Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

and boldness of manner, as well as any of them; so that neither does that constitute the ideal.

What then does? We have reduced this to something like the last remaining quantity in an equation, where all the others have been ascertained. Hogarth had all the other parts of an original and accomplished genius except this; but this he had not. He had an intense feeling and command over the impressions of sense, of habit, of character, and passion, the serious and the comic, in a word, of nature, as it fell within his own observation, or came within the sphere of his actual experience; but he had little power beyond that sphere, or sympathy with that which existed only in idea. He was "conformed to this world, not transformed." If he attempted to paint Pharaoh's daughter, and Paul before Felix, he lost himself. His mind had feet and hands, but not wings to fly with. There is a mighty world of sense, of custom, of every-day action, of accidents and objects coming home to us, and interesting because they do so; the gross, material, stirring, noisy world of common life and selfish passion, of which Hogarth was absolute lord and master: there is another mightier world, that which exists only in conception and in power, the universe of thought and sentiment, that surrounds and is raised above the ordinary world of reality, as the empyrean surrounds this nether globe, into which few are privileged to soar with mighty wings outspread, and in which, as power is given them to embody their aspiring fancies, to "give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name," to fill with imaginary shapes of beauty or sublimity, and make the dark abyss pregnant, bringing that which is remote home to us, raising themselves to the lofty, sustaining themselves on the refined and abstracted, making all things like not what we know and feel in ourselves, in this "ignorant present" time, but like what they must be in themselves, or in our noblest idea of them, and stamping that idea with reality, (but chiefly clothing the best and the highest with grace and grandeur:) this is the ideal in art, in poetry, and in painting. There are things which are cognizable only to sense, which interest only our more immediate instincts and passions; the want of food, the loss of a limb, or of a sum of money: there are others that appeal to different and

nobler faculties; the wants of the mind, the hunger and thirst after truth and beauty; that is, to faculties commensurate with objects greater and of greater refinement, which to be grand must extend beyond ourselves to others, and our interest in which must be refined in proportion as they do so. The interest in these subjects is in proportion to the power of conceiving them, and the power of conceiving them is in proportion to the interest and affection for them, to the innate bias of the mind to elevate itself above everything low, and purify itself from everything gross Hogarth only transcribes or transposes what was tangible and visible, not the abstracted and intelligible. You see in his pie tures only the faces which you yourself have seen, or others like them; none of his characters are thinking of any person or thing out of the picture; you are only interested in the objects of their contention or pursuit, because they themselves are interested in them. There is nothing remote in thought, or comprehensive in feeling. The whole is intensely personal and local, but the interest of the ideal and poetical style of art, relates to more permanent and universal objects; and the characters and forms must be such as to correspond with and sustain that interest, and give external grace and dignity to it. Such were the subjects which Raphael chose; faces imbued with unalterable sentiment, and figures that stand in the eternal silence of thought. He places before you objects of everlasting interest, events of greatest magnitude, and persons in them fit for the scene of action→→→ warriors and kings, princes and nobles, and greater yet, poets and philosophers, and mightier than these, patriarchs and aposties, prophets and founders of religion, saints and martyrs, angels and the Son of God. We know their importance and their high calling, and we feel that they do not bele it. We see them as they were painted, with the eye of faith The light which they have kindled in the world is reflected back upon their faces; the

• When Meg Merrilies says in her dying moments~~ Nay, nay, lay my head to the east,” what was the east to her? Not a reality but an warn of dutant time and the land of her forefathers, the last the strongest, and the best that occurred to her in this world Her gipsy slang and drewa were quaint and grotesque, her attachment to the Kaim of Derncleugh anë the wood of Warrock was romantic; her worship of the cast was stond.

