CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW (continued 10)

We like Dr. Channing’s Sermons best; his Criticisms less; his Politics least of all. We think several of his Discourses do great honour to himself and his profession, and are highly respectable models of pulpit-composition. We would instance more particularly, and recommend to the perusal of our readers, that On the Duties of Children. The feeling, the justness of observation, the tenderness, and the severity, are deserving of all praise. The author here appears in a truly amiable and advantageous light. This composition alone makes us believe, that he is a good, and might, with proper direction and self-reliance, have been even a great man. We shall give a long extract with the more pleasure, as we are assuredly actuated by no ill-will towards the reverend author, and only wish to point out how very considerable ability, and probable uprightness of intention, may be warped and injured by a wrong bias, and candidateship for false and contradictory honours.

‘First, You are required to view and treat your parents with respect. Your tender, inexperienced age requires that you think of yourselves with humility, and conduct yourselves with modesty; that you respect the superior age, and wisdom, and improvements of your parents, and observe towards them a submissive deportment. Nothing is more unbecoming you; nothing will render you more unpleasant in the eyes of others, than froward or contemptuous conduct towards your parents. There are children, and I wish I could say there are only a few, who speak to their parents with rudeness, grow sullen at their rebukes, behave in their presence as if they deserved no 318attention, hear them speak without noticing them, and rather ridicule than honour them. There are many children at the present day who think more highly of themselves than of their elders; who think that their own wishes are first to be gratified; who abuse the condescension and kindness of their parents, and treat them as servants rather than superiors. Beware, my young friends, lest you grow up with this assuming and selfish spirit. Regard your parents as kindly given you by God, to support, direct, and govern you in your present state of weakness and inexperience. Express your respect for them in your manner and conversation. Do not neglect those outward signs of dependence and inferiority which suit your age. You are young, and you should therefore take the lowest place, and rather retire than thrust yourselves forward into notice. You have much to learn, and you should therefore hear, instead of seeking to be heard. You are dependent, and you should therefore ask instead of demanding what you desire, and you should receive every thing from your parents as a favour, and not as a debt. I do not mean to urge upon you a slavish fear of your parents. Love them, and love them ardently; but mingle a sense of their superiority with your love. Feel a confidence in their kindness; but let not this confidence make you rude and presumptuous, and lead to indecent familiarity. Talk to them with openness and freedom; but never contradict with violence; never answer with passion or contempt.

‘Secondly, You should be grateful to your parents. Consider how much you owe them. The time has been, and it was not a long time past, when you depended wholly on their kindness,—when you had no strength to make a single effort for yourselves,—when you could neither speak nor walk, and knew not the use of any of your powers. Had not a parent’s arm supported you, you must have fallen to the earth, and perished. Observe with attention the infants which you often see, and consider that a little while ago you were as feeble as they are: you were only a burden and a care, and you had nothing with which you could repay your parents’ affection. But did they forsake you? How many sleepless nights have they been disturbed by your cries! When you were sick, how tenderly did they hang over you! With what pleasure have they seen you grow up in health to your present state; and what do you now possess which you have not received from their hands? God, indeed, is your great parent, your best friend, and from him every good gift descends; but God is pleased to bestow every thing upon you through the kindness of your parents. To your parents you owe every comfort: you owe to them the shelter you enjoy from the rain and cold, the raiment which covers, and the food which nourishes you. While 319you are seeking amusements, or are employed in gaining knowledge at school, your parents are toiling that you may be happy, that your wants may be supplied, that your minds may be improved, that you may grow up and be useful in the world. And when you consider how often you have forfeited all this kindness, and yet how ready they have been to forgive you, and to continue their favours, ought not you to look upon them with the tenderest gratitude? What greater monster can there be than an unthankful child, whose heart is never warmed by the daily expressions of parental solicitude; who, instead of requiting his best friend by his affectionate conduct, is sullen and passionate, and thinks his parents will do nothing for him, because they will not do all he desires? Consider how much better they can decide for you than you can for yourselves. You know but little of the world in which you live. You hastily catch at every thing which promises you pleasure; and unless the authority of a parent should restrain you, you would soon rush into ruin, without a thought or a fear. In pursuing your own inclinations, your health would be destroyed, your minds would run to waste, you would grow up slothful, selfish, a trouble to others, and burdensome to yourselves. Submit, then, cheerfully to your parents. Have you not experienced their goodness long enough to know, that they wish to make you happy, even when their commands are most severe? Prove, then, your sense of this goodness by doing cheerfully what they require. When they oppose your wishes, do not think that you have more knowledge than they. Do not receive their commands with a sour, angry, sullen look, which says, louder than words, that you obey only because you dare not rebel. If they deny your requests, do not persist in urging them, but consider how many requests they have already granted you. Do not expect that your parents are to give up every thing to you, but study to give up every thing to them. Do not wait for them to threaten, but when a look tells you what they want, fly to perform it. This is the way in which you can best reward them for all their pains and labours. In this way you will make their house pleasant and cheerful. But if you are disobedient, perverse, and stubborn, you will make home a place of contention, noise, and anger, and your best friends will have reason to wish that you had never been born. A disobedient child almost always grows up ill-natured and disobliging to all with whom he is connected. None love him, and he has no heart to love any but himself. If you would be amiable in your temper and manner, and desire to be beloved, let me advise you to begin your life with giving up your wills to your parents.

‘Again, You must express your respect for your parents, by 320placing unreserved confidence in them. This is a very important part of your duty. Children should learn to be honest, sincere, open-hearted to their parents. An artful, hypocritical child is one of the most unpromising characters in the world. You should have no secrets which you are unwilling to disclose to your parents. If you have done wrong, you should openly confess it, and ask that forgiveness which a parent’s heart is so ready to bestow. If you wish to undertake any thing, ask their consent. Never begin any thing in the hope you can conceal your design. If you once strive to impose on your parents, you will be led on, from one step to another, to invent falsehoods, to practise artifice, till you will become contemptible and hateful. You will soon be detected, and then none will trust you. Sincerity in a child will make up for many faults. Of children, he is the worst who watches the eyes of his parents, pretends to obey as long as they see him, but as soon as they have turned away, does what they have forbidden. Whatever else you do, never deceive. Let your parents learn your faults from your own lips, and be assured they will never love you the less for your openness and sincerity.’—(Sermons and Tracts, p. 233.)

The whole discourse is prettily turned, and made out with great simplicity and feeling. There is a want neither of heart nor head. Dr. Channing here does well, for he trusts to his own observations and convictions. We may also give what he says in answer to Fenelon, on the subject of self-annihilation, as another favourable specimen of free enquiry, and of a higher or more philosophical cast.

‘We have said that self-crucifixion and love to God are, in Fenelon’s system, the two chief constituents, or elements, of virtue and perfection. To these we will give separate attention, although in truth, they often coalesce, and always imply one another. We begin with self-crucifixion, or what is often called self-sacrifice, and on this we chiefly differ from the expositions of our author. Perhaps the word self occurs more frequently than any other in Fenelon’s writings, and he is particularly inclined to place it in contrast with, and in opposition to, God. According to his common teaching, God and self are hostile influences or attractions, having nothing in common; the one the concentration of all evil, the other of all good. Self is the principle and the seat of all guilt and misery. He is never weary of pouring reproach on self; and, generally speaking, sets no limits to the duty of putting it to a painful death. Now, language like this has led men to very injurious modes of regarding themselves and their own nature, and made them forgetful of what they owe to themselves. It has thrown a cloud over man’s condition and prospects. It has led to self-contempt, a vice as pernicious as 321pride. A man, when told perpetually to crucify himself, is apt to include under this word his whole nature; and we fear that, under this teaching, our nature is repressed, its growth stinted, its free movements chained, and, of course, its beauty, grace, and power impaired. We mean not to charge on Fenelon this error of which we have spoken, or to hold him responsible for its effects. But we do think that it finds shelter under his phraseology; and we deem it so great, so pernicious, as to need a faithful exposition. Men err in nothing more than in disparaging and wronging their own nature. None are just to themselves. The truth on this great subject is indeed so obscured, that it may startle as a paradox. A human being, justly viewed, instead of being bound to general self-crucifixion, cannot reverence and cherish himself too much. This position, we know, is strong; but strong language is needed to encounter strong delusion. We would teach that great limitations must be set to the duty of renouncing or denying ourselves, and that no self-crucifixion is virtuous but that which concurs with, and promotes self-respect. We will unfold our meaning, beginning with positions which we presume will be controverted by none.’

