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seen, unless it is at the same time felt. How odd it seems, that often while you are looking at a face, and though you perceive no difference in the features, yet you find they have undergone a total alteration of expression! What a fine hand then is required to trace, what the eye can scarcely be said to distinguish! So I used to contend against Sir Joshua, that Raphael had triumphed over this difficulty in the Miracle of Bolseno, where he has given the internal blush of the unbelieving priest at seeing the wafer turned into blood-the colour to be sure assists, but the look of stupefaction and shame is also there in the most marked degree. Sir Joshua said it was my fancy, but I am as convinced of it as I am of my existence; and the proof is that otherwise he has done nothing. There is no story without it; but he has trusted to the expression to tell the story, instead of leaving the expression to be made out from the story. I have often observed the same effect in myself, when I have said any thing as mildly as I could, not using any violence of language nor indeed intending to hurt; and I have wondered at the effect; my sister has said, 'You should have seen your look,' but I did not know of it myself.”—I said, “If you bad, it would have been less felt by others. An instance of this made me laugh not long ago. I was offended at a waiter at an inn at Calais, and, while he was out of the room, I was putting on as angry a look as I could, but I found this sort of previous rehearsal to no purpose. The instant he returned into the room, I gave him a look that I felt made it unnecessary to tell him what I thought."-" To be sure, he would see it immediately."-" And don't you think, Sir," I said, “that this explains the difficulty of fine acting, and the difference between good acting and bad-that is, between face-making or mouthing and genuine passion? Is it wonderful that so many in this case prefer an artificial to a natural actor, the mask to the man, the artificial pretension to the natural expression? Not at all; the wonder rather is that people in general judge so right as they do, when they have such doubtful grounds to go upon; and they would not, but they trust less to rules or reasoning than to their feelings."

N. "You must come to that at last. The common sense of mankind (whether a good or a bad one) is the best criterion you have to appeal to. You necessarily impose upon yourself in judging of your own works. Whenever I am trying at an expression, I stick up the canvass in the room and ask people what it means, and if they guess right, I think I have succeeded. You yourself see the thing as you wish it, or according to what you have been endeavouring to make it. When I was doing the picture of Argyle, in the Tower, and of his enemy who comes and finds him asleep, I had a great difficulty to encounter in conveying the expression of the last-indeed I did it from myself-I wanted to give a look of mingled remorse and admiration, and when I found that others saw this look in the sketch I had made, I left off. By going on, I might lose it again. There is a point of felicity which, whether you fall short of or have gone beyond it, can only be determined by the effect on the unprejudiced observer. You cannot be always with your picture to explain it to others: it must be left to speak for itself. Those who stand before their pictures and make fine speeches about them, do themselves a world of harm: a painter should cut out his tongue, if he wishes to succeed. His language addresses

itself not to the ear, but the eye. He should stick to that as much as possible. Sometimes you hit off an effect without knowing it. Indeed the happiest results are frequently the most unconscious.-B―― was here the other day. You don't remember Henderson, I suppose?""No."-" He says his reading was the most perfect he ever knew. He thought himself a pretty good reader and a tolerable mimic; that he succeeded tolerably well in imitating Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, and others, but that there was something in Henderson's reading so superior to all the rest, that he never could come any thing near it. I said, You don't know that if you were to hear him now, you might think him even worse than your own imitation of him. We deceive ourselves as much with respect to the excellences of others as we do with respect to our own, by dwelling on a favourite idea. In order to judge, you should ask some one else who remembered him. I spoke to him about Kemble, whose Life he has been lately writing. I said, when he sat to me for the Richard III. meeting the children, he gave me no assistance whatever in the expression I wished to give, but remained quite immoveable, as if he were sitting for an ordinary portrait. B. said, This was his way he never put himself to any exertion, except in his professional character. If any one wanted to know his idea of a part, or of a particular passage, his reply always was, 'You must come and see me do it.'"

N— then spoke of the boy, as he always calls him (Master Betty). He asked if I had ever seen him act, and I said Yes, and was one of his admirers. He answered, "Oh! yes, it was such a beautiful effusion of natural sensibility; and then that graceful play of the limbs in youth gave such an advantage over every one about him. Humphreys (the artist) said, 'He had never seen the little Apollo off the pedestal before.' You see the same thing in the boys at Westminster School. But no one was equal to him." Mr. Nalluded with pleasure to his unaffected manners when a boy, and mentioned as an instance of his simplicity, his saying one day, "If they admire me so much, what would they say to Mr. Harley ?" (a tragedian in the same strolling company with himself.) We then spoke of his acting since he was grown up. Nsaid, "He went to see him one night with Fuseli, in Alexander the Great,' and that he observed coming out, they could get nobody to do it better."-" Nor so well," said Fuseli. A question being put," Why then could he not succeed at present ?"— "Because" said N- "the world will never admire twice. The first surprise was excited by his being a boy, and when that was over, nothing could bring them back again to the same point, not though he had turned out a second Roscius. They had taken a surfeit of their idol, and wanted something new. Nothing he could do could astonish them so much the second time, as the youthful prodigy had done the first time; and therefore he must always appear as a foil to himself, and seem comparatively flat and insipid. Garrick kept up the fever of public admiration as long as any body; but when he returned to the stage, after a short absence, no one went to see him. It was the same, with Sir Joshua: latterly Romney drew all his sitters from him. So they say the Exhibition is worse every year, though it is just the same: there are the same subjects and the same painters. Admiration is a

