En mille occasions l'amour a sçeu prouver Que tout devient pour luy, matiere à sympathie, Quand il fait tant que d'en vouloir trouver. She no doubt spoke sincerely, according to the light wherein, in the obliquity of her intellectual eyesight, she beheld him. Just as that prince of republican and unbelieving bigots, Thomas Holles, said of the same person, “I am sorry for the irregularities of Wilkes; they are, however, only as spots in the sun!" "It is the weakness of the many," says a once noted Journalist, "that when they have taken a fancy to a man, or to the name of a man, they take a fancy even to his failings." But there must have been no ordinary charm in the manners of John Wilkes, who in one interview overcame Johnson's well-founded and vehement dislike. The good nature of his countenance, and its vivacity and cleverness, made its physical ugliness be overlooked; and probably his cast of the eye, which was a squint of the first water, seemed only a peculiarity which gave effect to the sallies of his wit.

Hogarth's portrait of him he treated with characteristic good humour, and allowed it "to be an excellent compound caricature, or a caricature of what Nature had already caricatured. I know but one short apology, said he, to be made for this gentleman, or, to speak more properly, for the person of Mr. Wilkes; it is, that he did not make himself; and that he never was solicitous about the case (as Shakespeare calls it) only so far as to keep it clean and in health. I never heard that he ever hung over the glassy stream, like another Narcissus, admiring the image in it; nor that he ever stole an amorous look at his counterfeit in a side mirror. His form, such as it is, ought to give him no pain, while it is capable of giving so much pleasure to others. I believe he finds himself tolerably happy in the clay cottage to which he is tenant for life, because he has learned to keep it in pretty good order. While the share of health and animal spirits which heaven has given out should hold out, I can scarcely imagine he will be one moment

so temporary a habitation; or will ever be brought to our Ingenium Galba malè halitat: -Monsieur, est mal logé." This was part of a note for his intended edition of Churchill.

But

Squinting, according to a French writer, is not unpleasing, when it is not in excess. He is probably right in this observation. A slight obliquity of vision sometimes gives an archness of expression, and always adds to the countenance a peculiarity, which, when the countenance has once become agreeable to the beholder, renders it more so. when the eye-balls recede from each other to the outer verge of their orbits, or approach so closely that nothing but the intervention of the nose seems to prevent their meeting, a sense of distortion is produced, and consequently of pain. Il y a des gens, says Vigneul Marville, qui ne sauroient regarder des louches sans en sentir quelque douleur aux yeux. Je suis des ceux-la. This is because the deformity is catching, which it is well known to be in children; the tendency to imitation is easily excited in a highly sensitive frame as in them; and the pain felt in the eyes gives warning that this action, which is safe only while it is unconscious and unobserved, is in danger of being deranged.

A cast of the eye à la Montmorency was much admired at the Court of Louis XIII., where the representative of that illustrious family had rendered it fashionable by his example. Descartes is said to have liked all persons who squinted for his nurse's sake, and the anecdote tells equally in favour of her and of him.

St. Evremond says in writing the Eulogy of Turenne, Je ne m'amuserai point à depeindre tous les traits de son visage. Les caractères des Grands Hommes n'ont rien de commun avec les portraits des belles femmes. Muis je puis dire en gros qu'il avoit quelque chose d'auguste et d'agréable; quelque chose en sa physionomie qui faisoit concevoir je ne sai quoi de grand en son ame, et en son esprit. On pouvoit juger à le voir, que par un disposition particulière la Nature l'avoit pré

paré à faire tout ce qu'il a fait.

If Turenne had not been an ill-looking man, the skilful eulogist would not thus have excused himself from giving any description of his countenance; a countenance from which indeed, if portraits belie it not, it might be inferred that nature had prepared him to change his party during the civil wars, as lightly as he would have changed his seat at a card-table, to renounce the Protestant faith, and to ravage the Palatinate. Ne souvenez-vous pas de la physionomie funeste de ce grand homme, says Bussy Rabutin to, Madame de Sevigné. An Italian bravo said, che non teneva specchio in camera, perche quando si crucciava diveniva tanto terribile nell' aspetto, che veggendosi haria fatto troppo gran paura a se stesso.*

Queen Elizabeth could not endure the sight of deformity; when she went into public her guards, it is said, removed all misshapen and hideous persons out of her way.