Dr. Channing, after showing that the mind, the body, and even self-love, are parts of our nature which cannot well be dispensed with, thus proceeds:—

‘Now, it is not true that self-love is our only principle, or that it constitutes ourselves any more than other principles; and the wrong done to our nature by such modes of speech, needs to be resisted. Our nature has other elements or constituents, and vastly higher ones, to which self-love was meant to minister, and which are at war with its excesses. For example, we have reason or intellectual energy given us for the pursuit and acquisition of truth; and this is essentially a disinterested principle, for truth, which is its object, is of a universal, impartial nature. The great province of the intellectual faculty is to acquaint the individual with the laws and order of the divine system; a system, which spreads infinitely beyond himself, and of which he forms a small part; which embraces innumerable beings equally favoured by God, and which proposes, as its sublime and beneficent end, the ever-growing good of the whole. Again, human nature has a variety of affections, corresponding to our domestic and most common relations; affections, which in multitudes overpower self-love, which make others the chief object of our care, which nerve the arm for ever-recurring toil by day, and strengthen the wearied frame to forego the slumbers of the night. Then there belongs to every man the general sentiment of humanity, which responds to all human sufferings—to a stranger’s tears and groans, 322and often prompts to great sacrifices for his relief. Above all, there is the moral principle, that which should especially be called a man’s self; for it is clothed with a kingly authority over his whole nature, and was plainly given to bear sway over every desire. This is evidently a disinterested principle. Its very essence is impartiality. It has no respect of persons. It is the principle of justice, taking the rights of all under its protection, and frowning on the least wrong, however largely it may serve ourselves. This moral nature especially delights in, and enjoins a universal charity, and makes the heart thrill with exulting joy, at the sight or hearing of magnanimous deeds, of perils fronted, or death endured in the cause of humanity. Now, these various principles, and especially the last, are as truly ourselves as self-love. When a man thinks of himself, these ought to occur to him as his chief attributes. He can hardly injure himself more than by excluding these from his conception of himself, and by making self-love the great constituent of his nature.

‘We have urged these remarks on the narrow sense often given to the word self, because we are persuaded that it leads to degrading ideas of human nature, and to the pernicious notion that we practise a virtuous self-sacrifice in holding it in contempt. We would have it understood, that high faculties form this despised self, as truly as low desires; and we would add, that when these are faithfully unfolded, this self takes rank among the noblest beings in the universe. To illustrate this thought, we ask the reader’s attention to an important, but much-neglected, view of virtue and religion. These are commonly spoken of in an abstract manner, as if they were distinct from ourselves—as if they were foreign existences, which enter the human mind, and dwell there in a kind of separation from itself. Now, religion and virtue, wherever they exist, are the mind itself, and nothing else. A good man’s piety and virtue are not distinct possessions; they are himself, and all the glory which belongs to them, belongs to himself. What is religion? Not a foreign inhabitant—not something alien to our nature, which comes and takes up its abode in the soul. It is the soul itself, lifting itself up to its Maker. What is virtue? It is the soul listening to, and revering and obeying a law which belongs to its very essence—the law of duty. We sometimes smile when we hear men decrying human nature, and in the same breath extolling religion to the skies, as if religion were any thing more than human nature acting in obedience to its chief law. Religion and virtue, as far as we possess them, are ourselves; and the homage which is paid to these attributes, is in truth a tribute to the soul of man. Self-crucifixion, then, should it exclude self-reverence, would be any thing but virtue.

323‘We would briefly suggest another train of thought leading to the same result. Self-crucifixion, or self-renunciation, is a work, and work requires an agent. By whom, then, is it accomplished? We answer, by the man himself, who is the subject of it. It is he who is summoned to the effort. He is called by a voice within, and by the law of God, to put forth power over himself, to rule his own spirit, to subdue every passion. Now, this inward power, which self-crucifixion supposes and demands, is the most signal proof of a high nature which can be given. It is the most illustrious power which God confers. It is a sovereignty worth more than that over outward nature. It is the chief constituent of the noblest order of virtues; and its greatness, of course, demonstrates the greatness of the human mind, which is perpetually bound and summoned to put it forth. But this is not all; self-crucifixion has an object, an end. And what is it? Its great end is to give liberty and energy to our nature. Its aim is not to break down the soul, but to curb those lusts and passions which “war against the soul,” that the moral and intellectual faculties may rise into new life, and may manifest their divine original. Self-crucifixion, justly viewed, is the suppression of the passions, that the power and progress of thought, and conscience, and pure love, may be unrestrained. It is the destruction of the brute, that the angel may unfold itself within. It is founded on our godlike capacities, and the expansion and glory of these is the end. Thus the very duty, which by some is identified with self-contempt, implies and imposes self-reverence. It is the belief and the choice of perfection, as our inheritance and our end.’

This is extremely well meant, and very ably executed. There is a primâ philosophiâ view of the subject, which is, we think, above the ordinary level of polemical reasoning in our own country. In the line of argument adopted by our author, there is a strong reflection of the original and masterly views of the innate capacity of the soul for piety and goodness, insisted on in Bishop Butler’s Sermons—a work which has fallen into neglect, partly because of the harshness and obscurity of its style, but more because it contains neither a libel on human nature, nor a burlesque upon religion. There is much in the above train of thought silently borrowed from this profound work. Dr. Channing’s argument is, we think, good and sound against the misanthropes in philosophy, and the cynics in religion, who alike maintain the absolute falsity of all human virtue; but the Bishop of Cambray might say, that, with respect to him, it was not a practical answer, so much as a verbal evasion; neither meeting his views nor removing the source of his complaints. Fenelon assuredly, in wishing to annihilate self, did not wish to extirpate charity and faith, but to 324crush the old serpent, the great enemy of these. There is no doubt of the capacity of the soul for good and evil; the only question is, which principle prevails and triumphs. The satirist and the man of the world laugh at the pretension to superior sanctity and disinterestedness; the pious enthusiast may then be excused if he weeps at the want of them.

How far does that likeness to God, and sympathy with the whole human race, which Fenelon deprecates the want of, and Dr. Channing boasts of, as the inseparable attribute and chief ornament of man, really take place or not in the present state of things, and as a preparation for another and infinitely more important one? If we regard the moral capacity of man, self is a unit that counts millions. Its essence and its glory, says our optimist, is to comprehend the whole human race in its benevolent regards. Does it do so? The understanding runs along the whole chain of being; the affections stop, for the most part, at the first link in the chain. Sense, appetite, pride, passion, engross the whole of this self, and leave it nearly indifferent, if not averse, to all other claims on its attention. In order that the moral attainments should keep pace with the vaunted capacity of man, knowledge should be identified with feeling. We know that there are a million of other beings of as much worth, of the same nature, made in the image of God like ourselves. Have we the same sympathy with every one of these? Do we feel a million times more for all of them put together, than for ourselves? The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness, than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings. Fenelon laments bitterly and feelingly this disparity between duty and inclination, this want of charity, and eating of self into the soul. What is the consequence of the disproportionate ratios in which the head and the heart move? This paltry self, looking upon itself as of more importance than all the rest of the world, fancies itself the centre of the universe, and would have every one look upon it in the same light. Not being able to sympathize with others as it ought, it hates and envies them; is mad to think of its own insignificance in the general system; cannot bear a rival or a superior; despises and tramples on inferiors, and would crush and annihilate all pretensions but its own, that it might be all in all. The worm puts on the monarch, or the god, in thought and in secret; and it is only when it can do so in fact, and in public, and be the tyrant or idol of its fellows, that it is at ease or satisfied with itself. Fenelon was right in crying out (if it could have done any good) for the crucifying of this importunate self, and putting a better principle in its stead.

Dr. Channing’s Essays on Milton and Bonaparte are both done 325upon the same false principle, of making out a case for or against. The one is full of common-place eulogy, the other of common-place invective. They are pulpit-criticisms. An orator who is confined to expound the same texts and doctrines week after week, slides very naturally and laudably into a habit of monotony and paraphrase; is not allowed to be ‘wise above what is written;’ is grave from respect to his subject, and the authority attached to the truths he interprets; and if his style is tedious or his arguments trite, he is in no danger of being interrupted or taken to task by his audience. Such a person is unavoidably an advocate for certain received principles; often a dull one. He carries the professional license and character out of the pulpit into other things, and still fancies that he speaks ‘with authority, and not as the scribes.’ He may be prolix without suspecting it; may lay a solemn stress on the merest trifles; repeat truisms, and apologize for them as startling discoveries; may play the sophist, and conceive he is performing a sacred duty; and give what turn or gloss he pleases to any subject,—forgetting that the circumstances under which he declares himself, and the audience which he addresses, are entirely changed. If, as we readily allow, there are instances of preachers who have emancipated themselves from these professional habits, we can hardly add Dr. Channing to the number.

