him in the minutest trifle. True, he had a model; yet as this model was to be translated out of one art into another, room enough was left him for originality of thought to be manifested in his deviations from his archetype; and this originality is, in fact, such as to place him in the same rank, as to degree of merit, with the poet whom he imitated.

It appears then, that admirable as the picture is in the management of Virgil, there are traits in it, notwithstanding, incapable of being transferred to the purposes of the sculptor. The notion, therefore, that a good poetic description must also furnish a good picture in the painter's sense, and that a poet has only so far succeeded in his delineation as an artist can follow him, admits of great limitation; a limitation, by the way, which might have been presumed, even in default of any positive examples, simply from a consideration of the wider compass of poetry, and the peculiar nature of its images; for these, being less essentially sensuous than in the other arts, can co-exist without loss of their separate effects, in greater number and variety, than the objects themselves, or their natural signs can do within the narrow limits of space and time.

That poetry is the art of greatest comprehension; that effects are within its power unattainable to painting; and that a poet may often have good reasons to prefer the non-picturesque to the picturesque; these are truths which seem to have been but little contemplated: and, accordingly, upon the slightest differences detected between the ancient poets and artists, criticism has been confounded. The elder poets, for example, generally invest Bacchus with horns. Strange, then, says Spence, that horns are so rarely found on his statues. The horns of Bacchus, however, were no natural horns, like those of fawns and satyrs; they were simply a frontal ornament,

assumed or laid aside at pleasure. He could appear, therefore, unhorned; and did so, when he chose to reveal himself in his virgin beauty. Now it was precisely under that aspect that the artist wished to present him; and hence his obligation to dismiss all adjuncts that might disturb that impression. Such an adjunct were the horns attached to the diadem. Such an adjunct was the diadem itself, which concealed the beautiful forehead, and on that account is found upon the statues as rarely as the horns, although not less frequently attributed by the poets to Bacchus as its inventor. To the poet both horns and diadem were simply a source of beautiful allusions to the acts and character of the god: the artist, on the contrary, found them hindrances in his way-that interposed between the display of beauties greater than themselves. And if my

notion be true-that Bacchus was surnamed Auogos, in reference to a power of manifesting himself in a beautiful or a dreadful form, nothing can be more natural than that, of two modes of figuring him, the artist should adopt that which best corresponded with the purposes of his own art.

Statius and Valerius Flaccus have both described Venus under the passion of anger, with features so shockingly disfigured by that passion, that we should be apt to take her for one of the Furies, rather than for the Goddess of Love. Now, without any view to the defence of these particular passages, I shall here make one general observation on the principle which they involve.

The gods, and other supernatural creations of the artist and of the poet, are not entirely under the same law of art. To the artist they are no more than impersonated abstractions; and, that they may be understood and recognised for what they are, must always retain the same symbolic characteristics. Treated by the poet, on the contrary, they are substantial concrete persons, * who,

In such

besides their universal attributes, may bring forward, as occasion presents, other qualities and affections, that, for the moment, supersede and throw into the shade their abstract character. Venus, for example, to the sculptor, is the mere principle of the sexual love; she must, therefore, be clothed, with the retiring beauty and the gracious charms that fascinate us in beloved objects. These characteristics belong to the abstract conception; and the least deviation from this ideal would dissolve the representative image. Suppose, for instance, that her beauty were figured, not coy and retreating, but majestic-here we should have at once a Juno, no matter what were the artist's design. Give to the charms a less gracious and more commanding air, and ipso facto we shall have a Minerva. A wrathful Venus, therefore, to the sculptor, is a nugatory conception; for love, as love, can neither be wrathful nor vindictive. With the poet the case is otherwise; to him, also, Venus is the impersonated principle of love, but then something beside: she is not merely the impersonated principle, but also the incarnate principle; for she is the goddess of love, that is, a living creature, with her own separate individuality superadded to her abstract character, and consequently no less capable of abhorrence than of desire.

