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BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCXXXVIII. DECEMBER, 1843. VOL. LIV.

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved
to the end of each article.



                          CONTENTS.


        LECTURES AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY.                         691
        SOMETHING ABOUT MUSIC.                                 709
        THE PURPLE CLOAK; OR, THE RETURN OF SYLOSON TO SAMOS.  714
        LOVE AND DEATH.                                        717
        THE BRIDGE OVER THE THUR.                              717
        THE BANKING-HOUSE. A HISTORY IN THREE PARTS. PART II.  719
        COLLEGE THEATRICALS.                                   737
        LINES WRITTEN IN THE ISLE OF BUTE.                     749
        TRAVELS OF KERIM KHAN. CONCLUSION.                     753
        NOTES ON A TOUR OF THE DISTURBED DISTRICTS IN WALES.   766
        ADVENTURES IN TEXAS. NO. II.                           777
        DEATH FROM THE STING OF A SERPENT.                     798
        GIFTS OF TEREK.                                        799
        MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART VI.      801

        INDEX TO VOL. LIV.                                     815

       *       *       *       *       *




LECTURES AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY.

HENRY FUSELI.


At a time when the eye of the public is more remarkably, and we trust
more kindly, directed to the Fine Arts, we may do some service to the
good cause, by reverting to those lectures delivered in the Royal
Academy, composed in a spirit of enthusiasm honourable to the
professors, but which kindled little sympathy in an age strangely dead
to the impulses of taste. The works, therefore, which set forth the
principles of art, were not read extensively at the time, and had little
influence beyond the walls within which they were delivered. Favourable
circumstances, in conjunction with their real merit, have permanently
added the discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds to the standard literature
of our country. They have been transferred from the artist to the
scholar; and so it has happened, that while few of any pretension to
scholarship have not read the "The Discourses," they have not, as they
should have, been continually in the hands of artists themselves. To
awaken a feeling for this kind of professional reading--yet not so
professional as not to be beneficial--reflectingly upon classical
learning; indeed, we might say, education in general, and therefore more
comprehensive in its scope--we commenced our remarks on the discourses
of Sir Joshua Reynolds, which have appeared in the pages of Maga. There
are now more than symptoms of the departure of that general apathy which
prevailed, when most of the Academy lectures were delivered. It will be,
therefore, a grateful, and may we hope a useful, task, by occasional
notices to make them more generally known.

The successors of Reynolds labour under a twofold disadvantage; they
find that he has occupied the very ground they would have taken, and
written so ably and fully upon all that is likely to obtain a general
interest, as to leave a prejudice against further attempts. Of
necessity, there must be, in every work treating of the same subject,
much repetition; and it must require no little ingenuity to give a
novelty and variety, that shall yet be safe, and within the bounds of
the admitted principles of art. On this account, we have no reason to
complain of the lectures of Fuseli, which we now purpose to notice. Bold
and original as the writer is, we find him every where impressed with a
respect for Reynolds, and with a conviction of the truth of the
principles which he had collected and established. If there be any
difference, it is occasionally on the more debatable ground--particular
passages of criticism.