His notice of Milton is elaborate and stately, but neither new nor discriminating. One of the first and most prominent passages is a defence of poetry:—

‘Milton’s fame rests chiefly on his poetry; and to this we naturally give our first attention. By those who are accustomed to speak of poetry as light reading, Milton’s eminence in this sphere may be considered only as giving him a high rank among the contributors to public amusement. Not so thought Milton. Of all God’s gifts of intellect, he esteemed poetical genius the most transcendent. He esteemed it in himself as a kind of inspiration, and wrote his great works with something of the conscious dignity of a prophet. We agree with Milton in his estimate of poetry. It seems to us the divinest of all arts; for it is the breathing or expression of that sentiment which is deepest and sublimest in human nature; we mean, of that thirst or aspiration, to which no mind is wholly a stranger, after something purer and lovelier, something more powerful, lofty, and thrilling, than ordinary and real life affords. No doctrine is more common among Christians than that of man’s immortality; but it is not so generally understood, that the germs or principles of his whole future being are now wrapped up in his soul, as the rudiments of the future plant in the seed. As a necessary result of this constitution, the soul, possessed and moved by these mighty though infant 326energies, is perpetually stretching beyond what is present and visible, struggling against the bounds of its earthly prison-house, and seeking relief and joy in imaginings of unseen and ideal being. This view of our nature, which has never been fully developed, and which goes farther towards explaining the contradictions of human life than all others, carries us to the very foundation and sources of poetry. He who cannot interpret by his own consciousness what we have now said, wants the true key to works of genius. He has not penetrated those sacred recesses of the soul, where poetry is born and nourished, and inhales immortal vigour, and wings herself for her heavenward flight. In an intellectual nature, framed for progress and for higher modes of being, there must be creative energies, powers of original and ever-growing thought; and poetry is the form in which these energies are chiefly manifested. It is the glorious prerogative of this art, that it “makes all things new” for the gratification of a divine instinct. It indeed finds its elements in what it actually sees and experiences, in the worlds of matter and mind; but it combines and blends these into new forms and according to new affinities; breaks down, if we may so say, the distinctions and bounds of nature; imparts to material objects life, and sentiment, and emotion, and invests the mind with the powers and splendours of the outward creation; describes the surrounding universe in the colours which the passions throw over it, and depicts the mind in those moods of repose or agitation, of tenderness or sublime emotion, which manifest its thirst for a more powerful and joyful existence. To a man of a literal and prosaic character, the mind may seem lawless in these workings; but it observes higher laws than it transgresses, the laws of the immortal intellect; it is trying and developing its best faculties; and in the objects which it describes, or in the emotions which it awakens, anticipates those states of progressive power, splendour, beauty, and happiness, for which it was created.’

There is much more to the same purpose: The whole, to speak freely, is a laboured and somewhat tumid paraphrase on Lord Bacon’s definition of poetry, (which has been often paraphrased before,) where he prefers it to history, ‘as having something divine in it, and representing characters and objects not as they are, but as they ought to be.’ This is the general feature of our author’s writings; they cannot be called mere common-place, but they may be fairly termed ambitious common-place: That is, he takes up the newest and most plausible opinion at the turn of the tide, or just as it is getting into vogue, and would fain arrogate both the singularity and the popularity of it to himself. He hits the public between what they are tired of hearing, and what they never heard before. He has here, however, 327put the seal of orthodoxy on poetry, and we are not desirous to take it off. If he is inclined to stand sponsor to the Muses, and confirm their offspring at the Fount, he is welcome to do so. It is curious to see strict Professors for a long time denouncing and excommunicating Poetry as a wanton, and then, when they can no longer help it, clasping hands with her as the handmaid of truth; and instead of making her the daughter of ‘the father of lies,’ identifying her with the vital spirit of religion and our happiest prospects.

Dr. Channing is aware, however, that poetry is sometimes liable to abuse, and has given a handle to the ungodly; and as a set-off and salvo to this objection, has a fling at Lord Byron, as the demon who scatters ‘poison and death;’ while Sir Walter Scott is the beneficent genius of poetry, unfolding and imparting new energies and the most delightful impulses to the human breast. In pronouncing the latter sentence, he bows to popular opinion; in the former he considers just as properly what he owes to his profession.

The bulk of the account of Milton, both as a poet and a prose-writer, is, we are constrained to say, mere imitation or amplification of what has been said by others. He observes, ex cathedrâ, and with due gravity, that the forte of Milton is sublimity—that the two first books of Paradise Lost are unrivalled examples of that quality. He then proceeds to show, that he is not without tenderness or beauty, though he has not the graphic minuteness of Cowper or of Crabbe; he next praises his versification in opposition to the critics—dwells on the freshness and innocence of the picture of Adam and Eve in Paradise—maintains that our sympathy with Satan is nothing but the admiration of moral strength of mind—acknowledges the harshness and virulence of Milton’s controversial writings, but blames Dr. Johnson for doing so. All this we have heard or said before. We are not edified at all, nor are we greatly flattered by it. It is as if we should convey a letter to a friend in America, and should find it transcribed and sent back to us with a heavy postage.

We do not, then, set much store by our author’s criticisms, because they sometimes seem to be, in a great measure, borrowed from our own lucubrations. We set still less store by his politics, for they are borrowed from others. We have no objection to the most severe or caustic probing of the character of the late ruler of France; but we do object, in the name both of history and philosophy, to misrepresentations and falsehoods, as the groundwork of such remarks. When England has exploded them, half in shame, and half in anger, the harpy echo lingers in America. The ugly mask has been taken off; but Dr. Channing chooses to lecture on the mask in preference to the head. It would serve no useful purpose, however, to follow him in 328the details of his Analysis of the Character of Bonaparte. But we shall extract one of his most elaborate passages, in which he favours us with his opinion of the victors at Waterloo and Trafalgar:—

‘The conqueror of Napoleon, the hero of Waterloo, undoubtedly possesses great military talents; but we have never heard of his eloquence in the senate, or of his sagacity in the cabinet; and we venture to say, that he will leave the world without adding one new thought on the great themes, on which the genius of philosophy and legislature has meditated for ages. We will not go down for illustration to such men as Nelson, a man great on the deck, but debased by gross vices, and who never pretended to enlargement of intellect. To institute a comparison, in point of talent and genius, between such men and Milton, Bacon, and Shakspeare, is almost an insult to these illustrious names. Who can think of these truly great intelligences; of the range of their minds through heaven and earth; of their deep intuition into the soul; of their new and glowing combinations of thought; of the energy with which they grasped and subjected to their main purpose the infinite materials of illustration which nature and life afford; who can think of the forms of transcendent beauty and grandeur which they created, or which were rather emanations of their own minds; of the calm wisdom, and fervid, impetuous imagination which they conjoined; of the dominion which they have exercised over so many generations, and which time only extends and makes sure; of the voice of power, in which, though dead, they still speak to nations, and awaken intellect, sensibility, and genius, in both hemispheres;—who can think of such men, and not feel the immense inferiority of the most gifted warriors, whose elements of thought are physical forces and physical obstructions, and whose employment is the combination of the lowest class of objects on which a powerful mind can be employed?’

We are here forcibly reminded of Fielding’s character of Mr. Abraham Adams. ‘Indeed, if this good man had an enthusiasm, or what the vulgar call a blind side, it was this: he thought a Schoolmaster the greatest character in the world, and himself the greatest of all schoolmasters, neither of which points he would have given up to Alexander the Great at the head of his army.’ So Dr. Channing very gravely divides greatness into different sorts, and places himself at the top among those who talk about things—commanders at the bottom among those who only do them. He finds fault with Bonaparte for not coming up to his standard of greatness; but in order that he may not, raises this standard too high for humanity. To put it in force would be to leave the ancient and modern world as bare of great names as the wilds of North America. To make 329common sense of it, any one great man must be all the others. Homer only sung of battles, and it was honour enough for Alexander to place his works in a golden cabinet. Dr. Channing allows Bonaparte’s supremacy in war; but disputes it in policy. How many persons, from the beginning of the world, have united the two in a greater degree, or wielded more power in consequence? If Bonaparte had not gained a single battle, or planned a single successful campaign; if he had not scattered Coalition after Coalition, but invited the Allies to march to Paris; if he had not quelled the factions, but left them to cut one another’s throats and his own; if he had not ventured on the Concordat, or framed a Code of Laws for France; if he had encouraged no art or science or man of genius; if he had not humbled the pride of ‘ancient thrones,’ and risen from the ground of the people to an equal height with the Gods of the earth,—showing that the art and the right to reign is not confined to a particular race; if he had been any thing but what he was, and had done nothing, he would then have come up to Dr. Channing’s notions of greatness, and to his boasted standard of a hero! We in Europe, whether friends or foes, require something beyond this negative merit: we think that Cæsar, Alexander, and Charlemagne, were ‘no babies;’ we think that to move the great masses of power and bind opinions in a spell, is as difficult as the turning a period or winding up a homily; and we are surprised that stanch republicans, who complain that the world bow to birth and rank alone, should turn with redoubled rage against intellect, the instant it became a match for pride and prejudice, and was the only thing that could be opposed to them with success, or could extort a moment’s fear or awe for human genius or human nature.

Dr. Channing’s style is good, though in general too laboured, formal, and sustained. All is brought equally forward,—nothing is left to tell for itself. In the attempt to be copious, he is tautological; in striving to explain every thing, he overloads and obscures his meaning. The fault is the uniform desire to produce an effect, and the supposition that this is to be done by main force.

In one sermon, Dr. Channing insists boldly and loudly on the necessity that American preachers should assume a loftier style, and put forth energies and pretensions to claim attention in proportion to the excited tone of public feeling, and the advances of modern literature and science. He reproaches them with their lukewarmness, and points out to them, as models, the novels of Scott and the poetry of Byron. If Dr. Channing expects a grave preacher in a pulpit to excite the same interest as a tragedy hero on the stage, or a discourse on the meaning of a text of Scripture to enchain the feelings like one 330of the Waverley Novels, it will be a long time first. The mere proposal is putting the will for the deed, and an instance of that republican assurance and rejection of the idea of not being equal to any person or thing, which convinces pretenders of this stamp that there is no reason why they should not do all that others can, and a great deal more into the bargain.

FLAXMAN’S LECTURES ON SCULPTURE

Vol. i.] [October 1829.

