XII.

A BOY.'

A graceful boy with the skin of a wild beast hanging on his shoulders and a bunch of grapes in his hand. He is crowned with a vine wreath and buds and grapes: the legs are modern, and the face has not an antique but it expresses cheerful and earnest . .

XIII.

A PRIESTESS.

The drapery beautifully expressed, the face bad.

XIV.

AN ATHLETE.

(Curse these fig leaves; why is a round tin thing more decent than a cylindrical marble one?) An exceedingly fine statue-full of graceful strength; the countenance full of sweetness and strength. Its attitude with a staff lifted in one hand and some in the other, expresses serene dignity and power; a personification in the firmness and lightness of its form of that perfection of manhood when the will can be freely communicated to every fibre of the body. The muscles are represented how differently from a statue since anatomy has corrupted it.

XV.

A POMONA.

A woman in the act of lightly advancing-much care

1 The word Staircase is written above this Note in the MS. Notebook: how far the description of

the statues on the staircase extends,

I do not know.

has been taken to render the effect of the drapery as thrown back by the wind of her motion.

XVI.

AN ATHLETE

in every respect different from and inferior to the first.

XVII.

AN URANIA

holding a globe in one hand and compasses in the other: her countenance though not of the highest beauty, is beautiful her drapery drawn closely round shews the conformation of her left side and falls in graceful folds over the right arm.

Probably a portrait.

XVIII.

A VESTAL.

This face, which represented a real person, denotes an admirable disposition and mind, and is not beautiful but wise and gentle although with Her office might have contri

some mixture of severity.

buted to this expression.

XIX.

A VENUS GENITRIX.

Remarkable for the voluptuous effect of her finely proportioned form being seen through the folds of a drapery, the original of which must have been the

woven wind" of Chios. There is a softness in the attitude and upper part of the statue-the restoration of the arms and hand truly hideous.

XX.

A CALLIOPE.

Half modern-the drapery rather coarse.

XXI.

A HERCULES ON AN EMBLEMATIC BASE.

The arms probably restored, for the right hand especially is in villainous proportion.

XXII.

A MUSE.

A statue they call the Muse Polyhymnia-poor Muse— the head which may be a misapplication is of the family likeness of those shrewish and evil-minded Roman women of rank with the busts of whom the Capitol overflows. The form otherwise is too thin and spare for the ideal beauty in which the Muses were clothed. The drapery is very remarkable and very admirable; it is arranged in such large and unrestrained folds as the motions and the shape of a living form naturally forces a form into.

XXIII.

MERCURY.

Another glorious creature of the Greeks.

His coun

tenance expresses an imperturbable and god-like selfpossession; he seems in the enjoyment of delight which nothing can destroy. His figure nervous yet light, expresses the animation of swiftness emblemed by the plumes of his sandalled feet. Every muscle and nerve of his frame has tranquil and energetic life.

XXIV.

A VENUS

with villanous modern arms-this figure is rather too slight and weak-the body is correctly but feebly expressed.

XXV.

ANOTHER VENUS.

A very insipid person in the usual insipid attitude of this lady. The body and hips and where the lines of the fade into the thighs is exquisitely imagined

and executed.

XXVI.

AN APOLLO'

with his serpent crawling round a trunk of laurel on which his quiver is suspended. It probably was, when complete, magnificently beautiful. The restorer of the

head and arms following the

indications of the

muscles of the right side, has lifted the right arm, as if

The Note on an Apollo appeared in The Athenæum for the 22nd of September, 1832, and was reprinted in The Shelley Papers and in Mrs. Shelley's volumes of 1840. In all these cases it was unsuspectingly

given with the following openingwith serpents twining round a wreath of laurel on which the quiver is suspended.

2 In former editions, indication.

in triumph' at the success of an arrow; imagining to imitate the Lycian Apollo, or that so finely described by Apollonius Rhodius when the dazzling radiance of his beautiful limbs suddenly shone over the dark Euxine.

XXVII.

ANOTHER APOLLO.

Seen on

In every respect a coarse statue, with a goose or swan who has got the end of his pallium in his bill. one side the intense energy and god-like animation of those limbs, the spirit which seems as if it would not be contained.

XXVIII.

A CUPID.

Apparently part of a group-as in laughing defiance of those which are lost. It seeks to express what cannot be expressed in sculpture-the coarser and more violent effects of comic feeling cannot be seized by this art. Tenderness, sensibility, enthusiasm, terror, poetic inspiration, the profound, the beautiful, Yes.