WITH

SCULPTURE

ITH a few variations required by the technical part of the art, our remarks on painting are equally applicable to sculpture.

The statue of Moses by Michael Angelo, at Rome; Adam and Eve by Baccio, at Florence; the Vow of Louis XIII. by Coustou, at Paris; St. Denys by the same; the tomb of Cardinal Richelieu, the production of the joint genius of Lebrun and Girardon; the monument of Colbert, executed after the design of Lebrun, by Coyzevox and Tuby; Christ, the Mother of Pity, and the Eight Apostles, by Bouchardon, and several other statues of the religious kind, prove that Christianity understands the art of animating the marble full as well as the canvas.

It were, however, to be wished that sculptors would in future banish from their funeral compositions those skeletons which they have frequently introduced in monuments. Such phantoms are

not suggested by the genius of Christianity, which depicts death so fair for the righteous.

It is equally necessary to avoid representations of corpses (however meritorious the execution), or humanity sinking under protracted infirmities. A warrior expiring on the field of honor in the full vigor of manhood may be very fine; but a body emaciated by disease is an image which the arts reject, unless accompanied by some miracle, as in the picture of St. Charles Borromeo. Exhibit, then, upon the monument of the Christian, on the one hand his weeping family and his dejected friends, on the other, smiling hope and celestial joys. Such a sepulchre, displaying on either side the scenes of time and of eternity, would be truly admirable. Death might make his appearance there, but under the features of an angel at once gentle and severe; for the tomb of the righteous ought always to prompt the spectator to exclaim, with St. Paul: "O grave, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?"

Complete. Chapter v., Part III., Book I., of

"The Genius of Christianity."

THE LITERATURE OF QUEEN ANNE'S REIGN

HE invasion of French taste, begun in the reign of Charles
The

TII., was completed under William and Queen Anne.

great aristocracy, which was raising itself up, assumed the noble and imposing character of the great monarchy, its neighbor and its rival. English literature, till then almost unknown in France, crossed the Strait. Addison saw Boileau in 1701, and presented him with a copy of his Latin poems. Voltaire, obliged to seek refuge in England, on account of his quarrel with the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot, dedicated the "Henriade" to Queen Anne, and spoiled his genius by the philosophic ideas of Collins, Chubb, Tindal, Wolston, Toland, and Bolingbroke. He made us acquainted with Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Shaftesbury, Swift, and exhibited them to France as men of a new species, discovered by him in a new world. Racine the younger translated "Paradise Lost," and Rollin took notice of that poem in his "Traité des Études."

On the accession of William III. to the British crown, the writers of London and Paris enlisted themselves in a quarrel of princes and warriors. Boileau celebrated the Passage of the Rhine; Prior replies that the sovereign of Parnassus employs the nine muses to sing that Louis has not passed the Rhine — which was the truth. Philips translated Corneille's "Pompée," and Roscommon wrote the prologue to it. Addison celebrated the victories of Marlborough, and paid homage to "Athalie "; Pope published his "Essay on Criticism," for which "L'Art Poétique » furnished the model. He gives nearly the same rules as Horace and Boileau, but all at once, recollecting his dignity, he proudly exclaims:

"But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despise."

The French poet's "L'Art Poétique" was translated; Dryden revised the text, and merely substituted the names of English writers in place of those of French writers. He renders the hatezvous lentement, "gently make haste."

"The Rape of the Lock" was suggested by "Le Lutrin," and the "Dunciad" is an imitation of the Satires by the friend of Racine. Butler translated one of these satires.

The literary age of Queen Anne is a last reflection of the age of Louis XIV. And as if the great king had been destined to encounter William incessantly and to make conquests, when he could no longer invade England with his men at arms, he penetrated into it with his men of letters: the genius of Albion, which our soldiers could not subdue, yielded to our poets.

From "Sketches of English Literature.»

SWIFT AND STEELE

ONATHAN SWIFT, born in Ireland on the thirtieth of November, 1667, has been most inappropriately called by Voltaire the English Rabelais. Voltaire relished only the impieties of Rabelais, and his humor, when it is good; but the deep satire on society and man, the lofty philosophy, the grand style of the curé of Meudon, escaped his notice, as he saw only the weak side of Christianity, and had no idea of the intellectual and moral revolution effected in mankind by the Gospel.