These Lectures were delivered at the Royal Academy in an annual Course, instituted expressly for that purpose. They are not, on the whole, ill calculated to promote the object for which they were originally designed,—to guide the taste, and stimulate the enquiries of the student; but we should doubt whether there is much in them that is likely to interest the public. They may be characterised as the work of a sculptor by profession—dry and hard; a meagre outline, without colouring or adventitious ornament. The Editor states, that he has left them scrupulously as he found them: there are, in consequence, some faults of grammatical construction, of trifling consequence; and many of the paragraphs are thrown into the form of notes, or loose memorandums, and read like a table of contents. Nevertheless, there is a great and evident knowledge of the questions treated of; and wherever there is knowledge, there is power, and a certain degree of interest. It is only a pen guided by inanity or affectation, that can strip such subjects of instruction and amusement. Otherwise, the body of ancient or of modern Art is like the loadstone, to which the soul vibrates, responsive, however cold or repulsive the form in which it appears. We have, however, a more serious fault to object to the present work, than the mere defects of style, or mode of composition. It is with considerable regret and reluctance, we confess, that though it may add to the student’s knowledge of the art, it will contribute little to the understanding of it. It abounds in rules rather than principles. The examples, authorities, precepts, are full, just, and well-selected. The terms of art are unexceptionably applied; the different styles very properly designated; the mean is distinguished from the lofty; due praise is bestowed on the graceful, the grand, the beautiful, the ideal; but the reader comprehends no more of the meaning of these qualities at the end of the work than he did at the beginning. The tone of the Lectures is dogmatical rather than philosophical. The judgment for the most part is sound, though no new light is thrown on the 331grounds on which it rests. Mr. Flaxman is contented to take up with traditional maxims, with adjudged cases, with the acknowledged theory and practice of art: and it is well that he does so; for when he departs from the habitual bias of his mind, and attempts to enter into an explanation or defence of first principles, the reasons which he advances are often weak, warped, insufficient, or contradictory. His arguments are neither solid nor ingenious: They are merely quaint and gratuitous. If we were to hazard a general opinion, we should be disposed to say that a certain setness and formality, a certain want of flexibility and power, ran through the character of his whole mind. His compositions as a sculptor are classical,—cast in an approved mould; but, generally speaking, they are elegant outlines,—poetical abstractions converted into marble, yet still retaining the essential character of words; and the Professor’s opinions and views of art as here collected, exhibit barely the surface and crust of commonly-received maxims, with little depth or originality. The characteristics of his mind were precision, elegance, cool judgment, industry, and a laudable and exclusive attachment to the best. He wanted richness, variety, and force. But we shall not dwell farther on these remarks here; as examples and illustrations of them will occur in the course of this article.

The first Lecture, on the history of early British Sculpture, will be found to contain some novel and curious information. At its very commencement, however, we find two instances of perverse or obscure reasoning, which we cannot entirely pass over. In allusion to the original institution and objects of the Royal Academy, the author observes, that ‘as the study of Sculpture was at that time confined within narrow limits, so the appointment of a Professorship in that art was not required, until the increasing taste of the country had given great popularity to the art itself, and native achievements had called on the powers of native Sculpture to celebrate British heroes and patriots.’ Does Mr. Flaxman mean by this to insinuate that Britain had neither patriots nor heroes to boast of, till after the establishment of the Royal Academy, and a little before that of the Professorship of Sculpture? If so, we cannot agree with him. It would be going only a single step farther to assert that the study of Astronomy had not been much encouraged in this country, till the discovery of the Georgium Sidus was thought to call for it, and for the establishment of an Observatory at Greenwich! In the next page, the Lecturer remarks, ‘Painting is honoured with precedence, because Design or Drawing is more particularly and extensively employed in illustration of history. Sculpture immediately follows in the enumeration, because the two arts possess the same common principles, expressed 332by Painting in colour, and by Sculpture in form.’ Surely, there is here some confusion, either in the thoughts or in the language. First, Painting takes precedence of Sculpture, because it illustrates history by design or form, which is common to both; next, Sculpture comes after Painting, because it illustrates by form, what Painting does not illustrate by form, but by colour. We cannot make any sense of this. It is from repeated similar specimens that we are induced to say, that when Mr. Flaxman reasons, he reasons ill. But to proceed to something more grateful. The following is a condensed and patriotic sketch of the rise and early progress of Sculpture in our own country:

‘The Saxons destroyed the works of Roman grandeur in Britain, burnt the cities from sea to sea, and reduced the country to barbarism again; but when these invaders were settled in their new possessions, they erected poor and clumsy imitations of the Roman buildings themselves had ruined. The Saxon Painting is rather preferable to their Sculpture, which, whether intended to represent the human or brutal figure, is frequently both horrible and burlesque. The buildings erected in England from the settlement of the Saxons to the reign of Henry I., continued nearly the same plain, heavy repetitions of columns and arches. So little was Sculpture employed in them, that no sepulchral statue is known in England before the time of William the Conqueror.

‘Immediately after the Roman Conquest, figures of the deceased were carved, in bas-relief, on their gravestones, examples of which may be seen in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, representing two abbots of that church, and in Worcester Cathedral, those of St. Oswald and Bishop Wulstan. The Crusaders returned from the Holy Land; eager to imitate the arts and magnificence of other countries, they began to decorate the architecture with rich foliage, and to introduce statues against the columns; as we find in the west door of Rochester Cathedral, built in the reign of Henry I. Architecture now improved; Sculpture also became popular. The custom of carving a figure of the deceased in bas-relief on the tomb, seems likely to have been brought from France, where it was continued, in imitation of the Romans. Figures placed against columns might also be copied from examples in that country, of which one remarkable instance was a door in the church of St. Germain de Prez, in Paris, containing several statues of the ancient kings of France, projecting from columns; a work of the 10th century, of which there are prints in Montfaucon’s Antiquities.

‘Sculpture continued to be practised with such zeal and success, that in the reign of Henry III. efforts were made deserving our respect 333and attention at this day. Bishop Joceline rebuilt the Cathedral Church of Wells from the pavement, which having lived to finish and dedicate, he died in the year of our Lord 1242. The west front of this church equally testifies the piety and comprehension of the Bishop’s mind; the sculpture presents the noblest, most useful and interesting subjects possible to be chosen. On the south side, above the west door, are alto-relievos of the Creation in its different parts, the Deluge, and important acts of the Patriarchs. Companions to these on the north side are alto-relievos of the principal circumstances in the life of our Saviour. Above these are two rows of statues larger than nature, in niches, of kings, queens, and nobles, patrons of the church, saints, bishops, and other religious, from its first foundation to the reign of Henry III. Near the pediment is our Saviour come to judgment, attended by angels and his twelve apostles. The upper arches on each side, along the whole of the west front, and continued in the north and south ends, are occupied by figures rising from their graves, strongly expressing the hope, fear, astonishment, stupefaction, or despair, inspired by the presence of the Lord and Judge of the world in that awful moment. In speaking of the execution of such a work, due regard must be paid to the circumstances under which it was produced, in comparison with those of our own times. There were neither prints nor printed books to assist the artist. The Sculptor could not be instructed in Anatomy, for there were no Anatomists. Some knowledge of Optics, and a glimmering of Perspective, were reserved for the researches of so sublime a genius as Roger Bacon, some years afterwards. A small knowledge of Geometry and Mechanics was exclusively confined to two or three learned monks in the whole country; and the principles of those sciences, as applied to the figure and motion of man and inferior animals, were known to none! Therefore this work is necessarily ill drawn, and deficient in principle, and much of the sculpture is rude and severe; yet in parts there is a beautiful simplicity, an irresistible sentiment, and sometimes a grace, excelling more modern productions.

‘It is very remarkable that Wells Cathedral was finished in 1242, two years after the birth of Cimabue, the restorer of painting in Italy; and the work was going on at the same time that Nicolo Pisano, the Italian restorer of sculpture, exercised the art in his own country: it was also finished forty-six years before the Cathedral of Amiens, and thirty-six before the Cathedral of Orvieto was begun; and it seems to be the first specimen of such magnificent and varied sculpture, united in a series of sacred history, that is to be found in Western Europe. It is, therefore, probable that the general idea of the work might be brought from the East by some of the Crusaders. But there are two 334arguments strongly in favour of the execution being English: the family name of the Bishop is English, “Jocelyn Troteman”; and the style, both of sculpture and architecture, is wholly different from the tombs of Edward the Confessor and Henry III., which were by Italian artists.

‘The reign of Edward I. produced a new species of monument. When Eleanor the beloved wife of that monarch died, who had been his heroic and affectionate companion in the Holy War, he raised some crosses of magnificent architecture, adorned with statues of his departed queen, wherever her corpse rested on the way to its interment in Westminster Abbey. Three of these crosses still remain, at Northampton, Geddington, and Waltham. The statues have considerable simplicity and delicacy; they partake of the character and grace particularly cultivated in the school of Pisano; and it is not unlikely, as the sepulchral statue and tomb of Henry III. were executed by Italians, that these statues of Queen Eleanor might be done by some of the numerous travelling scholars from Pisano’s school.

