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painter was more attentive to the general effect of his personages, than to preserve delicacy of detail. The surrounding scenery is executed in a grand, style. The picture is about two feet and eleven inches in height, three feet and eleven inches in width. It was painted by Poussin for the chevalier del Pozzo, who exerted all his influence to promote the interest of the painter during his residence at Rome. He was incessant in his endeavours to bring him into notice, and solicited for him the most lucrative engagements. Poussin, as a testimony of his gratitude for such kind services, presented the chevalier with this picture. At his death it passed into the hands of M. Le Notre. Afterwards it adorned the cabinet of the unfortunate Louis XVI.

NOTES OF A DESULTORY READER.—FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

BEN JONSON thus speaks of the eloquence of lord Bacon: "There happened in my time one noble speaker (lord Verulam) who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more prestly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded where he spoke; and had his judges angry or pleased at his devotion. The fear of every one that heard him was, lest he should make an end."

This is certainly high praise; but there has been no time or place perhaps, in which eloquent men have not appeared, upon whom, some of their cotemporaries might not be disposed to pass an equally lofty panegyric. The parliamentary oratory of lord Bolingbroke has been extolled as unrivalled: so, in later times have been the speeches of lords Chatham and Mansfield by their respective friends; and still more recently, those of Burke, Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Erskine and Curran.

It seems to be matter of just regret, that we have no method of perpetuating the merit of those, who have excelled in this

captivating art. The genius of the writer is displayed in his works; that of the painter in his pictures; that of the composer of music, in the note book which records the "concords of sweet sounds" of which he has been the eliciter or combiner. But, if even the words of the orator are preserved, his manner, his voice, his tones, his looks, his gestures, are lost to future ages; and the circumstances which constitute the essence of his art, his action, never go down to posterity. Hence it is, that the comparative excellence of Demosthenes and Cicero, and that of the other great names which have been mentioned, cannot be estimated; and for the same reason, no scale can be established, whereby to determine the relative merits of the "well graced actors," of past times with those of the present, or one with the other, of those who have left the scene. ne. Whether, therefore, with due allowance for national manners and tastes, Le Kain and Clairon of the French stage, were superior to Garrick and Siddons of the English; or whether Betterton, the paragon of his day, was superior, or in any degree comparable to Garrick, the paragon of his, must ever remain a mere matter of conjecture, as probably it would be of dispute, were they all alive and marshalled for comparison before the most exquisitely refined audience that ever crowded a theatre.

But it is further to be remarked, that there is a fashion in these things as in all others that are the objects of taste; and that what is called a new school, is nothing more than a new fashion, which puts down an old one. They who will not accede to this, but insist that every innovation is an improvement, are advocates for human perfectibility, or at least for man's continual progression towards perfection-a doctrine, in which, however well disposed to acquiesce in the orthodoxy of new schools, and new modes, and new fashions, I must profess myself a sceptic. Hence, though I might be disposed to believe, that Garrick was a better actor than any of his predecessors, that belief would not be at all founded on the circumstance of his coming after them. This celebrated performer has indeed the credit of correcting some of the acknowledged errors of the English stage, particularly the starch and formal manner of its declamation; and a similar reform, we are told by Marmontel, was, through his suggestion,

effected by Clairon in France. But there may be room for doubting, whether, by Garrick, the innovation was not carried too far, since it has been said, that the poetry of English tragedy, from the adoption of his manner, has been utterly disregarded through an extreme sedulity to copy nature: For without recurring to Voltaire's strong illustration of, neanmoins Je porte les culottes, I take it for granted, it will be ceded; that tragedy should be written in verse, and that the heroes of this sort of drama should continue to mouth heroics, the natural propensity of human beings to hold discourse in humble prose notwithstanding.

THE pleasure we derive from a fine passsage of descriptive poetry, is never so vivid and delightful, as when we can identify it with impressions received in early life, and which have in a great degree, lain dormant, until revived by the poet. It is for the person, therefore, to whom it recalls the circumstances of a water-scene in the serenity of a summer evening, when wafted along by moonlight, he had been lulled by the drowsy sound of distant oars, and that hollow kind of murmur, with which, in the stillness of night, the tide of flood seems to complain of resistance, and to groan under the weight of vessels incumbent on its swelling surface:-it is for such a one alone, duly to appreciate the beauty and just imagery of these lines of Petronius:

Qualis silenti nocte remorum sonus

Longè refertur, cum premunt classes mare
Pulsumque marmor abiete imposita gemit.

It is among the eccentricities of Shakspeare, and his daring deviations from the beaten track of dramatic writers, that his Romeo is at first introduced as enamoured of a lady who does not appear, and contributes not at all to the catastrophe of the piece. Still, as the circumstance is not unnatural, it may probably conduce to the interest of the play, and have entered into the poet's plan faithfully to depict the versatility of youthful passion, passing from object to object, until meeting with a heart of sufficient congeniality to fix it. Thus, from the sighing swain of Rosaline, the love-sick youth of Verona is instantaneously transformed into the idolator of Juliet, causing the old friar to exclaim:

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