THE GENIUS OF BANKS

As Banks never received anything like the encouragement which he deserved, the character of his genius must be sought more in the works that he sketched, than those that he executed in marble. Among his sketches, the poetical abounded, and these were founded chiefly on Homer. Several splendid sketches are his Andromache lamenting with her handmaidens over the body of Hector, the Venus rising from the Sea, shedding back her tresses as she ascends, and a Venus bearing Æneas wounded from the Battle. “In his classical sketches,” says Cunningham, “the man fully comes out: we see that he had surrendered his whole soul to those happier days of sculpture when the human frame was unshackled and free, and the dresses as well as deeds of men were heroic; that the bearing of gods was familiar to his dreams; and that it was not his fault if he aspired in vain to be the classic sculptor of his age and nation.” His monument to the only daughter of Sir Brooke Boothby, now in Ashbourne church, Derbyshire, represents the child when six years old, lying asleep on her couch in all her innocence and beauty. “Simplicity and elegance,” says Dr. Mavor, “appear in the workmanship, tenderness and innocence in the image.” The sculptor’s daughter Lavinia says, “He was a minute observer of nature, and often have I seen him stop in his walk to remark an attitude, or some group of figures, and unconsciously trace the outline in air with his finger as if drawing paper had been before him. He would in the same way remark folds of drapery, and note them in his mind, or sketch them on paper, to be used when occasion called.”