True it is, that in complex groups, the artist enjoys the same privilege with the poet of introducing Venus or any other divinity as a real existence, and clothed with functions extra-essential to the idea which she represents. But, if extra-essential, they must at least never be contradictory to

that idea;-not to tie them down to the severe rule, which some would impose, of deviating from the strictly essential attributes no farther than to their immediate consequences. Let us take the case of Venus delivering the Vulcanian armour to her son Æneas. Here the act is of that kind, which, though extra-essential to the abstract character of a Venus, may yet bend to the sculptor's purposes; for there is nothing here to prevent him from giving to his Venus all the grace and beauty which belong to her as the Goddess of love. But take the case of the same Venus avenging her insulted authority upon the men of Lemnos, where she is exhibited descending upon a gloomy cloud in dilated proportions, with cheeks inflamed, hair dishevelled, a black robe thrown loosely about her, and a torch grasped in her hand;this clearly is no phasis under which she could be contemplated by the artist; there being no room here for any traits by which he could suggest her universal character. But to the poet such an attitude and action are not ill adapted: since he has it in his power to place in direct juxta-position to this attitude of fury another more appropriate to the goddess, and carrying into the very heart of the transitory passion a sense of the calm and immortal beauty which it has for a moment been permitted to disturb.

In short, the poet has an exclusive privilege of painting by negative traits, and of so blending these with the positive, as to melt two opposite forms of revelation into unity. On this side stands a Venus, in the radiance and glory of her charms, her tresses confined by golden clasps, and her azure

robe floating around her: on that stands a goddess ;-another, and yet the same; stripped of her cestus; armed-but with far other flames, and with more terrific shafts, and accompanied by kindred furies. These are two opposite exhibitions of one and the same power; the artist can exhibit but one of these; the poet can ex

hibit both in direct succession. Shall the weakness of the one become a law for the strength of the other? If Painting be the sister of Poetry, let her not be an envious sister; nor let the younger deny to the elder any ornaments whatsoever, simply because they are unsuitable to herself.

In these comparisons of the artist and the poet, a principal regard must be directed to this question-Whether each were in equal circumstances of liberty, so as to be able to aim at the highest effects in his art, without external constraint.

Such a constraint existed to the artist not unfrequently in the national religion. A work, destined to religious uses in the public worship, could not always aim at that pure form of excellence which might have been realized under a single and undivided attention to the pleasure of the spectator. Superstition had loaded the gods with images addressed to the sense: and thus it happened that the most beautiful amongst the gods were not always worshipped under their most beautiful forms.

Another mode of constraint existed in the internal difficulties and limitations of art. The personified abstractions of the poet were sufficiently characterized by the names and the sort of actions attributed to them. But to the artist these means of explaining himself were denied. By way of interpre tation to his personifications, he was reduced to the necessity of connecting with them certain sensuous images or emblems. These images, being understood in a sense different from their direct literal import, gave to the personifications which they accompanied the rank and title of Allegoric figures. A woman, for instance, with a bridle in her hand, or a woman leaning against a pillar, are in the arts allegoric personages; that is, impersonated abstractions expounded by emblems. But the corresponding creations of Poetry, viz. Temperance and Constancy, are simply impersonated abstractions, and not allegorizations. This mode of expressing moral functions by sensuous images-was a product of

the necessity which beset the artist. But why should the poet, who knows nothing of this necessity, adopt the artist's expedient for meeting it? The resources of Art, however meritorious for following the steps of poetry, are in themselves no absolute perfections. When the artist symbolizes a figure by some sensuous image, he exalts this figure to the rank of a living being: but the poet, by adopting such auxiliary exponents, degrades what was already a living being to the rank of a puppet.

