ART. IV.-Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain, engraved from authentic Pictures in the Galleries of the Nobility and the Public Collections of the Country: with Biographical and Historical Memoirs of their Lives and Actions. By Edmund Lodge, Esq., F.S.A. London, folio, three volumes (200 Engravings). 1821-8. THERE are few national foibles, real or imaginary, wherewith we have been more frequently taunted by our neighbours, than that liberal patronage of portrait painters and bust makers, which accompanies, as is said, a culpable neglect of those who cultivate other and, as they are called, higher and more dignified branches of the fine arts. "Tis vain,' says the satirist, to set before an Englishman the scenes of landscape, or the heroes of history; nature and antiquity are nothing in his eye-he has no value but for himself, nor desires any copy but of his own form.' So Johnson stated the charge half a century ago, and he thus answered it : 'Whoever is delighted with his own picture must derive his pleasure from the pleasure of another; every man is always present to himself, and has therefore little need of his own resemblance, nor can desire it but for the sake of those whom he loves and by whom he hopes to be remembered. . . . Genius is chiefly exerted in historical pictures, and the art of the painter of portraits is often lost in the obscurity of his subject. But it is in painting as in life: what is greatest is not always best. I should grieve to see Reynolds transfer to heroes and to goddesses, to empty splendour and to airy fiction, that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in reviving tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead." Dr. Johnson says nothing as to our alleged indifference for landscape' and nature;' these, indeed, were matters for which the doctor himself entertained no very ardent predilection-but the reproach, if it was ever justly cast on us, could not be repeated now without the very absurdity of injustice. The English school of landscape painting has come to be of the first rank, and the contemporaries of Turner, Constable, Calcott, Thomson, Williams, Copley Fielding, and others whom we might name even with these masters, have no reason to reproach themselves with any neglect of their merits. The truth with which these artists have delineated the features of British landscape is, according to general admission, unmatched by even the most splendid exertions of foreign schools in the same department. Nor have they confined themselves to the scenery, varied as that is, of their own country. Not a few have carried the same principles and practice with them into other lands, and one in particular has brought the mountains, the vallies, and the atmosphere of Greece herself so * Idler, Feb. 24, 1759. near near to us in his excellent delineations, that we are persuaded many of the beauties of Sophocles, and Euripides, and Plato, (to say nothing of Childe Harold and Anastasius,) will be henceforth more strongly felt than in former days. As to what are called exclusively historical paintings,'-as if portraits were not historical-we suppose we must still submit to share the reproach of our fathers; yet we cannot believe that the defect of patronage is by any means the main or most efficient cause of the rarity of such works among us. Our collectors pay as largely and as willingly, at least, as any others for the historical pieces of the old masters; and it is not easy to understand why they who certainly do this, and as certainly cannot be accused of neglecting either their own Wilkies or their own Turners, should be set down, unheard, as guilty of the inglorious condition of the English historical school. Walpole has been a hundred times vilified for saying 'want of protection is the apology for want of genius: a poet or a painter may want an equipage or a villa by wanting protection-they can always afford ink and paper, colours and pencils.' But though this was rather sharp and short language from the voluptuous virtuoso of Strawberry Hill, we fear there is homely truth at the bottom of his observations. That sarcastic 'silken baron' was, indeed, little likely to appreciate or to sympathise with the sickness and numbness which have so often crept from the heart to the hand of forlorn and friendless genius; yet, on the other side, he is no true friend to the young aspirant in any department either of letters or of art, who loses a suitable opportunity of reminding him that to conquer external difficulties and discouragements has been, in almost every instance, the highest praise of those whom impartial posterity place at the head of their class. There is no study which ought to be more cultivated by either painter or poet than the personal history of his predecessors; it is sure to furnish either, provided he be worth the teaching, with the best lessons of modesty, and at the same time with the best antidote to despondence, and stimulus to industry. Let any man produce a really good historical picture, and we shall then have the opportunity of judging whether the patrons of English art are or not in reality chargeable with distaste for that particular exercise of genius. We must in candour confess, that we prefer naked walls in our churches to walls covered with great' pictures, such as Somerset House has ever been accustomed to produce. Nor is it at all wonderful that we should be difficult to please. We have before us the efforts of British art in other walks, and the satisfaction of seeing our countrymen and contemporaries equal the most illustrious names among foreign nations and past ages. Of this we are naturally proud; and their just fame demands that we should cast jealous eyes eyes on performances which demand not only similar but superior honours. Nor is it so difficult, as some would have us believe, to make experiments in the department which the nation is accused of neglecting. A large canvas will never, in all likelihood, be the sine qua non of a great genius.