This column is one of the most celebrated monuments of antiquity. Its height, including the pedestal and statue, is one hundred and forty-four English feet. It was erected in the centre of the forum of Trajan, and was dedicated to that emperor by the senate and people of Rome in commemoration of his decisive victory over the Dacians. It is of the Doric order, and its shaft is constructed of thirty-four pieces of Greek marble, hollowed out in the centre for the stairs, and joined together with cramps of bronze. For elegance of proportion, beauty of style, and for simplicity and dexterity of sculpture, it is accounted the finest column in the world. The sculptures on the pedestal are master-pieces of Roman art. The shaft is embellished with bassi-rilievi, representing the expedition of Trajan against the Dacians, which run spirally, twenty-three times around the column, and which gradually increase in size, so that those at the top appear to the spectator, to be of the same size as those at the bottom. A spiral stair-case, of one hundred and eighty-five steps, runs up the interior, and receives light from sixty-three openings in the shaft. A gold medal, struck in commemoration of the completion of the column, shows that it was formerly surmounted by a statue of Trajan, holding in one hand a sceptre, and in the other a globe, in which were deposited the ashes of that prince. Pope Sixtus V. placed a statue of St. Peter, by the Cavaliere Fontana, in the place of that of Trajan, which had been destroyed some centuries before. A greater absurdity than placing the statue of a peaceful apostle over the sculptured representation of the Dacian war, can scarcely be conceived.
THE DEATH OF APOLLODORUS.
Apollodorus fell a victim to the envy of Adrian, the successor of Trajan, who himself dabbled in architecture, as well as the other arts. According to Pliny, he ridiculed the proportions of the temple of Rome and Venus, which had been built from Adrian’s designs, saying that “if the goddesses who were placed in it should be disposed to stand up, they would be in danger of breaking their heads against the roof, or if they should wish to go out, they could not,” which so incensed the Emperor, that he banished the architect, and had him put to death. Another account is, that as Trajan was conversing about some of the buildings, Adrian, who was present, made some remarks, on which the architect said, “Go and paint pumpkins, for you know nothing about these matters,” an affront which Adrian never forgot, and avenged by the death of the architect when he became Emperor. What a return to the architect of Trajan’s Column!
HOGARTH.
The talents of this eccentric genius were preëminent in burlesque and satire. He therefore chiefly devoted himself to delineate the calamities and crimes of private life, and the vices and follies of the age. He portrayed vice as leading to disgrace and misery, while he represented virtue as conducting to happiness and honor. His series of the “Harlot’s Progress,” the “Rake’s Progress,” “Marriage à la Mode,” gained him great reputation; and the prints which he engraved and published from them, although rude specimens of the art, met with an enormous sale, greatly to his own emolument. Lord Orford characterizes him as a painter of comedy. “If catching the manners and follies of the age, ‘living as they rise’; if general satire on vices and ridicules, familiarized by strokes of nature, and heightened by wit, and the whole animated by just and proper expressions of the persons, be comedy, Hogarth composed comedy as much as Moliere.” Others have better characterized him as a great moral preacher. Alderman Boydell was accustomed to say that every merchant, shopkeeper, mechanic, and others who had youth in their employment, ought to have some of Hogarth’s prints framed and hung up for their admonition.
HOGARTH’S APPRENTICESHIP.
Hogarth was apprenticed, at an early age, to an engraver of arms on plate. While thus engaged, his inclination for painting was manifested in a remarkable manner. Going out one day with some companions on an excursion to Highgate, the weather being very hot, they entered a public house, where before long a quarrel occurred. One of the disputants struck the other on the head with a quart pot, which cut him severely; and the blood running down the man’s face, gave him a singular appearance, which, with the contortions of his countenance, presented Hogarth with a laughable subject. Taking out his pencil, he sketched the scene in such a truthful and ludicrous manner, that order and good feeling were at once restored.
HOGARTH’S REVENGE.
Hogarth, in his early career, was once greatly distressed to raise the paltry sum of twenty shillings, to satisfy his landlady, who endeavored to enforce payment. To be revenged on her, he painted her an ugly and malicious hag, her features so truthfully drawn, that every person who had seen her at once recognized the individual. Woe betided the man who incurred his ire; he crucified him without mercy. In his controversy with Wilkes, he caricatured him in his print of “The Times;” and Churchill, the poet, he represented as a canonical bear, with a ragged staff, and a pot of porter.