‘The long and prosperous reign of Edward III. was as favourable to literature and liberal arts, as to the political and commercial interests of the country. So generally were painting, sculpture, and architecture encouraged and employed, that besides the buildings raised in this reign, few sacred edifices existed, which did not receive additions and decorations. The richness, novelty, and beauty of architecture may be seen in York and Gloucester Cathedrals, and many of our other churches: besides the extraordinary fancy displayed in various intricate and diversified figures which form the mullions of windows, they were occasionally enriched with a profusion of foliage and historical sculpture, equally surprising for beauty and novelty. In the chancel of Dorchester Church, near Oxford, are three windows of this kind, one of which, besides rich foliage, is adorned with twenty-eight small statues relating to the genealogy of our Saviour; and the other two with alto-relievos from acts of his life.’

Mr. Flaxman then proceeds to trace the progress of Sculpture, and the growing passion for it in this country, through the reign of Henry VII. to the period when its prospects were blighted by the Reformation, and many of its monuments defaced by the Iconoclastic fury of the Puritans and zealots in the time of Charles I. The Lecturer seems to be of opinion that the genius of sculpture in our island was arrested, in the full career of excellence, and when it was approaching the goal of perfection, by these two events; which drew aside the public attention, and threw a stigma on the encouragement of sacred sculpture; whereas, it would perhaps be just as fair to 335argue, that these events would never have happened, had it not been for a certain indifference in the national character to mere outward impressions, and a slowness to appreciate, or form an enthusiastic attachment to objects that appeal only to the imagination and the senses. We may be influenced by higher and more solid principles,—reason and philosophy; but that makes nothing to the question. Mr. Flaxman bestows great and deserved praise on the monuments of Aylmer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, and Edmund Crouchback, in Westminster Abbey, which are by English artists, whose names are preserved; but speaks slightingly of the tomb of Henry VII. and his wife, in Henry VII.’s Chapel, by Torregiano; from whom, on trivial and insufficient grounds, he withholds the merit of the other sculptures and ornaments of the chapel. This is prejudice, and not wisdom. We think the tomb alone will be monument enough to that artist in the opinion of all who have seen it. We have no objection to, but on the contrary applaud the Lecturer’s zeal to repel the imputation of incapacity from British art, and to detect the lurking traces and doubtful prognostics of it in the records of our early history; but we are, at the same time, convinced that tenaciousness on this point creates an unfavourable presumption on the other side; and we make bold to submit, that whenever the national capacity bursts forth in the same powerful and striking way in the Fine Arts that it has done in so many others, we shall no longer have occasion to praise ourselves for what we either have done, or what we are to do:—the world will soon be loud in the acknowledgment of it. Works of ornament and splendour must dazzle and claim attention at the first sight, or they do not answer their end. They are not like the deductions of an abstruse philosophy, or even improvements in practical affairs, which may make their way slowly and under-ground. They are not a light placed under a bushel, but like ‘a city set on a hill, that cannot be hid.’ To appear and to be, are with them the same thing. Neither are we much better satisfied with the arguments of the learned professor to show that the series of statuary in Wells Cathedral is of native English workmanship. The difference of style from the tombs of Edward the Confessor and Henry III. by Italians, can be of little weight at a period when the principles of art were so unsettled, and each person did the best he could, according to his own taste and knowledge; and as to the second branch of the evidence, viz. that ‘the family name of the Bishop is English, Jocelyn Troteman,’ it sounds too much like a parody on the story of him who wanted to prove his descent from the ‘Admirable Crichton,’ by his having a family cup in his possession with the initials A. C.!

336We dwell the longer and more willingly on the details and recollections of the early works of which the author speaks so feelingly, as first informed with life and sentiment, because all relating to that remote period of architecture and sculpture, exercises a peculiar charm and fascination over our minds. It is not art in its ‘high and palmy state,’ with its boasted refinements about it, that we look at with envy and wonder, so much as in its first rude attempts and conscious yearning after excellence. They were, indeed, the favoured of the earth, into whom genius first breathed the breath of life; who, born in a night of ignorance, first beheld the sacred dawn of light—those Deucalions of art, who, after the deluge of barbarism and violence had subsided, stood alone in the world, and had to sow the seeds of countless generations of knowledge. We can conceive of some village Michael Angelo, with a soul too mighty for its tenement of clay, whose longing aspirations after truth and good were palsied by the refusal of his hand to execute them,—struggling to burst the trammels and trying to shake off the load of discouragement that oppressed him: What must be his exultation to see the speaking statue, the stately pile, rise up slowly before him,—the idea in his mind embodied out of nothing, without model or precedent,—to see a huge cathedral heave its ponderous weight above the earth, or the solemn figure of an apostle point from one corner of it to the skies; and to think that future ages would, perhaps, gaze at the work with the same delight and wonder that his own did, and not suffer his name to sink into the same oblivion as those who had gone before him, or as the brutes that perish;—this was, indeed, to be admitted into the communion, the ‘holiest of holies’ of genius, and to drink of the waters of life freely! Art, as it springs from the source of genius, is like the act of creation: it has the same obscurity and grandeur about it. Afterwards, whatever perfection it attains, it becomes mechanical. Its strongest impulse and inspiration is derived, not from what it has done, but from what it has to do. It is not surprising that from this state of anxiety and awe with which it regards its appointed task,—the unknown bourne that lies before it, such startling revelations of the world of truth and beauty are often struck out when one might least expect it, and that Art has sometimes leaped at one vast bound from its cradle to its grave! Mr. Flaxman, however, strongly inculcates the contrary theory, and is for raising up Art to its most majestic height by the slow and circuitous process of an accumulation of rules and machinery. He seems to argue that its advance is on a gradually inclined plane, keeping pace and co-extended with that of Science; ‘growing with its growth and strengthening with its strength.’ It appears to us that this is not rightly to weigh 337the essential differences either of Science or of Art; and that it is flying in the face both of fact and argument. He says, it took sculpture nine hundred or a thousand years to advance from its first rude commencement to its perfection in Greece and Egypt: But we must remember, that the greatest excellence of the Fine Arts, both in Greece, Italy, and Holland, was concentrated into little more than a century; and again, if Art and Science were synonymous, there can be no doubt that the knowledge of anatomy and geometry is more advanced in England in the present day than it was at Athens in the time of Pericles; but is our sculpture therefore superior? The answer to this is, ‘No; but it ought to be, and it will be.’ Spare us, good Mr. Prophesier! Art cannot be transmitted by a receipt, or theorem, like Science; and cannot therefore be improved ad libitum: It has inseparably to do with individual nature and individual genius.

The Second Lecture is on Egyptian Sculpture, and here Mr. Flaxman displays the same accurate information and diligent research as before. The Egyptian statues, the Sphinx, the Memnon, &c. were, as is well known, principally distinguished for their size, and the immense labour and expense bestowed upon them. The critic thus justly characterizes their style and merits:

‘The Egyptian statues stand equally poised on both legs, having one foot advanced, the arms either hanging straight down on each side; or, if one is raised, it is at a right angle across the body. Some of the statues sit on seats, some on the ground, and some are kneeling; but the position of the hands seldom varies from the above description; their attitudes are of course simple, rectilinear, and without lateral movement; the faces are rather flat, the brows, eyelids, and mouth formed of simple curves, slightly but sharply marked, and with little expression; the general proportions are something more than seven heads high; the form of the body and limbs rather round and effeminate, with only the most evident projections and hollows. Their tunics, or rather draperies, are in many instances without folds. Winckelman has remarked, that the Egyptians executed quadrupeds better than human figures; for which he gives the two following reasons: first, that as professions in that country were hereditary, genius must be wanting to represent the human form in perfection; secondly, That superstitious reverence for the works of their ancestors prevented improvements. This is an amusing, but needless hypothesis: for there are statues in the Capitoline Museum with as great a breadth, and choice of grand parts proper to the human form, as ever they represented in their lions, or other inferior animals. In addition to these observations on Egyptian statues, we may remark, the forms of their hands and feet are gross; they have 338no anatomical detail of parts, and are totally deficient in the grace of motion. This last defect, in all probability, was not the consequence of a superstitious determination to persist in the practice of their ancestors; it is accounted for in another and better way.

‘Pythagoras, after he had studied several years in Egypt, sacrificed a hundred oxen in consequence of having discovered, that a square of the longest side of a right-angled triangle is equal to the two squares of the lesser sides of the same triangle; and thence it follows, that the knowledge of the Egyptians could not have been very great at that time in geometry. This will naturally account for that want of motion in their statues and relievos, which can only be obtained by a careful observation of nature, assisted by geometry.’

This is, we apprehend, one of the weak points of Mr. Flaxman’s reasoning. That geometry may be of great use to fix and ascertain certain general principles of the art, we are far from disputing; but surely it was no more necessary for the Egyptian sculptor to wait for the discovery of Pythagoras’s problem before he could venture to detach the arms from the sides, than it was for the Egyptians themselves to remain swathed and swaddled up like mummies, without the power of locomotion, till Pythagoras came with his geometrical diagram to set their limbs at liberty. If they could do this without a knowledge of mechanics, the sculptor could not help seeing it, and imperfectly copying it, if he had the use of his senses or his wits about him. The greater probability is, that the sepulchral statues were done from, or in imitation of the mummies; or that as the imitation of variety of gesture or motion is always the most difficult, these stiff and monotonous positions were adopted (and subsequently adhered to from custom) as the safest and easiest. After briefly noticing the defects of the Hindoo and other early sculpture, the author proceeds to account for the improved practice of the Greeks on the same formal and mechanic principles.

