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gauzy texture of all the upper part of that print? The divine Raphael is never weak and flimsy. Look at his cartoons, and think of the absurd mode in which other translators present them. How vigorous in execution are the originals-how broadhow far from all that is minute and little! The mind, under the great idea to be impressed, impatient of the laborious minute, hurried on the hand to stamp the grand character; yet how incongruous to their greatness is the littleness to miniature them in every part, by exquisite finish! Yet such attempts are made, as if the great character were unfelt, unseen. Cannot we be content to see the energy of St Paul preaching, without counting every hair on his head?

But I am stepping out of my proposed walk, which was to discuss landscape-however my remarks illustrate what I would assert of landscape-engraving. Is it right to have the same finnikin execution for all works? The light Berghem, the free and flowing pencil of Gaspar, the dash and savageness of Salvator Rosa -are they all to be of the same handling? Yet, such is too often the practice. Tone alone is studied. Now, in the prints published by Pond and others, in the work I have noticed, there is but little tone, just enough to preserve harmony throughout, that nothing shall stare and offend; the rest is left to the imagination. Luckily, perhaps, the art had not then reached the fascinating, tempt ing power; therefore, we have execution, masterly, free, and appropriate to every surface and object, and to the general character of the pic ture, which is as essential as to the parts.

In a former number of Maga I was delighted that due praise had been bestowed on the very original genius of a native artist, the Father of woodengraving in England, the poetical, moral Bewick,-the English Esop of wood-engravers. There is always a pleasure in recording merit-more especially if it has been overlooked; and besides the pleasure of rescuing such men as Vivares, and his coworkers, from oblivion, I am sure that in directing public attention to their beautiful etching-for in their etching lies their great excellence-I am inviting attention to that which

will afford great delight, and give a taste and relish for the arts, not duly felt, where such works are not yet admired. Indeed, the very recom. mendation of the art of etching, enforced thereby, is well worthy the attention of sketchers, candidates for my brotherhood, who will learn by the observation of the works I have praised, and by the practice of the same art, to see the distinct beauties of all the forms in nature, and to ascertain their characteristic execution. Etching is perhaps the best practice in drawing, is a sure corrective of the slovenly hand; for every thing must be designed, where there can be no happy accident, no splash of the brush to hide defects.

As to a sketcher, it is most material to be well acquainted with the principle of composition. I shall venture to return to my favourite Gaspar to exemplify the magic power of lines, for which, as well as for many other excellences-some of which I may occasionally touch upon at another time-he cannot be too much studied. Once, a pedestrian tourist in Italy, and making excursions from a convent, near Vico Varo, I chanced to follow a path which led me among the mountains; on a sudden, I came upon a scene, that I instantly recog nised to be the subject of one of Gaspar Poussin's pictures, one in my own possession. I had copied the picture; every passage in it was therefore familiar to me. I knew it instantly, by a large building on a hill, behind which was probably a small town; but only this one range of building was visible from the point where I stood. In this building, which was large, there was scarcely any alteration; the general run of the lines of the country he had preserved: his additions were however important, and all tending to perfect the composition;-the prin ciple was manifest. Let me describe shortly the picture as it is. It is, as most of his pictures are, a scene among the mountains. On a hill which breaks into the sky is the building, rather large, as commanding its district; it is situated a little to the left of the centre. The ground falls on both sides of it more gently towards the left edge of the picture, and is there seen through the open space left by the foliage of a tree

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that rises to the top of the canvass; but the fall from the building to the centre is more precipitous, and dips into a woody dingle or pass, whence the ground rises again on the other side of the picture, where it becomes more broken, and is much covered with small wood, the rocks rising from it, and interspersed among the foliage, and somewhat near the right extremity of the canvass, is elevated into a rocky summit, of a bold character, which falls again towards the edge of the picture, so that you are not to imagine any higher ground. There are then two summits, the last mentioned the highest, and that on which the building is placed; they face, and appear to hold communication with each other. Between them is the dell, or small pass, filled up with trees, not distinguishable by their stems, but by their masses of foliage; and you can just distinguish a path among them. This connects the two parts. In the centre, above the dip connecting the two hills, is placed a more distant mountain, occupying just so much space as would fill up the interval, if the lines were to be continued; and again, under this dip, a bank gently rises, on which is a small sitting figure, and by him a few scarcely marked sheep, or goats; on this bank, to the right, are larger trees, as nearer the foreground, that throw off into proper distance the wood of the rocky hill behind them. The lines of these trees incline down again among broken ground, so as to be under the mass of rock. Below this ground is a road, and two figures near the right side, and walking out of the picture, one rather looking back; they are conversing; they are graceful figures. Connected with this road, at the bottom of the picture, is a mass of mere herbage, part of the foreground, from which grows the great tree on the other side of the picture.