-In the successful and popular works of our great living artists in other departments, the historical aspirant might find better things than the food either of vanity or of envy. In them, if he would condescend to study them, he might perceive certain qualities, without which neither in poetry, nor in painting, nor in sculpture, will any artist, of whatever genius, be able to command the lasting favour of this nation-qualities which have been and might again be displayed in his own walk-namely, truth and common sense. Twenty years ago there were not wanting persons who bemoaned or vituperated, as it suited their temper, the national indifference to historical romance. Three duodecimos put an end to that clamour. Every tragedian of this day lays to his soul the flattering unction that the English public are insensible to tragic meritsthat we will bear nothing but Shakspeare; nay, that, if Shakspeare were to rise from the grave, and produce another Macbeth, it would be damned the first night. It is easy to declaim in this fashion-rather easier than to shame the fools' either by a good play, or a good picture. The Idler, however, is surely a little too hasty in his exclusion of personal vanity from among the prime and most active elements of the popularity of the portrait painter here as elsewhere. The good portrait painter always flatters; for it is his business, not, indeed, to alter and amend features, complexion, or mien, but to select and fix (which it demands genius and sense to do) the best appearance which these ever do wear. Happy the creature of sense and passion who has always with him that self which he could take pleasure in contemplating! Happy-to pass graver considerations-the fair one whose countenance continues as youthful as her attire! When Queen Elizabeth's wrinkles waxed deep and many, it is reported that an unfortunate Master of the Mint incurred disgrace by a too faithful shilling; the die was broken, and only one mutilated impression is now in existence. Her maids of honour took the hint, and were thenceforth careful that no fragment of looking-glass should remain in any room of the palace. In fact, the lion-hearted lady had not heart to look herself in the face for the last twenty years of her life; but we nowhere learn that she quarrelled with Holbein's portraitures of her youth, or those of her stately prime of viraginity by De Heere and Zucchero; on the contrary, it was a likeness of herself, painted during the lifetime of her father, that she bestowed on her illustrious spy,' as the dearest token of her esteem, at a very advanced advanced period of her reign, with the inscription (written by herself): 'The queen to Walsingham this table sent, nor did she frown to the last at sight of another portrait by the same hand, executed immediately after her accession to the throne, and inscribed with these lines, Juno potens sceptris, et mentis acumine Pallas, Et roseo Veneris fulget in ore decor; Obstupuit Pallas, erubuitque Venus." In this matter, as in many others, Dr. Johnson paid human nature a compliment which it deserved not, in judging of the race in general from the manliness of his own taste and feelings. The pettinesses of vanity were far enough a Scævolæ studiis; but they display themselves nowhere in more perfect efflorescence than in the artist's studio, where the very light of heaven is trained and managed into a most delicate harbinger and minister of flattery. How often has every portrait painter muttered to himself the lines of Dryden, 'Good heaven! that sots and knaves should be so vain And stand recorded, at their own request, To future times a libel or a jest? Is there one in the world who, in the absence of a sitter, would have the boldness to breathe a whisper in favour of this part of the doctor's argument? Sir Joshua, had he heard him, would, no doubt, have shifted his trumpet. It was as unlikely, no doubt, that Dr. Johnson should sympathize with this kind of vanity, as it was rash in him to deny its copious existence. He who has neither done things worthy to be written, nor written things worthy to be read,' takes the trouble of transmitting his portrait to posterity to very little purpose. If the picture be a bad one, it will soon find its way to the garret; if good, as a work of art, it will perpetuate the fame, probably the name, indeed, of the artist alone. These are the obscurorum virorum imagines which, as Walpole said, are christened commonly in galleries, like children at the Foundling Hospital, by chance.' Who will think of anything but the excellence of Sir Thomas Lawrence's skill, when he surveys, a few years, or a few hundred years hence, the features of those pampered citizens and giddy beauties, which even that pencil attempts in vain to invest with the dignity and sobriety of intellect and virtue? How deep and reverential, on the other hand, is the interest with which all men contemplate the likenesses of the good and the great that have been; how powerful the feeling with which we peruse the features glove each article has as intricate a genealogy--the beard alone might furnish matter for a volume. That, we thought, had at last, after all its changes and chances, become extinct; but the venerable ornament has come forth again from abeyance, and the Granger or Dallaway of the next century may probably have to trace it again from the dies non of George III. through another retrogressive score or two of pollings and trimmings-the triangle, the peak, the pantile-if not the patriarchal flood of mane itself,— Even Aaron's beard, that to the skirts Did of his garments go.' Without the aid of pictures, antiquaries would have been utterly baffled in such researches; but for the multiplication of engravings, even their best explanations would be comparatively unintelligible to the general reader. Fortunately, the best portrait painters have, in general, been the most careful to preserve the features of costume as they found them; and it were to be wished that there had been no exceptions to this rule. The admirable pictures of Holbein and Vandyke derive, from this fidelity, a species of interest, for the absence of which even genius like theirs could not have compensated. The latter, indeed, could hardly have improved on the reality before him-the era at which our taste in dress, as in architecture, and in many other things, was at its best, being that in which he visited our shores-to paint, fortunately for English history, the most interesting characters that figure in its page. Holbein was less fortunate, but he had too much sense and shrewdness to escape from real difficulties by fantastic evasions; and the same praise is due to Sir Joshua Reynolds. Lely and Kneller, on the contrary, for the sake of flimsy night-gowns and coxcombical caps, have, in fact, doue their best to leave a blank in our tables; we are often obliged to the performances of less fashionable and ambitious hands, for our liveliest notions of the real men and women of their days. It is well, for instance, that we have other pictures of John Duke of Argyle and Greenwich, besides that in which he appears with a voluminous wig, a naked neck, and Roman armour-Poor Jeanie Deans would hardly have suspected such a personage of having a heart that would warm to the tartan.' Who would not rather possess that portrait of the Duke of Wellington, which presents the very dress he wore at Waterloo,* than the same form and features surrounded even by the same inimitable hand, with the most graceful of imaginary concomitants? The great successor of Reynolds has chosen the better part also: wherever he condescends to the foppery of flaunting cloak and bare throat, we may be sure the blame lies in the capricious vanity of his subject. Now in the collection, we understand, of the Right Honourable Robert Peel. Mr. |