Another chapter is devoted to "The famous balance composed by De Piles for estimating the different degrees of merit in the principal historical painters." This famous balance is a piece of critical coxcombry with which we never could have tolerable patience. It is an absurd assumption of superiority in the critic over all the masters that ever were; as if he alone were able to conceive perfection, to which no painter has ever been able to advance; that perfection on which the critic, or rather De Piles, had his eye, is Number 20; that no Painter has approached it nearer than nineteen. It commences with a falsehood in supposition, that the critic is above the Painter, or Art, or the only one really cognisant of it. The fact being quite the reverse, for we know nothing that we have not been absolutely taught by genius. It is genius that precedes; it is the maker, the worker, the inventor, who alone sees the step beyond. Did the critic see this step he would cease to be the critic, and become the maker. He would become the genius. In the arts, whether of poetry, painting, or music, we know nothing but what practical genius tells us, shows us, teaches us; seldom is it, indeed, that the scholar critic comprehends fully the lessons taught; but to pretend to go before the masters, and to set up a post with his Number 20 marked upon it, and to bid his master reach it if he can, is the puerile play of an infantine intellect, or very conceited mind! And so we give M. De Piles, and all his followers, a slap in the face, and bid them go packing with Number 20. We will not condescend to pull to pieces this fantastic scheme, which is in its distinctions, and weighings and calculations, appreciations and depreciations, as false as it must necessarily be, arising from a mind capable of laying down any such scheme at all. The chapter on prices, and the lists contained, will be consulted with advantage by collectors. It contains valuable documents, showing the fluctuations of public taste. There is much useful information upon cleaning pictures, and on varnishes. Something has been recently said to bring into practice again the varnishing with white of egg. M. de Burtin is decidedly against the practice. "As to the varnishes of water, isinglass, and white of egg, every prudent amateur will attack them the instant that he discovers such dangerous enemies, and will use every effort to free his pictures from them." We think him utterly mistaken in the following passage. "In operating upon a work of art, whether to clean it or to raise the varnish, it ought to be remembered, that the colours grow hard only by the lapse of time." If so, surely a hundred years would be time enough to harden—but the chemical tests which touch the hard paint, if it be hard, of a century old, will not be applicable to those of still older date, and of better time. He had shown this unconsciously in what he had said of spirits of wine. We have taken some pains in the pages of Maga to disabuse the public with regard to the imaginary benefit of painting in varnish—a most pernicious practice; and that it is so, we have elsewhere given both proof and authorities. We are glad to find our author on our side. "Besides, no one at the present day (1808) is ignorant of their absurd method of painting in varnish, which corrupts the colours, and prevents them ever attaining the requisite hardness." There is much useful matter upon varnishing, which it will be well that collectors and keepers of public galleries should read with attention. We do not say follow, but read; for it is indeed a very serious matter to recommend a varnish, seeing how many pictures are totally ruined by bad applications. We have been told that drying oil mixed with mastic varnish has been, though not very recently, used in our National Gallery. We hope it is a mistake, and that there has been no such practice. The effect must be to make them dull and horny, and to destroy all brilliancy in time. We say no more upon that subject, believing that our National Gallery is intrusted to good hands, and that whatever is done, will be done with judgment, and not without much reflection. A new varnish has appeared, "Bentley's." We believe it is copal, but rendered removable as mastic. It is certainly very brilliant, not, or but slightly, subject to chill, and is more permanent, as well as almost colourless. De Burtin not only denounces the use of oil in varnishes, but speaks of a more disgusting practice, common in Italy, of rubbing pictures "with fat, oil, or lard, or other animal grease.... So destructive a practice comes in process of time to rot the picture, so that it will not hold together." We should scarcely have thought it worth while to notice this, had we not seen pictures so treated in this country. Behold a specimen of folly and hazardous experiment:—"At that time, I frequented the Dresden gallery every morning, and got from M. Riedal all the details of his practice. He informed me that, amongst others, the chief works of Correggio, Raffaelle, Titian, and Procaccini, after having undergone his preparatory operations, had got a coat of his 'oil of flowers,' which he would repeat, until every part became 'perfectly bright.' And on my remarking, that in the admirable 'Venus' of Titian, the carnations alone were bright, and all the rest flat, he told me with perfect coolness, that 'having only as yet given it three coats of his oil, that it was not astonishing, but that he would put it all in unison by multiplying the coats.'" The man should have been suffocated in his "oil of flowers," preserved in them, and hung up in the gallery in terrorem. Could ghosts walk and punish, we would not have been in his skin, though perfumed with his preservative oil of flowers, under the visitations of the ghosts of Correggio, Raffaelle, Titian, and Procaccini. "Such," adds M. de Burtin, "was his threat at the very moment that I felt overpowered with chagrin, to see the superb carnations of Titian acquiring a yellowish, sad, and monotonous tone, through the coats that he had already given to it."