Extreme ugliness has once proved as advantageous to its possessor as extreme beauty, if there be truth in those Triads wherein the Three Men are recorded who escaped from the battle of Camlan. They were Morvran ab Teged, in consequence of being so ugly, that every body thinking him to be a Demon out of Hell fled from him; Sandde Bryd-Angel, or Angel-aspect, in consequence of being so fine of form, so beautiful and fair, that no one raised a hand against him - for he was thought to be an Angel from Heaven: and Glewlwyd Gavaelvawr, or Great-grasp, (King Arthur's porter,) from his size and strength, so that none stood in his way, and every body ran before him; excepting these three, none escaped from Camlan,—that fatal field where King Arthur fell with all his chivalry.

That painter of great but insane genius, William Blake, of whom Allan Cunningham has written so interesting a memoir, took this Triad for the subject of a picture, which he called the Ancient Britons. It was one of his worst pictures, which is saying

IL CORTEGIANO, 27.

much; and he has illustrated it with one of the most curious commentaries, in his very curious and very rare descriptive Catalogue of his own Pictures.

It begins with a translation from the Welsh, supplied to him, no doubt, by that good simple-hearted, Welsh-headed man, William Owen, whose memory is the great store-house of all Cymric tradition and lore of every kind.

"In the last battle of King Arthur only Three Britons escaped; these were the Strongest Man, the Beautifullest Man, and the Ugliest Man. These Three marched through the field unsubdued as Gods; and the Sun of Britain set, but shall arise again with tenfold splendour, when Arthur shall awake from sleep, and resume his dominion over earth and ocean.

"The three general classes of men," says the painter, "who are represented by the most Beautiful, the most Strong, and the most Ugly, could not be represented by any historical facts but those of our own countrymen, the Ancient Britons, without violating costumes. The Britons (say historians) were naked civilised men, learned, studious, abstruse in thought and contemplation ; naked, simple, plain in their acts and manners; wiser than after ages. They were overwhelmed by brutal arms, all but a small remnant. Strength, Beauty, and Ugliness escaped the wreck, and remain for ever unsubdued, age after age.

"The British Antiquities are now in the Artist's hands; all his visionary contemplations relating to his own country and its ancient glory, when it was, as it again shall be, the source of learning and inspiration. He has in his hands poems of the highest antiquity. Adam was a Druid, and Noah. Also Abraham was called to succeed the Druidical age, which began to turn allegoric and mental signification into corporeal command; whereby human sacrifice would have depopulated the earth. All these things are written in Eden. The artist is an inhabitant of that happy country; and if everything goes on as it has begun, the work of vegetation and generation may

expect to be opened again to Heaven, through Eden, as it was in the beginning.

"The Strong Man represents the human sublime. The Beautiful Man represents the human pathetic, which was in the ban of Eden divided into male and female. The Ugly Man represents the human reason. They were originally one man, who was fourfold he was self-divided and his real humanity drawn on the stems of generation: and the form of the fourth was like the Son of God. How he became divided is a subject of great sublimity and pathos. The Artist has written it under inspiration, and will, if God please, publish it. It is voluminous, and contains the ancient history of Britain, and the world of Satan and of Adam.

"In the mean time he has painted this picture, which supposes that in the reign of that British Prince, who lived in the fifth century, there were remains of those naked heroes in the Welsh mountains. They are now. Gray saw them in the person of his Bard on Snowdon; there they dwell in naked simplicity; happy is he who can see and converse with them, above the shadows of generation and death. In this picture, believing with Milton the ancient British history, Mr. Blake has done as all the ancients did, and as all the moderns who are worthy of fame, given the historical fact in its poetical vigour; so as it always happens; and not in that dull way that some historians pretend, who being weakly organised themselves, cannot see either miracle or prodigy. All is to them a dull round of probabilities and possibilities; but the history of all times and places is nothing else but improbabilities and impossibilities, what we should say was impossible, if we did not see it always before our eyes.

"The antiquities of every nation under Heaven are no less sacred than those of the Jews; they are the same thing, as Jacob Bryant and all antiquaries have proved. How other antiquities came to be neglected and disbelieved, while those of the Jews are collected and arranged, is an enquiry worthy of both the Antiquarian and the Divine.

All had originally one language, and one religion. This was the religion of Jesus, the everlasting Gospel. Antiquity preached the Gospel of Jesus. The reasoning historian, turner and twister of courses and consequences, such as Hume, Gibbon, and Voltaire, cannot, with all their artifice, turn or twist one fact, or disarrange self-evident action and reality. Reasons and opinions concerning acts are not history. Acts themselves alone are history, and they are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon, and Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading. Tell me the What; I do not want you to tell me the Why, and the How; I can find that out myself, as well as you can, and I will not be fooled by you into opinions, that you please to impose, to disbelieve what you think improbable, or impossible. His opinion, who does not see spiritual agency, is not worth any man's reading; he who rejects a fact because it is improbable, must reject all History, and retain doubts only.