There is, however, amongst the attributes by which the artist characterizes his abstractions, one class which is both more capable and more deserving of being transferred to a poetic use: I mean those exponents, which, strictly considered, are not allegoric, but simply express the instruments appropriate to the functions of the impersonated ideas considered as living agents. The bridle in the hand of Temperance, or the pillar against which Constancy is leaning, are purely allegoric, and therefore of no poetic application. On the other hand, the balance which is carried by Justice, is but imperfectly allegoric; because the right use of the balance is literally one function of Justice. And the lyre or flute in the hand of a Muse, the spear in the hand of Mars, or the hammer and tongs in the hand of Vulcan, are not allegoric at all, but merely instruments for producing the effects which we ascribe to those beings. Of this last class are those attributes which the ancient poets sometimes interweave with their descriptions, and which, by way of distinguishing them from such as are properly allegoric, I would propose to call the poetic attributes. The poetic attributes are to be interpreted literally; but the allegoric on principles of analogy.

WHAT strikes us in the artist, as the distinguishing point of excellence, is the execution; the invention, in his case, holding but the second place in our regard. But in the poet this is reversed; and we make light of his faculty for executing, compared with his power of original conception. Take the Laocoon for instance;-here the tortuous involution of the father and his sons into one group is an original thought; and, had Virgil derived this from the sculptor, the weightier part of his merit would have vanished. On the other hand, suppose the artist to have been indebted in this point to the poet, and, therefore, confessedly to have foregone all claim to invention, he would still have had room enough for the display of merit the most splendid, and of a kind the most appropriate to his art; to express a passion in marble being far more difficult than by the instrument of words.

With this readiness, however, to dispense with the faculty of invention in the artist, it is natural that there should have arisen on his part a corresponding indifference to that sort of pretension. Sensible that it was hope less for him to found any part of his distinction upon originality in the conception, he was willing to adopt ideas from any quarter, no matter whether old or new-and to throw the stress of his efforts upon the execution. Accordingly, he confined himself within the compass of a few popular subjects, and applied whatever inventive power he had to the modification of the familiar, and the recombination of old materials. And this, in fact, is the meaning of the word invention, when attributed to painting in the professed treatises on that art; invention applied not to the entire subject, but to the individual parts, or to their connexion with each other; that sort of invention, in short, which Horace recommended to the tragic poet. Certainly the poet has a great advantage who treats a known story. Thousands of petty details, which would else be requisite to put the reader in possession of the incidents and characters, are thus dispensed with; and the more rapidly his audience are made to comprehend the situation, the more readily will the appropriate interest arise. Now, if this be advan

tageous to the poet, à fortiori, it will be so to the painter. A subject, comprehensible at a glance in the purpose and meaning of its whole composition, is indispensable to the full effects of his art. For the final result depends much upon the first impression; and, if that be broken and retarded by a tedious process of question and investigation, the whole strength and liveliness of our emotions is intercepted and frost-bound.

Now, laying together both considerations,-first, that novelty of subject is the very last merit which we look for in a painting; and, secondly, that the very absence of this quality facilitates the impression which it aims at,-I think that we are under no necessity of ascribing the deficiency of invention in this art to a motive of indolent self-accommodation in the painter-to his ignorance or to the mechanical difficulties of his art, as absorbing his whole zeal and attention; but, on the contrary, that it will appear to have a deep foundation in the principles of the art; and that what at first sight might have been thought to limit the compass and energy of its effects, is, in fact, to be applauded as a wise abstinence on the part of the artist. Undoubtedly, in one respect, he might have found a better field for his art than has, in fact, been chosen since the time of Raphael; for Homer, and not Ovid, should have been the painter's manual. But this I say on a consideration of the superior grandeur which belongs to the Homeric subjects, and with no prejudice to the principle here maintained-that absolute novelty of story and situation is so far a defect in painting, and hostile to its highest purpose.

This principle is one which did not escape Aristotle. It is recorded that he advised Protogenes to paint subjects from the life of Alexander; an advice which, unfortunately for himself, that painter did not adopt. However, the rationale of it is evident; the acts of Alexander were at that time the subject of general conversation; and it did not require the sagacity of an Aristotle to foresee that they could never become obscure, or lose their interest and meaning with posterity.