Revived, by the Friends of the Muses." This collection contains poems by Lord Falkland, Lord Buckhurst, Sir John Beaumont, Sir Thomas Hawkins, Mr. Waller, Mayne, Cartwright, Waryng, the author of "Effigies Amoris," and other contributors of note. In 1640, the former volume of his works was reprinted; with a second, containing the rest of his plays, masques, and entertainments; Underwoods; English Grammar; his translation of Horace's Art of Poetry; and Discoveries. The latter is a prose work of various and extensive learning, containing opinions on all subjects, worthy to be weighed even at this distant period. In 1716, his works were reprinted in six volumes octavo. Another edition appeared in 1756, under the care of Mr. Whalley, of St. John's, Oxford, with notes, and the addition of a comedy not inserted in any former edition, called " The Case is Altered." But all former editions are superseded in value by that of Mr. Gifford.

Jonson was married, and had children; particularly a son and a daughter, both celebrated by him in epitaphs at their death; but none of his children survived him.

As a dramatic writer, he is remarkable for judgment in the arrangement of his plots; a happy choice of characters; and skill in maintaining character throughout the piece. The manners of the most trifling persons are always consistent. Dryden censures him for exhibiting mechanic humour, "Where men were dull and conversation low.". This remark is so far just, that Jonson chiefly aimed at mirth by the contrast and collision of what Dryden terms humour. The reader, however, would do the dramatist injustice, were he to apply the word humour to him in its modern and confined sense. Jonson cultivated it according to a more philosophical definition; as a technical term for characters swayed and directed by some predominant passion, the display of which, under various circumstances, formed the strength of the comedy. Among the writers of that age, Jonson alone perhaps felt all the impropriety arising from frequent and violent change of scene. Yet Jonson himself, who disapproved of Shakspeare's practice in that particular, was not wholly free from it, as Dryden has remarked with some appearance of triumph. Pope has touched on his genius in respect to dramatic poetry. He says, "That when Jonson got possession of the stage, he brought critical learning into vogue; and this was not done without difficulty, which appears from those frequent lessons, and indeed almost declamations, which he was forced to prefix to his first plays, and put into the mouths of his actors the grex, chorus, &c., to remove the prejudices and reform the judgment of his hearers. Till then the English

authors had no thoughts of writing upon the model of the ancients; their tragedies were only histories in dialogue, and their comedies followed the thread of any novel as they found it, no less implicitly than if it had been true history." In fact, this author's object was to found a reputation on understanding, and submitting to the discipline of the ancient stage; but his success fell short of his just expectations, and he growls on every occasion against the rude taste of an age which preferred to his laboured and well-concocted scenes, the more glowing, wild, and irregular effusions of his unlearned contemporaries. Beyond this there appears nothing to confirm the eagerly propagated opinion of his pride and malignity, at least in the earlier part of his life. At that time he contributed an encomium to almost every play or poem that appeared, from Shakspeare down to the translator of Du Bartas. His antagonist, Decker, seems to hint at a personal failing, seldom allied to malignity, when, in the "Satiromastix," Sir Vaughan says to Horace, that is, Jonson, "I have some cousin-german at court shall beget you the reversion of the master of the king's revels, or else to be his Lord of Misrule now at Christmas." We have already quoted Drummond to the purport, that drink was one of the elements in which he lived;" which accounts but too well for the poverty of his latter days, in spite of royal and noble munificence. In reference to this unfortunate propensity, the following amusing story is told:-Camden had recommended him to Sir Walter Raleigh, who trusted him with the care and education of his eldest son Walter, a gay spark, who could not brook Ben's rigorous treatment; but perceiving one foible in his disposition, made use of that to throw off the yoke of his government. This was an unlucky habit Ben had contracted, through his love of jovial company, of being overtaken with liquor, which Sir Walter did of all vices most abominate, and hath most exclaimed against. One day, when Ben had taken a plentiful dose, and was fallen into a sound sleep, young Raleigh got a great basket, and a couple of men, who laid Ben in it, and then with a pole carried him between their shoulders to Sir Walter, telling him their young master had sent home his tutor.

ABOUT the middle of the last century the art of Sculpture, which had been long on the decline, may be said to have reached the lowest point to which it has sunk since the revival of the arts; for, although the seventeenth century was the great æra of bad taste, the genius which was often apparent in the mannered productions of that time, no longer survived in those of the imitators who succeeded. The works of Bernini in Italy, and of Puget in France, both men of extraordinary talent but most mistaken principles, were still regarded as types of excellence. Their fame still produced a host of followers, who, with perhaps the single exception of Duquesnoy, called Fiammingo, naturally aimed at the extravagances and peculiarities of their models; and the consequence was, a constantly increasing deviation from nature, and a total misconception of the style and limits of the art. The works which were produced in Rome about the period alluded to, thus fluctuated between manner and insipidity; till the art had relapsed into a state of such lethargic mediocrity, that even sculptors of note, such as Cavaceppi, Pacetti, and Albacini, were content to occupy themselves in restoring and mending antique statues. But the germs of a better taste, and a more rational imitation, were already expanding. If the mania for collecting antique statues had the temporary effect of paralysing invention in the artist, and diverting the means of patronage, a gradual appreciation of the principles of ancient art was, nevertheless, the result; while the illustration and description of museums, and the works of Winkelmann, all tended to awaken the attention of the connoisseur to the amazing difference between the ill-advised caprices of the Bernini school and the sagacious simplicity of the ancients.