‘We find,’ he says, ‘upon these authorities (Vitruvius and the elder Pliny), that geometry and numbers were employed to ascertain the powers of motion and proportions; optics and perspective (as known to the ancients) to regulate projections, hollows, keeping, diminution, curvatures, and general effects in figures, groups, insulated or in relief, with accompaniments; and anatomy, to represent the bones, muscles, tendons, and veins, as they appear on the surface of the human body and inferior animals.

‘In this enlightened age, when the circle of science is so generally and well understood—when the connexion and relation of one branch with another is demonstrated, and their principles applied from necessity and conviction, wherever possibility allows, in the liberal and 339mechanical arts, as well as all the other concerns of life—no one can be weak or absurd enough to suppose it is within the ability and province of human genius, without the principles of science previously acquired—by slight observation only—to become possessed of the forms, characters, and essences of objects, in such a manner as to represent them with truth, force, and pathos at once! No; we are convinced by reason and experience, that “life is short and art is long;” and the perfection of all human productions depends on the indefatigable accumulation of knowledge and labour through a succession of ages.’—P. 55.

This paragraph, we cannot but think, proceeds altogether on a false estimate: it is a misdirection to the student. In following up the principles here laid down, the artist’s life would not only be short, but misspent. Is there no medium, in our critic’s view of this matter, between a ‘slight observation’ of nature, and scientific demonstration? If so, we will say there can be no fine art at all: For mere abstract and formal rules cannot produce truth, force, and pathos in individual forms; and it is equally certain that ‘slight observation’ will not answer the end, if all but learned pedantry is to be accounted casual and superficial. This is to throw a slur on the pursuit, and an impediment in the way of the art itself. Mr. Flaxman seems here to suppose that our observation is profound and just, not according to the delicacy, comprehensiveness, or steadiness of the attention we bestow upon a given object: but depends on the discovery of some other object which was before hid; or on the intervention of mechanical rules, which supersede the exercise of our senses and judgments—as if the outward appearance of things was concealed by a film of abstraction, which could only be removed by the spectacles of books. Thus, anatomy is said to be necessary ‘to represent the bones, muscles tendons, and veins, as they appear on the surface of the human body;’ so that it is to be presumed, that the anatomist, when he has with his knife and instruments laid bare the internal structure of the body, sees at a glance what he did not before see; but that the artist, after poring over them all his life, is blind to the external appearance of veins, muscles, &c., till the seeing what is concealed under the skin enables him for the first time to see what appears through it. We do not deny that the knowledge of the internal conformation helps to explain and to determine the meaning of the outward appearance; what we object to as unwarrantable and pernicious doctrine, is substituting the one process for the other, and speaking slightly of the study of nature in the comparison. It shows a want of faith in the principles and purposes of the Art itself, and a wish to confound and prop it up with the grave mysteries and formal pretensions of Science; 340which is to take away its essence and its pride. The student who sets to work under such an impression, may accumulate a great deal of learned lumber, and envelope himself in diagrams, demonstrations, and the whole circle of the sciences; but while he is persuaded that the study of nature is but a ‘slight’ part of his task, he will never be able to draw, colour, or express a single object, farther than this can be done by a rule and compasses. The crutches of science will not lend wings to genius. Suppose a person were to tell us, that if he pulled off his coat and laid bare his arm, this would give us (with all the attention we could bestow upon it) no additional insight into its form, colour, or the appearance of veins and muscles on the surface, unless he at the same time suffered us to flay it; should we not laugh in his face as wanting common sense, or conclude that he was laughing at us? So the late Professor of Sculpture lays little stress in accounting for the progress of Grecian art on the perfection which the human form acquired, and the opportunities for studying its varieties and movements in the Olympic exercises; but considers the whole miracle as easily solved, when the anatomist came with his probe and ploughed up the surface of the flesh, and the geometrician came with his line and plummet, and demonstrated the centre of gravity. He sums up the question in these words: ‘In the early times of Greece, Pausanias informs us the twelve Gods were worshipped in Arcadia, under the forms of rude stones; and before Dædalus the statues had eyes nearly shut, the arms attached to their sides, and the legs close together! but as geometry, mechanics, arithmetic, and anatomy improved, painting and sculpture acquired action, proportion and detailed parts.’ As to the slight account that is made in this reasoning of the immediate observation of visible objects, the point may be settled by an obvious dilemma: Either the eye sees the whole of any object before it; or it does not. If it sees and comprehends the whole of it with all its parts and relations, then it must retain and be able to give a faithful and satisfactory resemblance, without calling in the aid of rules or science to prevent or correct errors and defects; just as the human face or form is perfectly represented in a looking-glass. But if the eye sees only a small part of what any visible object contains in it,—has only a glimmering of colour, proportion, expression &c., then this incipient and imperfect knowledge may be improved to an almost infinite degree by close attention, by study and practice, and by comparing a succession of objects with one another; which is the proper and essential province of the artist, independently of abstract rules or science. On further observation we notice many details in a face which escaped us at the first glance; by a study of faces and of mankind practically, we perceive expressions which the generality do 341not perceive; but this is not done by rule. The fallacy is in supposing that all that the first naked or hasty observation does not give, is supplied by science and general theories, and not by a closer and continued observation of the thing itself, so that all that belongs to the latter department is necessarily casual and slight.

Mr. Flaxman enforces the same argument by quoting the rules laid down by Vitruvius, for ascertaining the true principles of form and motion. This writer says, ‘If a man lies on his back, his arms and legs may be so extended, that a circle may be drawn round, touching the extremities of his fingers and toes, the centre of which circle shall be his navel: also, that, a man standing upright, the length of his arms when fully extended is equal to his height; thus that the circle and the square equally contain the general form and motion of the human figure.’ From these hints, and the profound mathematical train of reasoning with which Leonardo da Vinci has pursued the subject, the author adds, that a complete system of the principles followed by the ancient Greek sculptors may be drawn out: that is to say, that because all the inflections of figure and motion of which the human body is susceptible, are contained within the above-mentioned circle or square, the knowledge of all this formal generality includes a knowledge of all the subordinate and implied particulars. The contortions of the Laocoon, the agony of the Children, the look of the Dying Gladiator, the contours of the Venus, the grace and spirit of the Apollo, are all, it seems, contained within the limits of the circle or the square! Just as well might it be contended, that having got a square or oval frame, of the size of a picture by Titian or Vandyke, every one is qualified to paint a face within it equal in force or beauty to Titian or Vandyke.

In the same spirit of a determination to make art a handmaid attendant upon Science, the author thus proceeds: ‘Pliny says, lib. xxxiv. c. 8, Leontius, the contemporary of Phidias, first expressed tendons and veins—primus nervos et venas expressit—which was immediately after the anatomical researches and improvements of Hippocrates, Democritus, and their disciples; and we shall find in the same manner all the improvements in art followed improvements in science.’ Yet almost in the next page, Mr. Flaxman himself acknowledges, that even in the best times of Grecian sculpture, and the era of Phidias and Praxiteles, dissections were rare, and anatomy very imperfectly understood, and cites ‘the opinion of the learned Professor of Anatomy, that the ancients artists owed much more to the study of living than dead bodies.’ Sir Anthony Carlisle, aware of the deficiencies of former ages in this branch of knowledge, and yet conscious that he himself would be greatly puzzled to carve the 342Apollo or the Venus, very naturally and wisely concludes, that the latter depends upon a course of study, and an acquaintance with forms very different from any which he possesses. It is a smattering and affectation of science that leads men to suppose that it is capable of more than it really is, and of supplying the undefined and evanescent creations of art with universal and infallible principles. There cannot be an opinion more productive of presumption and sloth.

The same turn of thought is insisted on in the Fourth Lecture, On Science; and indeed nearly the whole of that Lecture is devoted to a fuller developement and exemplification of what appears to us a servile prejudice. It would be unjust, however, to Mr. Flaxman, to suppose, or to insinuate, that he is without a better sense and better principles of art, whenever he trusted to his own feelings and experience, instead of being hoodwinked by an idle theory. Nothing can be more excellent than the following observations which occur towards the conclusion of the Lecture on Composition:

‘What has been delivered comprises some of the rules for composing, and observations on composition, the most obvious, and perhaps not the least useful. They have been collected from the best works and the best writings, examined and compared with their principles in nature. Such a comprehensive view may be serviceable to the younger student, in pointing his way, preventing error, and showing the needful materials; but after all, he must perform the work himself! All rules, all critical discourses, can but awaken the intelligence, and stimulate the will, with advice and directions, for a beginning of that which is to be done. They may be compared to the scaffolding for raising a magnificent palace; it is neither the building nor the decoration, but it is the workman’s indispensable help in erecting the walls which enclose the apartments, and which may afterwards be enriched with the most splendid ornaments. Every painter and sculptor feels a conviction that a considerable portion of science is requisite to the productions of liberal art; but he will be equally convinced, that whatever is produced from principles and rules only, added to the most exquisite manual labour, is no more than a mechanical work. Sentiment is the life and soul of fine art; without which it is all a dead letter! Sentiment gives a sterling value, an irresistible charm to the rudest imagery or most unpractised scrawl. By this quality a firm alliance is formed with the affections in all works of art. With an earnest watchfulness for their preservation, we are made to perceive and feel the most sublime and terrific subjects, following the course of sentiment, through the current and mazes of intelligence and passion, to the most delicate and tender ties and sympathies.’