Now, what were the alterations made by Gaspar? I must have stood nearly on the very spot where be made his sketch; the building proved this to me. He had, in the first place, somewhat altered the round and smooth character of the hills; he made that rocky and broken which, when I saw it, was a smooth green down. The wood was his own; I presume there never had been any

there,--certainly none growing among rocks, for rocks there were none, and they are not easily removed; and the bold rocky elevation was an entire addition, for there the hill in nature was smooth and rounded. The distant hill likewise, filling up the space between the two points, was his own. Between the building and the rocky elevation was a gradual dip, as I have described it; between this, above, he had put in his masses of cloud. The whole composition is extremely simple, and the scene very beautiful, as if quite upon the skirts of fairy-land; and the figures looked as if they had made frequent excursions into it, and perhaps were then bent on a special embassy to the "good people." The colouring is very simple, just what it ought to be to suit such a subject,-not too rich, but fresh, and in ever-changing variety and interchange of dark cool greens, and browns of the rocky soil, blending with the yellower tints of the more open unwooded broken ground. The cast of the colour is soft, yet refreshing; but looking at it at a little distance, you would say it had no effect. It had nothing striking; it was not painted for an exhibition room, where children of maturer growth and age go to unlearn their natural taste, and be amused with glare, as the minor children are amused when they look into their cut glass plaything, and shake, with new wonder, the shifting bits of many-coloured tin and sand. The picture has little of what is called effect; if it had, the placid charm of the whole scene would have been broken. Peace would have fled from the bold intrusion. The shelter would have been insecure. Here is a retreat with unrestrained ease; you could wander all over it, and rest with satisfaction recumbent in any part; you are not confined or shut in, for you see distant mountains which all belong to your domain, are all in the title-deeds of the faery gift, and you have range enough. That building, to which a path will lead you, not too conspicuous, but a homepath, such as might have been trodden by yourself and a few friends, (for the good people, if they visit you, come lightly, and wear not the downiest herbage with their delicate

feet,) is, you well know, your enchanted castle, where all things may be had for wishing for them; and there your own sweet Amanda, love ly with her flowing glossy locks, is looking from the balcony, watching and waiting your return from the working world, (where you have foolishly gone to be made sensible of the difference,) and holding in her gentle hand a most delicious sherbet, the pure extract of nepenthe, that grows plentifully in all the region. Nay, do not count the windows; on the other side, and facing the blue mountain, they may be many, and bright as Aladdin's, yet pay no tax for their number or dimensions. You know there must be sweet views, all of a character with this, over the brow of each hill; and, peradventure, when you have drank your draught, you will invite your Amanda to wander down into the dells over the hill. The whole terrene is guarded by a "genius loci;" the air all about it is balmy and enchanted.

are all told in his enchanting landscapes. Happy are you if you can but read the language in which he has put them down! It is worth your learning.

Most of Gaspar Poussin's pictures have water; here is none. But you doubt not that there is plenty on the other side of the height, falling over rocks down to the bottom, and there lying for a while in placid pools with trees reflected in them. You know it must be so, because it was the territory to which Gaspar had free access, and where he made all his sketches, and must contain within its range all the enchanting beauties he faithfully transferred to the canvass. Now, gentle sketcher, do not be offended, but I doubt if you would have stood two seconds at the spot, unless you be gifted with such creative pencil as his, that, like the harlequin wand, can transpose and convert at pleasure. There was little to attract but the building. You can imagine Gaspar with his creative eye, half-shut to reject from his vision all that was disagreeable in this scene from nature, and with his mind's eye on the alert, doing the whole thing in a few seconds. His tree in the corner he was sure of; he had hundreds of studies of the most graceful at home, knew every turn of their growth and nature, was familiar with all earth's best foliage, and knew the tales the balmy airs breathed and whispered among them; and they

Now, gentle sketcher, when you take your portfolio among the mountains, into the woods and wilds, you must learn so to half-shut your eyes, like Gaspar, that you may have the power to reject; then set your imagination free, cut the strings of tightlaced formality, and walk elastic as if you had just taken a salad of nepenthe.