These circumstances concurred ultimately to work a change and an

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improvement of taste among the artists themselves, and thus prepared a better æra of sculpture. The partiality of the Italians may be excused, when they attribute the reformation of the art to the single efforts of Canova, although the designs of Flaxman, composed about the same time that the Italian artist was beginning his career, exhibit a more decided feeling for the long-lost purity of the antique, and a more thorough comprehension of the style and language of sculpture, than we find in the works of his continental contemporaries. But it is time to give a more particular account of the subject of this memoir.

Antonio Canova was born A.D. 1757, at Possagno, a small town in the province of Treviso. His father, Pietro Canova, was a stonemason and builder; and the first occupation of the future sculptor taught him to use the chisel with dexterity. At the age of fourteen, he was introduced to the notice of Giovanni Faliero, a Venetian senator, who used annually to pass the autumn near Possagno. By the kind assistance of this nobleman, the young Canova was placed with one Torretti, a sculptor who had studied in Venice, and who resided in a neighbouring town. On the return of this artist to Venice, Canova accompanied him. A year afterwards however Torretti died, and the young sculptor, unwilling to continue with Ferrari, his master's nephew and heir, established himself in a studio of his own. While with Ferrari, he produced his first work, a pair of baskets of fruit and flowers, done for the noble Faliero. They are still to be seen in the stair-case of the Farsetti palace, in Venice, more generally known as the Albergo della Gran Bretagna. The same patron next employed him on two statues of Orpheus and Eurydice, preserved in the villa of Pradazzi, near Possagno. After one or two other less important performances, he executed his Dædalus and Icarus, for the Procurator Pisani. In all these works he aimed at a close imitation of individual nature, and this was carried so far in the Dædalus, that, when it was afterwards shown in Rome, the sculptor was hardly believed when he asserted that it was not moulded from a living model.

The imitation of the softness, surface, and accidents of skin was an early excellence and a lasting peculiarity of Canova; and however he may have been smitten with the antique statues in Rome, it is certain that, while in Venice, where he remained till the age of twenty-two, he paid little attention to the specimens of ancient art in the Farsetti Gallery. It is probable that the prejudice against the antique, which had prevailed ever since Bernini's time, was hardly yet effaced in Venice; and if Canova's admiration of the ancients

increased in Rome, it was undoubtedly greatly owing to the opinion and examples of those among whom he had the good fortune to be first thrown.

In 1779, Girolamo Zulian being appointed ambassador of the Republic at Rome, Faliero recommended Canova to his notice. The young sculptor had already determined to visit the metropolis of the arts, and soon followed the ambassador thither. The course of study which he adopted, founded on the comparison of nature with the best specimens of art, showed that he was earnest to improve; and his new patron Zulian, who had introduced him to the distinguished amateurs and artists residing in Rome, recommended him to send for a cast of his Dædalus and Icarus, in order to show them what he had done, and profit by their advice. He did so, and the day on which that group was submitted to the judgment of the connoisseurs was a memorable one for Canova. His work by no means excited unqualified approbation. It was, indeed, so different from the style which was then prevalent, that his judges remained silent, till the generous Gavin Hamilton openly declared, that it was a simple imitation of nature, which showed that the artist had nothing to unlearn; at the same time reminding him, that although the greatest artists had always begun thus, they had subsequently refined their taste by comparison and selection, and their execution by an ampler and larger treatment; all which, aiming at the grandest impressions of nature, but by no means departing from nature, approaches what is called the divine and ideal in art. This opinion, from so good a judge as Hamilton, delighted Zulian, who asked " what was to be done with the young "Give him a block of marble," said Hamilton, " and let him follow his own feeling." From this hour the fate of the young artist was decided Zulian furnished him with a studio and materials, and he began his career in Rome.

man?"

Canova always spoke with gratitude of Gavin Hamilton, and acknowledged that he owed to him every sound principle of art. The vast knowledge of the antique which the Scotch artist possessed, gave more than common weight and value to his advice respecting its imitation. Canova's first work in Rome, was an Apollo crowning himself. The sculptor himself was not satisfied with it, and felt all the difficulty of uniting a purer and broader style with a sufficient attention to the details of nature. His engagements soon after recalled him to Venice, to complete an unfinished work, the statue of the Marquis Poleni, placed in the Prato della Valle, at Padua. It was probably hurried, that he might get back sooner to Rome.

On his return to Rome, he produced his celebrated group of Theseus