In the "Introduction," the student is supplied with a list of the
authorities he should consult for the "History and Progress of his Art."
He avoids expatiating on the books purely elementary--"the van of which
is led by Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Durer, and the rear by Gherard
Lavresse--as the principles which they detail must be supposed to be
already in the student's possession, or are occasionally interwoven with
the topics of the lectures;" and proceeds "to the historically critical
writers, who consist of all the ancients yet remaining, Pausanias
excepted." Fortunately, there remain a sufficient number of the
monuments of ancient art "to furnish us with their standard of style;"
for the accounts are so contradictory, that we should have little to
rely upon. The works of the ancient artists are all lost: we must be
content with the "hasty compilations of a warrior," Pliny, or the
"incidental remarks of an orator," (rhetorician,) Quintilian. The former
chiefly valuable when he quotes--for then, as Reynolds observed, "he
speaks the language of an artist:" as in his account of the glazing
method of Apelles; the manner in which Protogenes embodied his colours;
and the term of art _circumlitio_, by which Nicias gave "the line of
correctness to the models of Praxiteles;" the foreshortening the bull by
Pausias, and throwing his shade on the crowd--showing a forcible
chiaroscuro. "Of Quintilian, whose information is all relative to style,
the tenth chapter of the XII.th book, a passage on expression in the
XI.th, and scattered fragments of observations analogous to the process
of his own art, is all that we possess; but what he says, though
comparatively small in bulk, with what we have of Pliny, leaves us to
wish for more. His review of the revolutions of style in painting, from
Polygnotus to Apelles, and in sculpture, from Phidias to Lysippus, is
succinct and rapid; but though so rapid and succinct, every word is
poised by characteristic precision, and can only be the result of long
and judicious enquiry, and perhaps even minute examination." Still less
have we scattered in the writings of Cicero, who, "though he seems to
have had little native taste for painting and sculpture, and even less
than he had taste for poetry, had a conception of nature; and with his
usual acumen, comparing the principles of one art with those of another,
frequently scattered useful hints, or made pertinent observations. For
many of these he might probably be indebted to Hortensius, with whom,
though his rival in eloquence, he lived on terms of familiarity, and who
was a man of declared taste, and one of the first collectors of the
time." He speaks somewhat too slightingly of Pausanias,[1] as "the
indiscriminate chronicler of legitimate tradition and legendary trash,"
considering that he praises "the scrupulous diligence with which he
examined what fell under his own eye." He recommends to the epic or
dramatic artist the study of the heroics of the elder, and the Eicones
or Picture Galleries of the elder and younger Philostratus.

"The innumerable hints, maxims, anecdotes, descriptions, scattered over
Lucian, Oelian, Athenaeus, Achilles Tatius, Tatian Pollux, and many
more, may be consulted to advantage by the man of taste and letters, and
probably may be neglected without much loss by the student." "Of modern
writers on art Vasari leads the van; theorist, artist, critic, and
biographer, in one. The history of modern art owes, no doubt, much to
Vasari; he leads us from its cradle to its maturity with the anxious
diligence of a nurse; but he likewise has her derelictions: for more
loquacious than ample, and less discriminating styles than eager to
accumulate descriptions, he is at an early period exhausted by the
superlatives lavished on inferior claims, and forced into frigid
rhapsodies and astrologic nonsense to do justice to the greater. He
swears by the divinity of M. Agnolo. He tells us that he copied every
figure of the Capella Sistina and the stanze of Raffaelle, yet his
memory was either so treacherous, or his rapidity in writing so
inconsiderate, that his account of both is a mere heap of errors and
unpardonable confusion, and one might almost fancy he had never entered
the Vatican." He is less pleased with the "rubbish of his
contemporaries, or followers, from Condior to Ridolfi, and on to
Malvasia." All is little worth "till the appearance of Lanzi, who, in
his 'Storia Pittorica della Italia,' has availed himself of all the
information existing in his time, has corrected most of those who wrote
before him, and, though perhaps not possessed of great discriminative
powers, has accumulated more instructive anecdotes, rescued more
deserving names from oblivion, and opened a wider prospect of art, than
all his predecessors." But for the valuable notes of Reynolds, the idle
pursuit of Du Fresnoy to clothe the precepts of art in Latin verse,
would be useless. "The notes of Reynolds, treasures of practical
observation, place him among those whom we may read with profit." De
Piles and Felibien are spoken of next, as the teachers of "what may be
learned from precept, founded on prescriptive authority more than on the
verdicts of nature." Of the effects of the system pursued by the French
Academy from such precepts, our author is, perhaps, not undeservedly
severe.

"About the middle of the last century the German critics, established at
Rome, began to claim the exclusive privilege of teaching the art, and to
form a complete system of antique style. The verdicts of Mengs and
Winkelmann, become the oracles of antiquaries, dilettanti, and artists,
from the Pyrenees to the utmost north of Europe, have been detailed, and
are not without their influence here. Winkelmann was the parasite of the
fragments that fell from the conversation or the tablets of Mengs--a
deep scholar, and better fitted to comment on a classic than to give
lessons on art and style, he reasoned himself into frigid reveries and
Platonic dreams on beauty. As far as the taste or the instruction of his
tutor directed, he is right when they are; and between his own learning
and the tuition of the other, his history of art delivers a specious
system, and a prodigious number of useful observations." "To him Germany
owes the shackles of her artists, and the narrow limits of