To those who have given any attention to the deciphering of illustrated enigmas, many of the early monograms might furnish considerable amusement. That of the rather obscure artist, Colioloro, is a perfect counterpart of the most elaborate and fanciful of the modern enigmas. The curious combination, not alone of words, but of single letters, with the pictorial emblems, is fully as fanciful as any which we remember to have seen, even among those of the Leipsic Illustrirte Zeitung, which seems to bestow more attention on the subject than any of its contemporaries.
It must be remembered, that the artist's full name is Artigli Coscia Colioloro. The device begins with a confused heap of birds' claws, paws of animals, &c.; next appears a thigh, cut short above the knee; this is followed by the letter C. Next in order is seen a flask pouring out a stream of oil; the letter l, with a comma above the line, comes next; and the whole is closed by a goodly heap of gold pieces. To an Italian scholar, it is hardly necessary to offer an explanation. The group of emblems at the left hand represents Artigli (limbs); the rude image which succeeds it stands for Coscia (a thigh); the C, followed by the little flask of oil (olio), forms Colio; and the l, with the comma, or rather the mark of apostrophe, followed by the heap of gold pieces (oro)—making together l'oro, completes the characters of the name—Artigli Coscia Colioloro.
It will not, however, be a matter of surprise, that the key to many of these emblems has, in the course of time, been lost; and that at present a considerable number of this class of monograms are a mystery even to the most learned in the art. Notwithstanding every appliance, the monogrammatists have occasionally been forced to confess themselves in doubt, and sometimes altogether at fault, as to the identification, or even the interpretation, of some of the emblems.
During the latter part of the seventeenth century, and the whole of the eighteenth, the monogram went almost entirely out of fashion. In England, even still, its use is far from being general; and engravings, especially, are now-a-days almost invariably signed with the full name. But foreign artists, and particularly those of the renaissance, have revived the old usage. Frederic Overbeck, the great father of the Christian school of art: Cornelius, to whose magnificent conceptions Munich and Berlin owe their most glorious works, both historical and imaginative—as the fresco illustrations of the Nibelungen Lied, in the Royal Palace; the 'Last Judgment,' in the Ludwig-Kirche; and the 'History of St Boniface,' in the Bonifaz-Kloster—Storr, the great Austrian master, whose conception of 'Faust,' in the Royal Gallery at Vienna, is in itself a great poem; and the whole Düsseldorf school—have conformed to the ancient type. Even the humorists have made it, in some instances, a vehicle of their humour. Few of those who were wont to enjoy Richard Doyle's inimitable sketches in Punch, whose guiding-spirit he used to be, can forget the funny little figure, surmounted by his well-known initials; and the lovers of political caricature must often have smiled over the quizzical-looking gentleman who used to figure at the right-hand corner of HH.'s admirable sketches. But we doubt whether the fashion is destined to be ever fully restored, or whether the monogram is not rather doomed to remain a thing of the past—a subject of speculation for that laborious, though not very practical class,
'Who delve 'mid nooks and sinuosities,
For literary curiosities.'
CLARET AND OLIVES.[1]
'Wine and Walnuts' was a good title for a gossipping book; 'Claret and Olives' is a better. It has a more decided flavour, a more elegant bouquet, a more gem-like colour. The other might refer to any denomination of that multitudinous stuff the English drink under the name of wine; or, if it has individuality at all, it relishes curiously of the coarse and heavy produce of Portugal, so beloved of Dr Johnson, and many other grave doctors, down to the last generation. This breathes all over of the sweet South; it babbles of green fields; it is full of gaiety and frolic, of song and laughter, and the sparkle of wit and crystal. The title, we say, is a good title; and the book has an unmistakable claret flavour—the best English claret, that is to say—which unites the strength of Burgundy with the bouquet of Château Margaux. Mr Reach despises a weak thin wine, and, by an idiosyncratical necessity, he has produced a sparkling, racy book. He traces the falling-off in our literature to a change in wine. 'The Elizabethans quaffed sack, or "Gascoyne, or Rochel wyn,"' quoth he; 'and we had the giants of those days. The Charles II. comedy writers worked on claret. Port came into fashion—port sapped our brains—and, instead of Wycherly's Country Wife, and Vanbrugh's Relapse, we had Mr Morton's Wild Oats, and Mr Cherry's Soldier's Daughter. It is really much to the credit of Scotland, that she stood stanchly by her old ally, France, and would have nothing to do with that dirty little slice of the worst part of Spain—Portugal, or her brandified potations. In the old Scotch houses, a cask of claret stood in the cellar, on the tap. In the humblest Scotch country tavern, the pewter tappit hen, holding some three quarts, "reamed," Anglicé, mantled, with claret just drawn from the cask. At length, in an evil hour, Scotland fell—
"Bold and erect the Caledonian stood,
Firm was his mutton, and his claret good;
'Let him drink port!' the English statesman cried;
He drank the poison, and his spirit died!"