Yet, he was for a time undecided as to a subject: the Expedition of Charles the Eighth of France into Italy; the Crusade of Cœur de Lion; the Barons’ Wars against John and Henry the Third; the History of Edward the Black Prince; Lives and comparisons of Henry the Fifth and the Emperor Titus; the Life of Sir Philip Sidney, of the Marquis of Montrose, of Raleigh—and other subjects of high interest, but each and all inferior to the one he at length undertook, and for which his studies had all along peculiarly fitted him, successively attracted his attention. Amidst the colossal ruins of the amphitheatre of Titus, the idea at length was formed in his mind of tracing the vicissitudes of Rome; and this idea swelled until his conception extended to such a history as should depicture the thousand years of change which fill up the period between the reign of the Antonines and the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks. Years of laborious study and research were necessary to accomplish this gigantic labour; but it was perfected, and remains the grandest historic monument ever raised by an Englishman. The recent investigations of Guizot have more fully confirmed the fact of the minute and careful inquiries of Gibbon, in bringing together the vast and multifarious materials necessary for the accurate completion of his design. His great work is, emphatically, for strictness of statement, combined with such comprehensiveness of subjects, for depth and clearness of disquisition, and for splendour of style, one of the most magnificent “Triumphs of Perseverance.”
And is the roll of these triumphs complete? Have the labours of the past pretermitted the possibility of equal victories in the future? Never, while the human mind exists, can the catalogue of its successes be deemed to have found a limit or an end. Immense fields of history remain yet untrodden and uncultivated; innumerable facts throughout the ages which are gone remain to be collected by industry and arranged by judgment; the ever-varying phases of human affairs offer perpetual material for new chronicle: let none who meditates to devote his youth to historical inquiry, with the meritorious resolve to distinguish his manhood by some useful monument of solid thought, imagine that his ground has been narrowed, but rather understand that it has been cleared and enlarged by the noble workmen who have gone before.
Neither let the young and gifted, in whom the kindlings of creative genius are felt, listen to the dull voices who say, “The last epic has been written—no more great dramas shall be produced—the lyrics of the past will never be equalled!” If such vaticinations were true, it would show that the human mind was dwarfed. Shakspere did not believe that, or he would not have excelled Sophocles. None but intellectual cravens will affright themselves with the belief that they cannot equal the doings of those who have gone before. True courage says, “The laurel is never sere: its leaves are evergreen. The laurels have not all been won: they flourish still, in abundance. The bright examples of the past shall not deter, but cheer me. I will go on to equal them. My life, like the lives of the earth’s truly great, shall be devoted to thought, to research—to deep converse with the mighty spirits who still live in their works, though their clay is dissolved; I will prepare to build, and build carefully and wisely, as they built; I also will rear my lasting memorial among “The Triumphs of Perseverance!”
CHAPTER III.
ARTISTS.
CANOVA.—CHANTREY.—SALVATOR ROSA.—BENJAMIN WEST.
If a rude image of the South Sea islanders be compared with one of Chantrey’s sculptures, or a Chinese picture with some perfect performance of Raffaelle or Claude, what a world of reflection unfolds itself on the countless steps taken by the mind, from its first attempt at imitating the human form, or depicturing a landscape, to the periods of its most successful effort in statuary or painting. The first childish essay of a great artist, compared with one of the masterpieces of his maturity, calls up kindred thoughts. How often must the eye re-measure an object; how often retrace the direction or inclination of the lines by which a figure is bounded; what an infinite number of comparisons must perception store up in the memory, as to the resemblance of one form to another; what repeated scrutiny must the judgment exercise over what most delights the ideal faculty, till the source of delight—the harmony arising from combination of forms—be discovered and understood; and how unweariedly must the intellect return, again and again, to these its probationary labours, before the capability for realising great triumphs in Art be attained.
Doubtless, the mind of a young artist, like the mind under any other process of training, exercises many of these acts with little self-consciousness; but observation and comparison have, inevitably, to be practised, and their results to be stored up in the mind, before the hand can be directed and employed in accurate delineation and embodiment of forms. Without diligence in this training, the chisel of Chantrey would have failed to bring more life-like shapes from a block of marble than the knife of a Sandwich islander carves out of the trunk of a tree; and the canvas of Claude would have failed as utterly to realise proportion, and sunlight, and distance, as a piece of porcelain figured and coloured by a native of China. As it is in the elaboration of Literature’s most perfect products so it is in Art: into the mind his images must be taken; there they must be wrought up into new combinations and shapes of beauty or of power; and from this grand repository the statuary or painter, like the poet, must summon his forms anew, evermore returning, dutifully, to compare them with Nature and actual life, and sparing no effort to clothe them with the attribute of veri-similitude.
Need it be argued, then, that without perseverance the world would have beheld none of the wonders of high Art? If the mind, by her own mysterious power, have, first, to pencil the forms of the outward upon her tablets within; if she have, then, a greater work of combination and creation to perform, ere a statue or a picture of the ideal can be realised; if the hand, in a word, can only successfully carve, limn, and colour, from the pattern laid up in the wealth of the trained and experienced mind, how absolute the necessity for perseverance to enrich and perfect that mind which is to direct the hand! That neglect of this evident truth has marked the lives of unsuccessful artists may, too often, be seen in the records of them: while the deepest conviction of a duty to obey its dictates has distinguished the world’s most glorious names in painting and sculpture. Let us glance at the steps taken by a few of these, in their way to triumphs; not unheedful, meanwhile, how their exhibition of the great moral quality of perseverance enabled them to trample on the difficulties of actual life, as well as to overcome obstacles in their progress to perfect art.