forced tribute, and to extort it from mankind (envious and ignorant as they are) they must be taken unawares." I remarked, "It was the same in books; if an author was only equal to himself, he was always said to fall off. The blow to make the same impression must be doubled, because we are prepared for it. We give him the whole credit of his first successful production, because it was altogether unexpected; but if he does not rise as much above himself in the second instance, as the first was above nothing, we are disappointed, and say he has fallen off, for our feelings are not equally excited."-" Just,” said N, "as in painting a portrait: people are surprised at the first sitting, and wonder to see how you have got on: but I tell them they will never see so much done again; for at first there was nothing but a blank canvass to work upon, but afterwards you have to improve upon your own design, and this at every step becomes more and more difficult. It puts me in mind of an observation of Opie's, that it was wrong to suppose that people went on improving to the last in any art or profession: on the contrary, they put their best ideas into their first works (which they have been qualifying themselves to undertake all their lives before), and what they gain afterwards in correctness and refinement, they lose in originality and vigour." I assented to this, as a very striking and (as I thought) sound remark. He said,-" I wish you had known Opie: he was a very original-minded man. Mrs. Siddons used to say, I like to meet Mr. Opie; for then I always hear something I did not know before.' I do not say, that he was always right; but he always put your ideas into a new track, that was worth following. I was very fond of Opie's conversation; and I remember once when I was expressing my surprise at his having so little of the Cornish dialect; Why,' he said, the reason is, I never spoke at all till I knew you and Wolcott.' He was a true genius. Mr. is a person of great judgment; but I do not learn so much from him. I think this is the difference between sense and genius;-a man of genius judges for himself, and you hear nothing but what is original from him but a man of sense, or of the knowledge of the world, judges as others do; and he is on this account the safest guide to follow, though not, perhaps, the most instructive companion. I recollect Miss Reynolds making nearly the same observation. She said, I don't know how it is; I don't think Miss C―― a very clever woman, and yet, whenever I am at a loss about any thing, I always go to consult her, and her advice is almost sure to be right.' The reason was, that this lady, instead of taking her own view of the subject, (as a person of superior capacity might have been tempted to do,) considered only what light others would view it in, and pronounced her decision according to the prevailing rules and maxims of the world. When old Dr. M married his housemaid, Sterne, on hearing of it, exclaimed, "Ay, I always thought him a genius, and now I'm sure of it!' The truth was, (and this was what Sterne meant,) that Dr. M. saw a thousand virtues in this woman which nobody else did, and could give a thousand reasons for his choice, that no one about him had the wit to answer: but nature took its usual course, and the woman turned out a very vixen, and tormented him out of his life, as he had been forewarned, according to the former experience of the world in such matters. His being in the wrong did not prove him to be less a genius,

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though it might impeach his judgment or prudence. He was, in fact, wiser, and saw more of the matter, than any one of his neighbours, who might advise him to the contrary; but he was not so wise as the collective experience or common sense of mankind on the subject, which his more cautious friends merely echoed. It is only the man of genius who has any right or temptation to make a fool of himself, by setting up his own unsupported opinion against that of the majority. He feels himself superior to any individual in the crowd, and therefore rashly undertakes to act in defiance of the whole mass of prejudice and opinion opposed to him. It is safe and easy to go in the stage-coach from London to Salisbury: but it would require great strength, boldness, and sagacity, to go in a straight line across the country."

A CABINET OF PORTRAITS.-NO. I.

"Adde

Vultum habitumque hominis: quem tu vidisse beatus,
Non magni pendis, quia contigit."

HOR. Sat. II. iv. 91–93.