"It has been said to the Artist, take the Apollo for the model of your beautiful man, and the Hercules for your strong man, and the Dancing Fawn for your ugly man. Now he comes to his trial. He knows that what he does is not inferior to the grandest antiques. Superior they cannot be, for human power cannot go beyond either what he does, or what they have done. It is the gift of God; it is inspiration and vision. He had resolved to emulate those precious remains of antiquity. He has done so, and the result you behold. His ideas of strength and beauty have not been greatly different. Poetry as it exists now on earth in the various remains of ancient authors, Music as it exists in old tunes or melodies, Painting and Sculpture as it exists in the remains of antiquity and in the works of more modern genius, is Inspiration, and cannot be surpassed; it is perfect and eternal: Milton, Shakspeare, Michael Angelo, Rafael, the finest specimens of ancient Sculpture and

Painting, and Architecture, Gothic, Grecian, Hindoo, and Egyptian are the extent of the human mind. The human mind cannot go beyond the gift of God, the Holy Ghost. To suppose that Art can go beyond the finest specimens of Art that are now in the world, is not knowing what Art is; it is being blind to the gifts of the Spirit.

"It will be necessary for the Painter to say something concerning his ideas of Beauty, Strength, and Ugliness.

"The beauty that is annexed and appended to folly, is a lamentable accident and error of the mortal and perishing life; it does but seldom happen; but with this unnatural mixture the sublime Artist can have nothing to do; it is fit for the burlesque. The beauty proper for sublime Art, is lineaments, or forms and features that are capable of being the receptacle of intellect; accordingly the Painter has given in his beautiful man, his own idea of intellectual Beauty. The face and limbs (?) that deviates or alters least, from infancy to old age, is the face and limbs (?) of greatest Beauty and Perfection.

"The Ugly likewise, when accompanied and annexed to imbecillity and disease, is a subject for burlesque and not for historical grandeur; the artist has imagined the Ugly man; one approaching to the beast in features and form, his forehead small, without frontals; his nose high on the ridge, and narrow; his chest and the stamina of his make, comparatively little, and his joints and his extremities large; his eyes with scarce any whites, narrow and cunning, and everything tending toward what is truly ugly; the incapability of intellect.

"The Artist has considered his strong man as a receptacle of Wisdom, a sublime energizer; his features and limbs do not spindle out into length, without strength, nor are they too large and unwieldy for his brain and bosom. Strength consists in accumulation of power to the principal seat, and from thence a regular gradation and subordination; strength in compactness, not extent nor bulk.

"The strong man acts from conscious su

periority, and marches on in fearless dependence on the divine decrees, raging with the inspirations of a prophetic mind. The Beautiful man acts from duty, and anxious solicitude for the fates of those for whom he combats. The Ugly man acts from love of carnage, and delight in the savage barbarities of war, rushing with sportive precipitation into the very teeth of the affrighted enemy.

"The Roman Soldiers rolled together in a heap before them: 'like the rolling thing before the whirlwind:' each shew a different character, and a different expression of fear, or revenge, or envy, or blank horror, or amazement, or devout wonder and unresisting awe.

"The dead and the dying, Britons naked, mingled with armed Romans, strew the field beneath. Amongst these, the last of the Bards who were capable of attending warlike deeds, is seen falling, outstretched among the dead and the dying; singing to his harp in the pains of death.

"Distant among the mountains are Druid Temples, similar to Stone Henge. The sun sets behind the mountains, bloody with the day of battle.

"The flush of health in flesh, exposed to the open air, nourished by the spirits of forests and floods, in that ancient happy period, which history has recorded, cannot be like the sickly daubs of Titian or Rubens. Where will the copier of nature, as it now is, find a civilized man, who has been accustomed to go naked? Imagination only can furnish us with colouring appropriate, such as is found in the frescoes of Rafael and Michael Angelo: the disposition of forms always directs colouring in works of true art. As to a modern man, stripped from his load of clothing, he is like a dead corpse. Hence Rubens, Titian, Correggio, and all of that class, are like leather and chalk; their men are like leather, and their women like chalk, for the disposition of their forms will not admit of grand colouring; in Mr. B.'s Britons, the blood is seen to circulate in their limbs; he defies competition in colouring."

My regard for thee, dear Reader, would