Read Ebook: The Collected Works of William Hazlitt Vol. 09 (of 12) by Hazlitt William Glover Arnold Editor Waller A R Alfred Rayney Editor

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Having repeated these lines to ourselves, we sit quietly down in our chairs to con over our task, abstract the idea of exclusive property, and think only of those images of beauty and of grandeur, which we can carry away with us in our minds, and have every where before us. Let us take some of these, and describe them how we can.

'At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smiles!'

'Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.'

They are laden with baskets of flowers--the tone of the picture is rosy, florid; it seems to have been painted at

'The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,'

We do not wish to draw invidious comparisons; yet we may say, in reference to the pictures in Lord Grosvenor's Collection, and those at Cleveland-house, that the former are distinguished most by elegance, brilliancy, and high preservation; while those belonging to the Marquis of Stafford look more like old pictures, and have a corresponding tone of richness and magnificence. We have endeavoured to do justice to both, but we confess we have fallen very short even of our own hopes and expectations.

PICTURES AT WILTON, STOURHEAD, &c.

Salisbury Plain, barren as it is, is rich in collections and monuments of art. There are, within the distance of a few miles, Wilton, Longford-Castle, Fonthill-Abbey, Stourhead, and last though not least worthy to be mentioned, Stonehenge, that 'huge, dumb heap,' that stands on the blasted heath, and looks like a group of giants, bewildered, not knowing what to do, encumbering the earth, and turned to stone, while in the act of warring on Heaven. An attempt has lately been made to give to it an antediluvian origin. Its mystic round is in all probability fated to remain inscrutable, a mighty maze without a plan: but still the imagination, when once curiosity and wonder have taken possession of it, heaves with its restless load, launches conjecture farther and farther back beyond the landmarks of time, and strives to bear down all impediments in its course, as the ocean strives to overleap some vast promontory!

It is on this account that we are compelled to find fault with the Collection at Fonthill Abbey, because it exhibits no picture of remarkable eminence that can be ranked as an heir-loom of the imagination--which cannot be spoken of but our thoughts take wing and stretch themselves towards it--the very name of which is music to the instructed ear. We would not give a rush to see any Collection that does not contain some single picture at least, that haunts us with an uneasy sense of joy for twenty miles of road, that may cheer us at intervals for twenty years of life to come. Without some such thoughts as these riveted in the brain, the lover and disciple of art would truly be 'of all men the most miserable:' but with them hovering round him, and ever and anon shining with their glad lustre into his sleepless soul, he has nothing to fear from fate, or fortune. We look, and lo! here is one at our side, facing us, though far-distant. It is the Young Man's Head, in the Louvre, by Titian, that is not unlike Jeronymo della Porretta in Sir Charles Grandison. What a look is there of calm, unalterable self-possession--

'Above all pain, all passion, and all pride;'

PICTURES AT BURLEIGH HOUSE

Burleigh! thy groves are leafless, thy walls are naked--

'And dull, cold winter does inhabit here.'

In this dreaming mood, dreaming of deathless works and deathless names, I went on to Peterborough, passing, as it were, under an arch-way of Fame,