What did Mr Price (late Sir Uvedale Price) mean by his assertion, that the buildings of Gaspar Poussin are not picturesque, but that the character of his landscape is so? Now, this remark of his, in conjunction with a few other remarks interspersed in his works, leads me to conclude that I do not understand his picturesque, or that he contradicts himself. Perhaps the term is of no definite meaning. "Is it not a little remarkable," says he, "that of the two most celebrated of mere landscape-painters, Gaspar and Claude, the one who painted wild, broken, picturesque nature, should hardly have any of those buildings which are allowed to be picturesque, and that the other, whose attention to all that is soft, engaging, and beautiful is almost proverbial, should comparatively have but few pictures without them?" And how does he account for it? Why, thusthat it was Gaspar's love for the picturesque in natural objects, that made him select the unpicturesque in his buildings as a contrast. Not a bit of it-his buildings are as much broken by their projections and additions, and various parts, as his rocks, from which they appear to have grown naturally, to have been thrown up by some magic command when the mass of the earth was all pulp, and as if all had been baked together. Ruins would not, as I stated in my last paper, have suited the sentiment of his pictures.

But this remark of Mr Price's is vexatious. It throws me out in my conjectures upon the meaning of his picturesque. What then are Gaspar's, what the common Italian buildings? In architectural rules, they are of too humble pretensions, and apparently too much without design, to

be, secundum artem, allowed to be beautiful, as objects per se. What, then, are they?" Observe," says he, "his elegant, but unbroken and unornamented buildings." Then,besides the sublime, and beautiful, and the picturesque, there is the elegantor is the elegant a kind of beauty, or one quality of it? So may be the picturesque, and, in fact, therefore not something distinct. I am, I confess, thrown out. If he would call the picturesque whatever is not beautiful nor sublime, yet paintable, (pardon the horrid word,) well; but it does not define, amid a great variety, any particular character. Then, again, the something that painters delight in means nothing, for they delight in multifarious things. We are sadly inventive in theories for lack of mere names. There are, in nature and in art, besides the sublime and beautiful, ten thousand gradations and shades of forms and sentiments, that all, in the imperfection of our nomenclature, want names; who even can name the tints he makes upon his palette out of three colours? If picturesque belongs to all these exceptions, they must surely include Gaspar's buildings; if not, and picturesque includes in that one term the pigsties, the dunghills, and the human brutes of Ostade, and Claude's temples, it is a mere ignis fatuus that will lead the sketcher into quagmires. There are no worse, no more unsatisfactory disputes, than about words. Let the sketchers avoid them; the caution may not be amiss, for I have observed that they are a discussing disputatious race; each is a gourmand in his own way, and is ever open-mouthed in the praise of his own favourite "bits." Price on the Picturesque should nevertheless be read. He is very entertaining, deals handsomely in keen useful satire, and sets off his good sense by an easy unaffected style. But I cannot help thinking the ingenious old gentleman has taken the pains to draw up poor naked truth out of her well to throw her into a river. I must positively see Foxley, the favoured spot where he brought his theories to practice. I have a great desire to visit it in company with Ignoramus, that these matters might be better cleared up, and that I might digest instruction, which I might deal

out again to the rising generation of sketchers. The worthy baronet was once so kind as to give me an invitation, though not personally known to him; for, in a correspondence with him on his, I believe yet unpublished, work on "Accent and Quantity," I contrived to hook in some remarks on Art. I laid before him this discovery of mine of Gaspar Poussin's principle of composition, with the truth of which he was satisfied. I was very near Foxley, when some unforeseen circumstance unexpectedly called me away. I think it necessary to say I have not seen this place, because I suspect there must be much in the grounds to call forth the admiration of the sketcher; and it must be particularly worth while to see a place where the picturesque is professedly exemplified, and that, too, according to the models of the old masters in painting. I regret much never having seen Foxley with him; he was an enthusiast, a shrewd sensible writer, and must have talked as he wrote. The personification of his own picturesque, his occasional pugnacity, is delightful, for it shews his whole heart and soul was in the matter. But I hope to see it with Ignoramus. I may then before-hand, and off-hand, suggest, that without reference to roughness, which is but an accidental quality to picturesqueness, is the appropriateness of all parts of a picture to each other and to the whole; if the objects be rough, that they shall be generally so; if smooth, generally smooth; occasionally admitting, as in music, slight discords. With this view every thing is paintable, or picturesque, if the painter will but recollect that all shall be appropriate, or suitable, rough to rough, smooth to smooth, gentle to gentle, turbulent to turbulent-in short, congruity. There is congruity in Gaspar, in Claude, in Salvator, in Berghem, in Cuyp, in Wilson, in Gainsborough, yet there is scarce a part in any picture of any of these that you could transfer to the picture of another; though all the objects and style of touching them are right in their own places, and have their own peculiar beauty from this appropriateness; transferred, they would be incongruous patches. Take for instance a picture by Ruysdael, and one of Gaspar Poussin;