From the account of Grecian sculpture, in the third Lecture, which 343is done with care and judgment, we select the following descriptions of the Minerva and Jupiter of Phidias:—

‘Within the temple (at the Acropolis of Athens) stood the statue of Minerva, thirty-nine feet high, made by Phidias, of ivory and gold, holding a victory, six feet high, in her right hand, and a spear in her left, her tunic reaching to her feet. She had her helmet on, and the Medusa’s head on her ægis; her shield was adorned with the battle of the gods and giants, the pedestal with the birth of Pandora. Plato tells us that the eyes of this statue were precious stones. But the great work of this chief of sculptors, the astonishment and praise of after ages, was the Jupiter at Elis, sitting on his throne, his left hand holding a sceptre, his right extending victory to the Olympian conquerors, his head crowned with olive, and his pallium decorated with birds, beasts, and flowers. The four corners of the throne were dancing victories, each supported by a sphinx, tearing a Theban youth. At the back of the throne, above his head, were the three horns, or seasons, on one side, and on the other the three Graces. On the bar, between the legs of the throne, and the panels, or spaces, between them, were represented many stories—the destruction of Niobe’s children, the labours of Hercules, the delivery of Prometheus, the garden of Hesperides, with the different adventures of the heroic ages. On the base, the battle of Theseus with the Amazons; on the pedestal, an assembly of the gods, the sun and moon in their cars, and the birth of Venus. The height of the work was sixty feet. The statue was ivory, enriched with the radiance of golden ornaments and precious stones, and was justly esteemed one of the seven wonders of the world.

‘Several other statues of great excellence, in marble and in bronze, are mentioned among the works of Phidias, particularly a Venus, placed by the Romans in the forum of Octavia; two Minervas, one named Callimorphus, from the beauty of its form; and it is likely that the fine statue of this goddess in Mr. Hope’s gallery is a repetition in marble of Phidias’s bronze, from its resemblance in attitude, drapery, and helmet, to the reverse of an Athenian coin. Another statue by him was an Amazon, called Eutnemon, from her beautiful legs. There is a print of this in the Museum Pium Clementinum.’

With the name of Phidias, Mr. Flaxman couples that of Praxiteles, and gives the following spirited sketch of him and his works:—

‘Praxiteles excelled in the highest graces of youth and beauty. He is said to have excelled not only other sculptors, but himself, by his marble statues in the Ceramicus of Athens; but his Venus was preferable to all others in the world, and many sailed to Cnidos for the purpose of seeing it. This sculptor having made two statues of 344Venus, one with drapery, the other without, the Coans preferred the clothed figure, on account of its severe modesty, the same price being set upon each. The citizens of Cnidos took the rejected statue, and afterwards refused it to King Nicomedes, who would have forgiven them an immense debt in return; but they were resolved to suffer any thing, so long as this statue, by Praxiteles, ennobled Cnidos. The temple was entirely open in which it was placed, because every view was equally admirable. This Venus was still in Cnidos during the reign of the Emperor Arcadius, about 400 years after Christ. Among the known works of Praxiteles are his Satyr, Cupid, Apollo, the Lizard-killer, and Bacchus leaning on a Faun.’

But we must stop short in this list of famous names and enchanting works, or we should never have done. This seems to have been the fabulous age of sculpture, when marble started into life as in a luxurious dream, and men appeared to have no other employment than ‘to make Gods in their own image.’ The Lecturer bestows due and eloquent praise on the horses in the Elgin collection, which he supposes to have been done under the superintendence, and probably from designs by Phidias; but we are sorry he has not extended his eulogium to the figure of the Theseus, which appears to us a world of grace and grandeur in itself, and to say to the sculptor’s art, ‘Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther!’ What went before it was rude in the comparison; what came after it was artificial. It is the perfection of style, and would have afforded a much better exemplification of the force and meaning of that term than the schoolboy definition adopted in the Lecture on this subject; namely, that as poets and engravers used a stylos, or style, to execute their works, the name of the instrument was metaphorically applied to express the art itself. Style properly means the mode of representing nature; and this again arises from the various character of men’s minds, and the infinite variety of views which may be taken of nature. After seeing the Apollo, the Hercules, and other celebrated works of antiquity, we seem to have exhausted our stock of admiration, and to conceive that there is no higher perfection for sculpture to attain, or to aspire to. But at the first sight of the Elgin Marbles, we feel that we have been in a mistake, and the ancient objects of our idolatry fall into an inferior class or style of art. They are comparatively, and without disparagement of their vast and almost superhuman merit, stuck-up gods and goddesses. But a new principle is at work in the others which we had not seen or felt the want of before (not a studied trick, or curious refinement, but an obvious truth, arising from a more intimate acquaintance with, and firmer reliance on, nature;)—a principle of fusion, of motion, so that the marble flows like a wave. The common antiques represent 345the most perfect forms and proportions, with each part perfectly understood and executed; every thing is brought out; every thing is made as exquisite and imposing as it can be in itself; but each part seems to be cut out of the marble, and to answer to a model of itself in the artist’s mind. But in the fragment of the Theseus, the whole is melted into one impression like wax; there is all the flexibility, the malleableness of flesh; there is the same alternate tension and relaxation; the same sway and yielding of the parts; ‘the right hand knows what the left hand doeth’; and the statue bends and plays under the framer’s mighty hand and eye, as if, instead of being a block of marble, it was provided with an internal machinery of nerves and muscles, and felt every the slightest pressure or motion from one extremity to the other. This, then, is the greatest grandeur of style, from the comprehensive idea of the whole, joined to the greatest simplicity, from the entire union and subordination of the parts. There is no ostentation, no stiffness, no overlaboured finishing. Every thing is in its place and degree, and put to its proper use. The greatest power is combined with the greatest ease: there is the perfection of knowledge, with the total absence of a conscious display of it. We find so little of an appearance of art or labour, that we might be almost tempted to suppose that the whole of these groups were done by means of casts from fine nature; for it is to be observed, that the commonest cast from nature has the same style or character of union and reaction of parts, being copied from that which has life and motion in itself. What adds a passing gleam of probability to such a suggestion is, that these statues were placed at a height where only the general effect could be distinguished, and that the back and hinder parts, which are just as scrupulously finished as the rest, and as true to the mould of nature, were fixed against a wall where they could not be seen at all; and where the labour (if we do not suppose it to be in a great measure abridged mechanically) was wholly thrown away. However, we do not lay much stress on this consideration; for we are aware that ‘the labour we delight in physics pain,’ and we believe that the person who could do the statue of the Theseus, would do it, under all circumstances, and without fee or reward of any kind. We conceive that the Elgin Marbles settle another disputed point of vital interest to the arts. Sir Joshua Reynolds contends, among others, that grandeur of style consists in giving only the masses, and leaving out the details. The statues we are speaking of repudiate this doctrine, and at least demonstrate the possibility of uniting the two things, which had been idly represented to be incompatible, as if they were not obviously found together in nature. A great number of parts may be collected into one mass; as, on the other hand, a work 346may equally want minute details, or large and imposing masses. Suppose all the light to be thrown on one side of a face, and all the shadow on the other: the chiaroscuro may be worked up with the utmost delicacy and pains in the one, and every vein or freckle distinctly marked on the other, without destroying the general effect—that is, the two broad masses of light and shade. Mr. Flaxman takes notice that there were two eras of Grecian art before the time of Pericles and Phidias, when it was at its height. In the first they gave only a gross or formal representation of the objects, so that you could merely say, ‘This is a man, that is a horse.’ To this clumsy concrete style succeeded the most elaborate finishing of parts, without selection, grace or grandeur. ‘Elaborate finishing was soon afterwards’ [after the time of Dædalus and his scholars] ‘carried to excess: undulating locks and spiral knots of hair like shells, as well as the drapery, were wrought with the most elaborate care and exactness; whilst the tasteless and barbarous character of the face and limbs remained much the same as in former times.’ This was the natural course of things, to denote first the gross object; then to run into the opposite extreme, and give none but the detached parts. The difficulty was to unite the two in a noble and comprehensive idea of nature.

We are chiefly indebted for the information or amusement we derive from Mr. Flaxman’s work, to the historical details of his subject. We cannot say that he has removed any of the doubts or stumbling-blocks in our way, or extended the landmarks of taste or reasoning. We turned with some interest to the Lecture on Beauty; for the artist has left specimens of this quality in several of his works. We were a good deal disappointed. It sets out in this manner: ‘That beauty is not merely an imaginary quality, but a real essence, may be inferred from the harmony of the universe; and the perfection of its wondrous parts we may understand from all surrounding nature; and in this course of observation we find, that man has more of beauty bestowed on him as he rises higher in creation.’ The rest is of a piece with this exordium,—containing a dissertation on the various gradations of being, of which man is said to be at the top,—on the authority of Socrates, who argues, ‘that the human form is the most perfect of all forms, because it contains in it the principles and powers of all inferior forms.’ This assertion is either a flat contradiction of the fact, or an antique riddle, which we do not pretend to solve. Indeed, we hold the ancients, with all our veneration for them, to have been wholly destitute of philosophy in this department; and Mr. Flaxman, who was taught when he was young to look up to them for light and instruction in the philosophy of art, has engrafted too 347much of it on his Lectures. He defines beauty thus: ‘The most perfect human beauty is that most free from deformity, either of body or mind, and may be therefore defined—The most perfect soul is the most perfect body.’