I had business there: I will not say what. I could at this time do nothing. I could not write a line--I could not draw a stroke. 'I was brutish;' though not 'like warlike as the wolf, nor subtle as the fox for prey.' In words, in looks, in deeds, I was no better than a changeling. Why then do I set so much value on my existence formerly? Oh God! that I could but be for one day, one hour, nay but for an instant, what then I was--that I might, as in a trance, a waking dream, hear the hoarse murmur of the bargemen, as the Minster tower appeared in the dim twilight, come up from the willowy stream, sounding low and underground like the voice of the bittern--that I might paint that field opposite the window where I lived, and feel that there was a green, dewy moisture in the tone, beyond my pencil's reach, but thus gaining almost a new sense, and watching the birth of new objects without me--that I might stroll down Peterborough bank, and see the fresh marshes stretching out in endless level perspective, with the cattle, the windmills, and the red-tiled cottages, gleaming in the sun to the very verge of the horizon, and watch the fieldfares in innumerable flocks, gamboling in the air, and sporting in the sun, and racing before the clouds, making summersaults, and dazzling the eye by throwing themselves into a thousand figures and movements--that I might go, as then, a pilgrimage to the town where my mother was born, and visit the poor farm-house where she was brought up, and lean upon the gate where she told me she used to stand when a child of ten years old and look at the setting sun!--I could do all this still; but with different feelings. As our hopes leave us, we lose even our interest and regrets for the past. I had at this time, simple as I seemed, many resources. I could in some sort 'play at bowls with the sun and moon;' or, at any rate, there was no question in metaphysics that I could not bandy to and fro, as one might play at cup-and-ball, for twenty, thirty, forty miles of the great North Road, and at it again, the next day, as fresh as ever. I soon get tired of this now, and wonder how I managed formerly. I knew Tom Jones by heart, and was deep in Peregrine Pickle. I was intimately acquainted with all the heroes and heroines of Richardson's romances, and could turn from one to the other as I pleased. I could con over that single passage in Pamela about 'her lumpish heart,' and never have done admiring the skill of the author and the truth of nature. I had my sports and recreations too, some such as these following:--

'To see the sun to bed, and to arise, Like some hot amourist, with glowing eyes Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him, With all his fires and travelling glories round him. Sometimes the moon on soft night clouds to rest, Like beauty nestling in a young man's breast, And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep Admiring silence while those lovers sleep. Sometimes outstretcht, in very idleness, Nought doing, saying little, thinking less, To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air, Go eddying round and small birds how they fare, When Mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn, Filch'd from the careless Amalthea's horn: And how the woods berries and worms provide Without their pains, when earth has nought beside To answer their small wants. To view the graceful deer come tripping by, Then stop and gaze, then turn, they know not why, Like bashful younkers in society. To mark the structure of a plant or tree, And all fair things of earth, how fair they be.'

I have wandered far enough from Burleigh House; but I had some associations about it which I could not well get rid of, without troubling the reader with them.

'Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream.'

'And in its liquid texture mortal wound Receives no more than can the fluid air.'

As an illustration of the same thing, there are two Claudes at Burleigh, which certainly do not come up to the celebrity of the artist's name. They did not please me formerly: the sky, the water, the trees seemed all too blue, too much of the colour of indigo. But I believed, and wondered. I could no longer admire these specimens of the artist at present, but assuredly my admiration of the artist himself was not less than before; for since then, I had seen other works by the same hand,

'On a sudden I was surrounded by a thick cloud or mist, and my guide wafted me through the air, till we alighted on a most delicious rural spot. I perceived it was the early hour of the morn, when the sun had not risen above the horizon. We were alone, except that at a little distance a young shepherd played on his flageolet as he walked before his herd, conducting them from the fold to the pasture. The elevated pastoral air he played charmed me by its simplicity, and seemed to animate his obedient flock. The atmosphere was clear and perfectly calm: and now the rising sun gradually illumined the fine landscape, and began to discover to our view the distant country of immense extent. I stood awhile in expectation of what might next present itself of dazzling splendour, when the only object which appeared to fill this natural, grand, and simple scene, was a rustic who entered, not far from the place where we stood, who by his habiliments seemed nothing better than a peasant; he led a poor little ass, which was loaded with all the implements required by a painter in his work. After advancing a few paces he stood still, and with an air of rapture seemed to contemplate the rising sun: he next fell on his knees, directed his eyes towards heaven, crossed himself, and then went on with eager looks, as if to make choice of the most advantageous spot from which to make his studies as a painter. "This," said my conductor, "is that Claude Gel?e of Lorraine, who, nobly disdaining the low employment to which he was originally bred, left it with all its advantages of competence and ease to embrace his present state of poverty, in order to adorn the world with works of most accomplished excellence."'

PICTURES AT OXFORD AND BLENHEIM

Blenheim is a morning's walk from Oxford, and is not an unworthy appendage to it--

'And fast by hanging in a golden chain This pendent world, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude, close by the moon!'