A Venetian General of the name of Magius was long exposed to the calumny of his fellow-citizens, because he had failed to conduct to a successful issue a particular expedition, which they had confided to his command. Instead of composing a long memoir, which might never have been read, in justification of his proceedings, he employed the first artists of his day, and among others Paul Veronese, to execute on vellum a series of highly finished miniature paintings, descriptive of the adventures and sufferings, which he had endured in endeavouring to accomplish the enterprise with which he had been intrusted. He published these paintings in a small volume of eighteen pages, and thus placed before the eyes of his countrymen a short and striking sketch of the difficulties, which first impeded his progress, and finally prevented his success in the arduous service upon which he had been despatched. Those who wish to learn more respecting this specimen of pictorial biography, may satisfy themselves by referring to the last series of Mr. D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature. I allude to it for no other purpose, than to justify myself in writing the portraiture of some of those great and illustrious characters, who have achieved for themselves a glorious immortality in the memory of mankind. If the artist be permitted to usurp the functions of the author, there can be no just reason, why the author may not in his turn usurp the functions of the artist. Indeed, as books can be copied to any extent, at pleasure, by the invention of printing, and as each successive copy is quite as valuable as the original, a portrait, which it is desirable to perpetuate, is more likely to reach posterity by means of the author's pen, than it is by means of the artist's pencil. Colours fade, and canvass perishes; but the press flourishes in immortal vigour, and gives to every image, which it once marks as its own, an eternity of duration, which cannot be attained by any other process.

Almost every popular work of the last century contained, opposite to the title-page, a picture of the author's person, with a few dry distiches underneath it, declaring that those, who were desirous of seeing the picture of the author's mind, must look for it in the pages of the work which he then published. The practice has, of late years, fallen into disuse,—perhaps, because authors, improving in modesty as well as in intelligence, have become more ashamed than they were formerly, of printing themselves by the side of their productions; but in the time of Addison it was so prevalent, as to induce him to remark, that a reader seldom perused a book with pleasure, until he knew whether the writer of it was a black or a fair man, of a mild or a choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like

instructive and interesting nature. The existence of this curiosity in the mind of the public is proved, beyond all disputing, by the extraordinary pains which have been taken in all ages to gratify it. Every writer of biography, from the time of Tacitus down to that of Moore, has felt his work to be incomplete, until he has added to the account of his hero's parentage and education, an account of his personal appearance, and of his bodily defects and accomplishments. Critics have descended from their stilts to describe in plain and intelligible language, the weak and perishable frame in which the soul of genius took up its mortal abode; and even moralists have not disdained to relax the austerity of their lucubrations, by registering information of a similar character. On the path which has thus been opened to the public, it is my intention now to tread; and I trust that, before I arrive at the termination of it, I shall be able to form, from the detached pictures which my literary predecessors have left of their contemporaries, such a cabinet of written miniatures, as will repay me for the trouble of collecting, and my reader for the trouble of examining it.

The subject, which I have proposed for this paper, is so extensive in itself, and so various in its ramifications, that I scarcely know from what point I ought to commence the discussion of it. It strikes me, however, that it will not be inconvenient, before I proceed further, to bestow a short notice upou some of those illustrious personages, who have displayed more than ordinary care to transmit to posterity a well-finished resemblance of their form and features, to contrast with their finical and preposterous anxiety the more than Mahometan reluctance of others, to see an image of themselves, traced out upon canvass, even by the most accurate and intelligent artists, and to show therefrom, that we should have had no correct delineation of either of these two classes of men, had it not been for the pen and ink sketches, which contemporary writers have incidentally drawn of them. In the first of the two classes, the Madman of Macedonia" stands pre-eminent. The edict, by which he prohibited any painter, except Apelles, from taking a picture, and any sculptor, except Lysippus, from executing a statue of him, is too well known to need farther mention. It is not, perhaps, equally notorious, that the issuing of a similar edict was once gravely meditated, though subsequently abandoned, by one of the ablest sovereigns of our own country,— mean by Queen Elizabeth. The anecdote, singular as it may appear, rests upon authority which it is impossible to question. In the Archæologia of the Society of Antiquaries, (Vol. ii. p. 169,) there is a copy of a proclamation, dated 1563, in the hand-writing of Mr. Secretary Cecil, which forbids" all manner of persons to draw, paint, grave, or pourtrayt her Majesty's personage or visage for a time, until by some perfect pattern or example the same may be by others followed." Even some of her wisest successors have not been free from this miserable vanity. If we are to believe Pope,

"Charles to late time to be transmitted fair
Assign'd his figure to Bernini's care;
And great Nassau to Kneller's baud decreed
To fix him graceful on the bounding steed."

Louis the Fourteenth was actuated by similar feelings, and would not permit either his poets to speak of him, or his painters to draw him, except as the handsomest man of his age and court. Even the sage philosopher of Ferney was infected with this paltry ambition, and would not sit to any but the firstrate artists, even for a silhouette of his contemptible features. I cannot help suspecting that each of these distinguished characters had such an extravagant opinion of his or her own personal beauty, as to deem it impossible for any artist of ordinary talent to form a copy of it, capable of giving an adequate idea of the grace of the prototype; and if such a notion did influence them, then I must add, that each and all of them would have acted more wisely in refusing to be painted at all than in submitting to be painted by particular artists. Indeed, there have been many celebrated persons who could not be

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