transfer to the latter the angular foliage of the former, amid the easy, bending, graceful foliage of the latter, and vice versa; you will be vexed at the incongruous confusion. What is the beauty of Gainsborough's donkeys and gipsies, (they were great favourites with Mr Price,) but in their being seen just where you would expect to find them? The scene has no aim beyond such associates, (and it is not a very high aim.) But send your Gaspar to Varnishando to have his figures cleaned out, and paint in with your own hand -or, if you please, get Landseer to do the thing, if he would not fear the profanation--these gipsies and don keys, you would very shortly yourself request to be "written down an ass." In all the various subjects within the reach and aim of art, from the sublime to the low, there are certain principles of composition of lines, and of light, and shade, and colour, all under modifications according to the sentiment to be expressed, common to all, and it is this common law that makes them all the property of one art. Mr Price lets loose sleek coach-horses into a rough field, and preferring in such a scene the rough donkeys, concludes, wrongly, that the horses, though much the finer animals, are not picturesque. They are not picturesque there, because they are not appropriate to all about them. These sleek, highly groomed, beautiful animals, are out of their places; the background for them should be the stall, or some such other as may belong to them; with appropriate backgrounds they would make pictures. And are not Wouverman's sleek animals, and ladies hawking, as picturesque as Gainsborough's gipsies and donkeys? You would not put Watteau's courtlike figures amid Gainsborough's scenes? Transfer the donkies to the bower, and the coquettes to the thickets, and you would deserve to wear Bottom's head for ever; for, like him, you would have "dreamed a dream that hath no bottom."

The fact is, mere exact imitation is pleasing; the transferring objects, subject to continual change, from their places in nature to a perpetuity on canvass, the fixing of something transient, is sure to delight the eye and mind, that ever regret that all

things are fleeting. Whatever is faithfully represented, and has no accompanying dissonant objects, will be sure to be picturesque, if picturesque be what is paintable; and thus the painter, subjecting all to the common laws of the art, will work upon our natural love of imitation, and excite in us pleasure, by the representation of objects in themselves ugly, sometimes even disgustingly so. But, in these cases, we more admire the art, the beauty of tone, of colour, and light, and shade, that give a sentiment to the whole picture, sometimes foreign to, or not necessarily arising out of, the objects represented; and in these cases the apparent subject is subordinate to one, that is to be felt. The painter, working with light, and shade, and colour, has the power to heighten, or to obscure, to enrich, or to subdue. And under this power many emotions may be excited, that shall have reference to the objects represented. Oftentimes these objects are not the first things that strike the mind; we are pleased, independently of them; and, when we see them there, transfer to them the pleasurable sensatious that really arise without them. When the sentiment arises from tone and colour, a very high subject, and extreme beauty of composition, one in its own nature so powerful as to force and fix the mind to it, would detract from the effect intended by the painter. This is exemplified by Rembrandt; the most faithful representation of really beautiful objects would dissolve, by their commanding presence, the mystery and magic that pervades his chiaroscuro. By the impression effected by the tone and colour, you are put quite out of the expectation of elegance or beauty; you would as soon think of finding the Venus or Antinous in an Egyptian catacomb. You would wonder how the laughter-loving goddess came there, and in the warmth of imagi nation, if of a chivalric spirit, might fancy you were breaking a spear with the enchanter who placed her there, and find that you had only poked a hole through the panel with your umbrella. The superstition, the mystery of Rembrandt, is the great subject; the objects must be under its influence, not above it; they must have no power of their own, but be

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