In support of this truism, he strings a number of quotations together, as if he were stringing pearls:

‘In Plato’s dialogue concerning the beautiful, he shows the power and influence of mental beauty on corporeal; and in his dialogue, entitled “The greater Hippias,” Socrates observes in argument, “that as a beautiful vase is inferior to a beautiful horse, and as a beautiful horse is not to be compared to a beautiful virgin, in the same manner a beautiful virgin is inferior in beauty to the immortal Gods; for,” says he, “there is a beauty incorruptible, ever the same.” It is remarkable, that, immediately after, he says, “Phidias is skilful in beauty.” Aristotle, the Scholar of Plato, begins his Treatise on Morals thus:—“Every art, every method and institution, every action and council, seems to seek some good; therefore the ancients pronounced the beautiful to be good.” Much, indeed, might be collected from this philosopher’s treatises on morals, poetics, and physiognomy, of the greatest importance to our subject; but for the present we shall produce only two quotations from Xenophon’s Memorabilia, which contain the immediate application of these principles to the arts of design. In the dialogue between Socrates and the sculptor Clito, Socrates concludes, that “Statuary must represent the emotions of the soul by form;” and in the former part of the same dialogue, Parrhasius and Socrates agree that, “the good and evil qualities of the soul may be represented in the figure of man by painting.” In the applications from this dialogue to our subject, we must remember, philosophy demonstrates that rationality and intelligence, although connected with animal nature, rises above it, and properly exists in a more exalted state. From such contemplations and maxims, the ancient artists sublimated the sentiments of their works, expressed in the choicest forms of nature; thus they produced their divinities, heroes, patriots, and philosophers, adhering to the principle of Plato, that “nothing is beautiful which is not good;” it was this which, in ages of polytheism and idolatry, still continued to enforce a popular impression of divine attributes and perfection.’

If the ancient sculptors had had nothing but such maxims and contemplations as these to assist them in forming their statues, they would have been greatly to seek indeed! Take these homilies on the Beautiful and the Good, together with Euclid’s Elements, into any country town in England, and see if you can make a modern Athens of it. The Greek artists did not learn to put expression into 348their works, because Socrates had said, that ‘statuary must represent the emotions of the soul by form;’ but he said that they ought to do so, because he had seen it done by Phidias and others. It was from the diligent study and contemplation of the ‘choicest forms of nature,’ and from the natural love of beauty and grandeur in the human breast, and not from ‘shreds and patches,’ of philosophy, that they drew their conceptions of Gods and men. Let us not, however, be thought hard on the metaphysics of the ancients: they were the first to propose these questions, and to feel the curiosity and the earnest desire to know what the beautiful and the good, meant. If the will was not tantamount to the deed, it was scarcely their fault; and perhaps, instead of blaming their partial success, we ought rather to take shame to ourselves for the little progress we have made, and the dubious light that has been shed upon such questions since. If the Professor of Sculpture had sought for the principles of beauty in the antique statues, instead of the scholia of the commentators, he probably might have found it to resolve itself (according, at least, to their peculiar and favourite view of it) into a certain symmetry of form, answering in a great measure, to harmony of colouring, or of musical sounds. We do not here affect to lay down a metaphysical theory, but to criticise an historical fact. We are not bold enough to say that beauty in general depends on a regular gradation and correspondence of lines, but we may safely assert that Grecian beauty does. If we take any beautiful Greek statue, we shall find that, seen in profile, the forehead and nose form nearly a perpendicular straight line; and that finely turned at that point, the lower part of the face falls by gentle and almost equal curves to the chin. The cheek is full and round, and the outline of the side of the face a general sloping line. In front, the eyebrows are straight, or gently curved; the eyelids full and round to match, answering to that of Belphœbe, in Spenser—

‘Upon her eyebrows many Graces sat,

Under the shadow of her even brows:’

The space between the eyebrows is broad, and the two sides of the nose straight, and nearly parallel; the nostrils form large and distinct curves; the lips are full and even, the corners being large; the chin is round, and rather short, forming, with the two sides of the face, a regular oval. The opposite to this, the Grecian model of beauty, is to be seen in the contour and features of the African face, where all the lines, instead of corresponding to, or melting into, one another, in a kind of rhythmus of form, are sharp, angular, and at cross-purposes. Where strength and majesty were to be expressed by the Greeks, they adopted a greater squareness, but there was the same unity and 349correspondence of outline. Greek grace is harmony of movement. The ideal may be regarded as a certain predominant quality or character (this may be ugliness or deformity as well as beauty, as is seen in the forms of fauns and satyrs) diffused over all the parts of an object, and carried to the utmost pitch, that our acquaintance with visible models, and our conception of the imaginary object, will warrant. It is extending our impressions farther, raising them higher than usual, from the actual to the possible.^[31] How far we can enlarge our discoveries from the one of these to the other, is a point of some nicety. In treating on this question, our author thus distinguishes the Natural and the Ideal Styles:

‘The Natural Style may be defined thus: a representation of the human form, according to the distinction of sex and age, in action or repose, expressing the affections of the soul. The same words may be used to define the Ideal Style, but they must be followed by this addition—selected from such perfect examples as may excite in our minds a conception of the preternatural. By these definitions will be understood that the Natural Style is peculiar to humanity, and the Ideal to spirituality and divinity.’

We should be inclined to say, that the female divinities of the ancients were Goddesses because they were ideal, rather than that they were ideal because they belonged to the class of Goddesses; ‘By their own beauty were they deified.’ Of the difficulty of passing the line that separates the actual from the imaginary world, some test may be formed by the suggestion thrown out a little way back; viz. that the ideal is exemplified in systematizing and enhancing any idea whether of beauty or deformity, as in the case of the fauns and satyrs of antiquity. The expressing of depravity and grossness is produced here by approximating the human face and figure to that of the brute; so that the mind runs along this line from one to the other, and carries the wished-for resemblance as far as it pleases. But here both the extremes are equally well known, equally objects of sight and observation: insomuch that there might be a literal substitution of the one for the other; but in the other case, of elevating character and pourtraying Gods as men, one of the extremes is missing; and the combining the two, is combining a positive with an unknown abstraction. To represent a Jupiter or Apollo, we take the best species, (as it seems to us,) and select the best of that species: how we are to get beyond that best, without any given form or visible image to refer to, it is not easy to determine. The ideal, 350according to Mr. Flaxman, is ‘the scale by which to heaven we do ascend;’ but it is a hazardous undertaking to soar above reality, by embodying an abstraction. If the ancients could have seen the immortal Gods, with their bodily sense, (as it was said that Jupiter had revealed himself to Phidias,) they might have been enabled to give some reflection or shadow of their countenances to their human likenesses of them: otherwise, poetry and philosophy lent their light in vain. It is true, we may magnify the human figure to any extent we please, for that is a mechanical affair; but how we are to add to our ideas of grace or grandeur, beyond any thing we have ever seen, merely by contemplating grace and grandeur that we have never seen, is quite another matter. If we venture beyond the highest point of excellence of which we have any example, we quit our hold of the natural, without being sure that we have laid our hands on what is truly divine; for that has no earthly image or representative—nature is the only rule or ‘legislator.’ We may combine existing qualities, but this must be consistently, that is, such as are found combined in nature. Repose was given to the Olympian Jupiter to express majesty; because the greatest power was found to imply repose, and to produce its effects with the least effort. Minerva, the Goddess of Wisdom, was represented young and beautiful; because wisdom was discovered not to be confined to age or ugliness. Not only the individual excellencies, but their bond of union, were sanctioned by the testimony of observation and experience. Bacchus is represented with full, exuberant features, with prominent lips, and a stern brow, as expressing a character of plenitude and bounty, and the tamer of savages and wild beasts. But this ideal conception is carried to the brink; the mould is full, and with a very little more straining, it would overflow into caricature and distortion. Mercury has wings, which is merely a grotesque and fanciful combination of known images. Apollo was described by the poets (if not represented by the statuary) with a round jocund face, and golden locks, in allusion to the appearance and rays of the sun. This was an allegory, and would be soon turned to abuse in sculpture or painting. Thus we see how circumscribed and uncertain the province of the ideal is, when once it advances from ‘the most perfect nature to spirituality and divinity.’ We suspect the improved Deity often fell short of the heroic original; and the Venus was only the most beautiful woman of the time, with diminished charms and a finer name added to her. With respect to ideal expression, it is superior to common every-day expression, no doubt; that is, it must be raised to correspond with lofty characters placed in striking situations; but it is tame and feeble compared with what those characters would exhibit in the 351supposed circumstances. The expressions in the Incendio del Borgo are striking and grand; but could we see the expression of terror in the commonest face in real danger of being burnt to death, it would put all imaginary expressions to shame and flight.