not make choice of the colossal height of this statue with a view to make size a substitute for grandeur; but in order that he might be able, among other things, to finish, fill up, and enrich every part as much as possible. Size assists grandeur in genuine art only by enabling the Artist to give a more perfect developement to the parts of which the whole is composed. A miniature is inferior to a full-sized picture, not because it does not give the large and general outline, but because it does not give the smaller varieties and finer elements of nature. As a proof of this (if the thing were not self-evident), the copy of a good portrait will always make a highly-finished miniature, but the copy of a good miniature, if enlarged to the size of life, will make but a very vapid portrait. Some of our own Artists, who are fond of painting large figures, either misunderstand or misapply this principle. They make the whole figure gigantic, not that they may have room for nature, but for the motion of their brush, regarding the quantity of canvas they have to cover as an excuse for the slovenly and hasty manner in which they cover it; and thus in fact leave their pictures nothing at last but monstrous miniatures.
‘We should hardly have ventured to mention this figure of five and thirty feet high, which might give an inordinate expansion to the ideas of our contemporaries, but that the labour and pains bestowed upon every part of it,—the thirty Gods carved on the pedestal, the battle of the Centaurs and Lapithæ on the sandals, would at once make their magnificent projects shrink into a nutshell, or bring them within the compass of reason.—We had another inducement for extracting Pliny’s account of the Minerva of Phidias, which was, to check any inclination on the part of our students to infer from the Elgin Marbles, that the perfection of ancient Grecian art consisted in the imperfect state in which its earliest remains have come down to us; or to think that fragments are better than whole works, that the trunk is more valuable without the head, and that the grandeur of the antique consists in the ruin and decay into which it has fallen through time.’
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326. Who to the life. Cowley, To the Royal Society.
To learn her manner.