——"Lorsque la vertu, avec peine abjurée,
Nous fait voir une femme à ses fureurs livrée,
S'irritant par l'effort que ce pas a couté,
Son âme avec plus d'art a plus de cruauté."
She was even less famous for the number of her lovers, than the catastrophes of which she was the cause.
"Had ever nymph such reason to be glad?
Two in a duel fell, and one ran mad."
Not two, but half a dozen fell in duels; and if her lovers "ran mad," it was in despite, not in despair. Lady Shrewsbury is past jesting or satire; and after a first involuntary pause of admiration before her matchless beauty, we turn away with horror. For the rest of the portraits on this vast staircase, it would take a volume to give a catalogue raisonnée of them. We pass, then, into a corridor hung with two large and very mediocre landscapes, representing Tivoli and Terni. Any attempt, even the best, to paint a cataract must be abortive. How render to the fancy the two grandest of its features—sound and motion? the thunder and the tumult of the headlong waters? We will pass on to the gallery, and lose ourselves in its enchantments.
Where shall we begin?—Any where. Throw away the catalogue: all are old acquaintances. We are tempted to speak to them, and they look as if they could curtsey to us. The very walls breathe around us. What Vandykes—what Lelys—what Sir Joshuas! what a congregation of all that is beauteous and noble!—what Spencers, Sydneys, Digbys, Russells, Cavendishes, and Churchills!—O what a scene to moralize, to philosophize, to sentimentalize in!—what histories in those eyes, that look, yet see not!—what sermons on those lips, that all but speak; I would rather reflect in a picture-gallery, than elegize in a churchyard. The "poca polvere che nulla sente," can only tell us we must die; these, with a more useful and deep-felt morality, tell us how to live.
Yet I cannot say I felt thus pensive and serious the first time I looked round the gallery at Althorpe. Curiosity, excitement, interest, admiration—a crowd of quick successive images and recollections fleeting across the memory—left me no time to think. I remember being startled, the moment I entered, by a most extraordinary picture,—the second Prince of Orange, and his preceptor Katts, by Flinck. The eyes of the latter are really shockingly alive; they stare out of the canvass, and glitter and fascinate like those of a serpent. If I had been a Roman Catholic, I should have crossed myself, as I looked at them, to shield me from their evil and supernatural expression.[ 74] The picture of the two Sforzas, Maximilian and his brother Francis, by Albert Durer, is quite a curiosity; and so is another, by Holbein, near it, containing the portraits of Henry the Eighth, his daughter Mary, and his jester, Will Somers,—all full of individuality and truth. The expression in Mary's face, at once saturnine, discontented and vulgar, is especially full of character. These last three pictures are curious and valuable as specimens of art; but they are not pleasing. We turn to the matchless Vandykes, at once admirable as paintings, and yet more interesting as portraits. A full-length of his master and friend, Rubens, dressed in black, is magnificent; the attitude particularly graceful. Near the centre of the gallery is the charming full-length of Queen Henrietta Maria, a well-known and celebrated picture. She is dressed in white satin, and stands near a table on which is a vase of white roses, and, more in the shade, her regal crown. Nothing can be in finer taste than the contrast between the rich, various, but subdued colours of the carpet and background, and the delicate, and harmonious, and brilliant tints which throw out the figure. None of the pictures I had hitherto seen of Henrietta, either in the king's private collection, or at Windsor, do justice to the sparkling grace of her figure, or the vivacity and beauty of her eyes, so celebrated by all the contemporary poets. Waller, for instance:—