awe and homage which has been paid to them is seated upon their brow, and encircles them like a glory. All those who come before them are conscious of a superior presence. For example, the beggars in the Gate Beautiful are impressed with this ideal borrowed character. Would not the cripple and the halt feel a difference of sensation, and express it outwardly in such circumstances? And was the painter wrong to transfer this sense of preternatural power and the confidence of a saving faith to his canvass? Hogarth's 'Pool of Bethesda,' on the contrary, is only a collection of common beggars receiving an alms. The waters may be stirred, but the mind is not stirred with The fowls, again, in the 'Miraculous Draught of Fishes,' exult and clap their wings, and seem lifted up with some unusual cause of joy. There is not the same expansive, elevated principle in Hogarth. He has amiable and praise-worthy characters, indeed, among his bad ones. The master of the industrious and idle apprentice is a good citizen and a virtuous man; but his benevolence is mechanical and confined; it extends only to his shop, or, at most, to his ward. His face is not ruffled by passion, nor is it inspired by thought. To give another instance, the face of the faithful female fainting in the prison scene in the 'Rake's Progress,' is more one of effeminate softness than of disinterested tenderness, or heroic constancy. But in the pictures of the 'Mother and Child,' by Raphael and Leonardo Da Vinci, we see all the tenderness purified from all the weakness of maternal affection, and exalted by the prospects of religious faith; so that the piety and devotion of future generations seems to add its weight to the expression of feminine sweetness and parental love, to press upon the heart, and breathe in the countenance. This is the ideal, passion blended with thought and pointing to distant objects, not debased by grossness, not thwarted by accident, not weakened by familiarity, but connected with forms and circumstances that give the utmost possible expansion and refinement to the general sentiment. With all my admiration of Hogarth, I cannot think him equal to Raphael. I do not know whether if the portfolio were opened, I would not as soon look over the prints of Hogarth as those of Raphael; but assur edly, if the question were put to me, I would sooner never have

LECTURE VIII.

On the Comic Writers of the Last Century.

THE question which has been often asked, "Why there are comparatively so few good modern comedies?" appears in a great measure to answer itself It is because so many excellent comedies have been written, that there are none written at present. Comedy naturally wears itself out-destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully er posing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at. It holds the m for up to nature, and men seeing their most striking peculiarities and defects, pass in gay review before them, learn either to avoid or conceal them. It is not the criticism which the pale taste exercises upon the stage, but the criticism which the stage exercises upon public manners that is fatal to comedy, by rendering the subject-matter of it tame, correct, and spiritless

are drilled into a sort of stupid decorum, and forced to wear the same dull uniform of outward appearance; and yet it is asked, why the Comic Muse does not point, as she was wont, at the peculiarities of our gait and gesture, and exhibit the picturesque contrasts of our dress and costume, in all that graceful, var ety in which she delights The genuine source of comic writing",

"Where it must live, or have no life at all,”

is undoubtedly to be found in the distinguishing peculiarities of men and manners. Now this distinction can subsist, so as to be strong, pointed, and general, only while the manners of different classes are formed almost immediately by their particular cir cumstances, and the characters of individuals by their natural temperament and situation, without being everlastingly mod fef and neutralized by intercourse with the world-by knowledge

and education. In a certain stage of society, men may be said to vegetate like trees, and to become rooted to the soil in which they grow. They have no idea of anything beyond themselves and their immediate sphere of action; they are, as it were, circumscribed, and defined by their particular circumstances; they are what their situation makes them, and nothing more. Each

is absorbed in his own profession or pursuit, and each in his turn contracts that habitual peculiarity of manners and opinions which makes him the subject of ridicule to others, and the sport' of the Comic Muse. Thus the physician is nothing but a physician, the lawyer is a mere lawyer, the scholar degenerates' into a pedant, the country squire is a different species of being from the fine gentleman, the citizen and the courtier inhabit each a different world, and even the affectation of certain characters, in aping the follies or vices of their betters, only serves to show the immeasurable distance which custom or fortune has placed between them. Hence the earlier comic writers, taking advantage of this mixed and solid mass of ignorance, folly, pride, and prejudice, made those deep and lasting incisions into it-have given those sharp and nice touches, that bold relief to their characters, have opposed them in every variety of contrast and collision, of conscious self-satisfaction and mutual antipathy, with a power which can only find full scope in the same rich and inexhaustible materials. But in proportion as comic genius succeeds in taking off the mask from ignorance and conceit, as it teaches us

"To see ourselves as others see us,”—

in proportion as we are brought out on the stage together, and our prejudices clash one against the other, our sharp angular points wear off; we are no longer rigid in absurdity, passionate" in folly, and we prevent the ridicule directed at our habitual foibles by laughing at them ourselves.

If it be said, that there is the same fund of absurdity and prejudice in the world as ever-that there are the same unaccountable perversities lurking at the bottom of every breast,— I should answer, Be it so: but at least we keep our follies to ourselves as much as possible; we palliate, shuffle, and equivo

« AnteriorContinuar »