Blenheim is not inferior in waving woods and sloping lawns and smooth waters to Pembroke's princely domain, or to the grounds of any other park we know of. The building itself is Gothic, capricious, and not imposing--a conglomeration of pigeon-houses--

'In form resembling a goose pie.'

'Sure never were seen Two such beautiful ponies; All others are brutes, But these macaronies.'

CRITICISM ON HOGARTH'S MARRIAGE A-LA-MODE

There is the same felicity in the figure and attitude of the Bride, courted by the Lawyer. There is the utmost flexibility, and yielding softness in her whole person, a listless languor and tremulous suspense in the expression of her face. It is the precise look and air which Pope has given to his favourite Belinda, just at the moment of the Rape of the Lock. The heightened glow, the forward intelligence, and loosened soul of love in the same face, in the Assignation-scene before the masquerade, form a fine and instructive contrast to the delicacy, timidity, and coy reluctance expressed in the first. The Lawyer, in both pictures, is much the same--perhaps too much so--though even this unmoved, unaltered appearance may be designed as characteristic. In both cases, he has 'a person and a smooth dispose, framed to make women false.' He is full of that easy good-humour, and easy good opinion of himself, with which the sex are delighted. There is not a sharp angle in his face to obstruct his success, or give a hint of doubt or difficulty. His whole aspect is round and rosy, lively and unmeaning, happy without the least expense of thought, careless, and inviting; and conveys a perfect idea of the uninterrupted glide and pleasing murmur of the soft periods that flow from his tongue.

The expression of the Bride in the Morning-scene is the most highly seasoned, and at the same time the most vulgar in the series. The figure, face, and attitude of the Husband are inimitable. Hogarth has with great skill contrasted the pale countenance of the Husband with the yellow whitish colour of the marble chimney-piece behind him, in such a manner as to preserve the fleshy tone of the former. The airy splendour of the view of the inner room in this picture, is probably not exceeded by any of the productions of the Flemish school.

The Night-scene is inferior to the rest of the series. The attitude of the Husband, who is just killed, is one in which it would be impossible for him to stand, or even to fall. It resembles the loose pasteboard figures they make for children. The characters in the last picture, in which the Wife dies, are all masterly. We would particularly refer to the captious, petulant self-sufficiency of the Apothecary, whose face and figure are constructed on exact physiognomical principles, and to the fine example of passive obedience and non-resistance in the Servant, whom he is taking to task, and whose coat of green and yellow livery is as long and melancholy as his face. The disconsolate look, the haggard eyes, the open mouth, the comb sticking in the hair, the broken, gapped teeth, which, as it were, hitch in an answer--every thing about him denotes the utmost perplexity and dismay. The harmony and gradations of colour in this picture are uniformly preserved with the greatest nicety, and are well worthy the attention of the artist.

It has been observed, that Hogarth's pictures are exceedingly unlike any other representations of the same kind of subjects--that they form a class, and have a character, peculiar to themselves. It may be worth while to consider in what this general distinction consists.

Footnote 1:

We like this picture of a Concert the best of the three by Titian in the same room. The other two are a Ganymede, and a Venus and Adonis; the last does not appear to us from the hand of Titian.

Footnote 2:

Footnote 3:

Two thirds of the principal pictures in the Orleans Collection are at present at Cleveland-House, one third purchased by the Marquis of Stafford, and another third left by the Duke of Bridgewater, another of the purchasers Mr. Brian had the remaining third.

Footnote 4:

'Aut Erasmus aut Diabolus.' Sir Thomas More's exclamation on meeting with the philosopher of Rotterdam.

Footnote 5:

The late Mr. Curran described John Kemble's eye in these words.

Footnote 6:

It is said in the catalogue to be painted on touch-stone.

Footnote 7:

Written in February, 1823.

Footnote 8:

We heard it well said the other day, that 'Rubens's pictures were the palette of Titian.'

Footnote 9:

Footnote 10:

From the New Monthly Magazine.

Footnote 11:

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