We have noticed, at considerable length, this work, and have been led on by the interest of the subject. The perusal of this translation will repay the connoisseur, and we think the artist. The former, in this country, will be surprised to find names of artists, whose works will not be found in our collections, at least with their titles. The artist will find some useful information, and will always find his flame of enthusiasm fed by reading works upon the subject of art, though they should be very inferior to the present useful volume. We recommend it as not unamusing to all who wish to think upon art, and to acquire the now almost necessary accomplishment of a taste for pictures.
MANNER AND MATTER.
A Tale.
Chapter I.
Along the dusty highway, and underneath a July sun, a man about fifty, tending somewhat to the corpulent, and dressed in heavy parsonic black, might have been seen treading slowly—treading with all that quiet caution which one uses who, conscious of fat, trusts his person to the influence of a summer sky. Mr Simpson, such was the name of this worthy pedestrian, passed under the denomination of a mathematical tutor, though it was now some time since he had been known to have any pupil. He was now bent from the village of ——— to the country-seat of Sir John Steventon, which lay in its neighbourhood. He had received the unusual honour of an invitation to dinner at the great man's house, and it was evidently necessary that he should present himself, both his visage and his toilet, in a state of as much composure as possible. The dust upon his very shining boot, this a touch from his pocket-handkerchief, before entering the house, could remove, and so far all traces of the road would be obliterated; but should this wicked perspiration once fairly break its bounds, he well knew that nothing but the lapse of time, and the fall of night, would recover him from this palpable disorder. Therefore it was that he walked with wonderful placidity, making no one movement of body or mind that was not absolutely necessary to the task of progression, and holding himself up, so to speak, within his habiliments as if he and they, though unavoidably companions on the same journey, were by no means intimate or willing associates. There was a narrow strip of shade from the hedge that ran beside the road, and although the shadow still left the nobler half of his person exposed to the rays of the sun, he kept carefully within such shelter as it afforded. If he encountered any one, he stood still and examined the foliage of the hedge. To dispute the path in any other manner, with the merest urchin he might meet, was out of the question. It would have caused excitement. Moreover he was a meek man, and in all doubtful points yielded to the claim of others. Grocery-boys and barrow-women always had the wall of him. Our traveller proceeded so tranquilly, that a sparrow boldly hopped down upon the ground before him; he was so resolved to enter into conflict with no living creature, that he paused till it had hopped off again.
Mr Simpson's toilet, though it had been that day a subject of great anxiety with him, presented, we fear, to the eyes of the world nothing remarkable. A careless observer, if questioned on the apparition he had met with, would have replied very briefly, that it was the figure of an old pedant dressed in a suit of rusty black. Suit of rusty black! And so he would dismiss the aggregate of all that was choice, reserved, and precious in the wardrobe of Mr Simpson. Rusty black, indeed! Why, that dress coat, which had been set apart for years for high and solemn occasions, had contracted a fresh dignity and importance from every solemnity with which it had been associated. And those respectable nether-garments, had they not always been dismissed from service the moment he re-entered his own dusty apartment? Had they not been religiously preserved from all abrasion of the surface, whether from cane-bottomed chair, or that under portion of the library table which, to students who cross their legs, is found to be so peculiarly pernicious to the nap of cloth? What could have made them worse for wear? Would a thoughtless world confound the influence of the all-embracing atmosphere, with the wear and tear proper to cloth habiliments? And then his linen—would a careless public refuse to take notice that not a single button was missing from the shirt, which, in general, had but one solitary button remaining—just one at the neck, probably fastened by his own hand? Above all, was it not noticeable that he was not to-day under the necessity of hiding one hand behind him under the lappets of his coat, and slipping the other down his half-open umbrella, to conceal the dilapidated gloves, but could display both hands with perfect candour to public scrutiny? Were all these singular merits to pass unacknowledged, to be seen by no one, or seen only by himself?
It was an excellent wish of Burns'—
"Oh, would some power the giftie gie us,
To see ourselves as others see us!"