The Tale of a Tub," in which the Pope, Luther, and Calvin are attacked, and "Gulliver," in which social institutions are stigmatized, exhibit but faint copies of "Gargantua." The ages in which the two writers lived produce, moreover, a wide difference between them: Rabelais began his language; Swift finished his. It is not certain, however, that the "Tale of a Tub" is Swift's, or that it was written entirely by him; Swift amused himself by manufacturing verses of twenty, thirty, and sixty feet. Velly, the historian, has translated the satire on the peace of Utrecht, entitled "John Bull."

William III., who did so many things, taught Swift the art of growing asparagus in the Dutch manner. Jonathan fell in love with Stella, took her to his deanery of St. Patrick, and at the end of sixteen years, when he was at the end of his passion, he married her. Esther Vanhomrigh conceived an affection for Swift, though he was old, ugly, and disgusting. When she learned that he was absolutely married to Stella, who had become quite indifferent to him, she died; Stella soon followed Esther. The hard-hearted man, who caused the death of these two beautiful young women, was not able, like the truly great poets, to bestow on them a second life.

Steele, a countryman of Swift, became his rival in politics Having obtained a seat in the House of Commons, he was ex

pelled from it as the author of seditious libels. On the creation of twelve peers, during the administration of Oxford and Bolingbroke, he addressed a cutting letter to Sir Miles Wharton, on the making of peers for particular occasions. Steele did not enrich himself by this connection with the great corrupter Walpole; relinquishing his pamphlets, he turned his attention to mechanical literature, and invented a machine for conveying salmon fresh to London.

Steele has been deservedly commended for having cleansed the drama of those obscenities with which the writers of the time of Charles II. had infected it: this was so much the more meritorious in the author of the "Conscious Lovers," inasmuch as his own manners were far from regular. Meanwhile, his contemporary, Gay, the fabulist, brought upon the stage "The Beggar's Opera," the hero of which is a robber and the heroine a prosti"The Beggar's Opera" is the original of our melodramas of the present day.

tute.

From "Sketches of English Literature."

GEOFFREY CHAUCER

(c. 1340-1400)

T HAS been too unkindly said of Chaucer's prose, that it is valuable chiefly because it is Chaucer's. The same critics who say this assert that he is indebted to other writers whom he translates or paraphrases for the wisdom of "The Tale of Melibeus," from which the essay "On Getting and Using Riches" is extracted. It must be remembered, however, that paraphrasing and imitating were esteemed cardinal literary virtues in the time of Chaucer, as they were in the Augustan age at Rome. But even if his prose is denied all claim to originality, it is still the best prose English of its age, and some knowledge of it is necessary for all who wish to understand the growth of the English language and its literature.

Chaucer's birthplace is not known, nor is the exact year of his birth; but London claims him, and the weight of authority puts the date of his birth at about 1340. The year of Dante's death was 1321, so that Chaucer was almost his contemporary, as he was actually the contemporary of Petrarch whom, it is said, he met when he went to Italy in 1372 on a diplomatic mission for the king of England. From the great masters of the Italian revival of learning, he caught the spirit and learned the art which made him the "Father of English Poetry." He was the son of a London vintner and very little is known of his early years. He was a soldier under Edward III. in France, and when the French captured him the king paid £16 for his ransom. This was in 1360 and he was in favor at court under Edward and under Richard II., both of whom employed him in the diplomatic service. He became comptroller of customs for the port of London about the year 1374, and in 1386 he was chosen to Parliament as a knight of the shire from Kent. He was pensioned by Henry IV., who came to the throne in 1399- a year before Chaucer's death, the date of which is established by his epitaph as October 25th, 1400. These facts sufficiently indicate that he was a court favorite and his language is far from being the English vernacular of his day. It is English, however, and not French, for during his lifetime (1362) the court gave up the attempt to establish French as legally the language of England and restored to the law courts the Saxon dialect of the common people. Chaucer's English has a Saxon base; but, in addition to Norman French and Latin derivatives, he uses many direct coinages from the Italian, few of which took root in the language.