Posterity will doubt whether it was the fault of Flaxman or of his age, which in England offered neither training nor much encouragement to a sculptor, that he is weakest when he is most ambitious, and most inspired when he makes the least effort; but so it is. Not merely does he fail when he seeks to illustrate the intensity of Dante, or to rival the tumultuousness of Michelangelo—to be intense or tumultuous he was never made; but he fails, it may almost be said, in proportion as his work is elaborate and far carried, and succeeds in proportion as it is partial and suggestive. Of his completed ideal sculptures, the “St Michael” at Petworth is the best, and is indeed admirably composed from all points of view; but it lacks fire and force, and it lacks the finer touches of the chisel; a little bas-relief like the diploma piece of the “Apollo” and “Marpessa” in the Royal Academy compares with it favourably. This is one of the very few things which he is recorded to have executed in the marble entirely with his own hand; ordinarily he entrusted the finishing work of the chisel to the Italian workmen in his employ, and was content with the smooth mechanical finish which they imitated from the Roman imitations (themselves often reworked at the Renaissance) of Greek originals. Of Flaxman’s complicated monuments in the round, such as the three in Westminster Abbey and the four in St Paul’s, there is scarcely one which has not something heavy and infelicitous in the arrangement, and something empty and unsatisfactory in the surface execution. But when we come to his simple monuments in relief, in these we find almost always a far finer quality. The truth is that he did not thoroughly understand composition on the great scale and in the round, but he thoroughly understood relief, and found scope in it for his remarkable gifts of harmonious design, and tender, grave and penetrating feeling. But if we would see even the happiest of his conceptions at their best, we must study them, not in the finished marble but rather in the casts from his studio sketches (marred though they have been by successive coats of paint intended for their protection) of which a comprehensive collection is preserved in the Flaxman gallery at University College And the same is true of his happiest efforts in the classical and poetical vein, like the well-known relief of “Pandora conveyed to Earth by Mercury.” Nay, going farther back still among the rudiments and first conceptions of his art, we can realize the most essential charm of his genius in the study, not of his modelled work at all, but of his sketches in pen and wash on paper. Of these the principal public collections are at University College, in the British Museum, and the Victoria & Albert Museum; many others are dispersed in public and private cabinets. Every one knows the excellence of the engraved designs to Homer, Dante, Aeschylus and Hesiod, in all cases save when the designer aims at that which he cannot hit, the terrible or the grotesque. To know Flaxman at his best it is necessary to be acquainted not only with the original studies for such designs as these (which, with the exception of the Hesiod series, are far finer than the engravings), but still more with those almost innumerable studies from real life which he was continually producing with pen, tint or pencil. These are the most delightful and suggestive sculptor’s notes in existence; in them it was his habit to set down the leading and expressive lines, and generally no more, of every group that struck his fancy. There are groups of Italy and London, groups of the parlour and the nursery, of the street, the garden and the gutter; and of each group the artist knows how to seize at once the structural and the spiritual secret, expressing happily the value and suggestiveness, for his art of sculpture, of the contacts, intervals, interlacements and balancings of the various figures in any given group, and not less happily the charm of the affections which link the figures together and inspire their gestures.
The materials for the life of Flaxman are scattered in various biographical and other publications; the principal are the following:—An anonymous sketch in the European Magazine for 1823; an anonymous “Brief Memoir,” prefixed to Flaxman’s Lectures (ed. 1829, and reprinted in subsequent editions); the chapter in Allan Cunningham’s Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, &c., vol. iii.; notices in the Life of Nollekens, by John Thomas Smith; in the Life of Josiah Wedgwood, by Miss G. Meteyard (London, 1865); in the Diaries and Reminiscences of H. Crabbe Robinson (London, 1869), the latter an authority of great importance; in the Lives of Stothard, by Mrs Bray, of Constable, by Leslie, of Watson, by Dr Lonsdale, and of Blake, by Messrs Gilchrist and Rossetti; a series of illustrated essays, principally on the monumental sculpture of Flaxman, in the Art Journal for 1867 and 1868, by Mr G.F. Teniswood; Essays in English Art, by Frederick Wedmore; The Drawings of Flaxman, in 32 plates, with Descriptions, and an Introductory Essay on the Life and Genius of Flaxman, by Sidney Colvin (London, 1876); and the article “Flaxman” in the Dictionary of National Biography.
(S. C.)
FLEA (0. Eng. fléah, or fléa, cognate with flee, to run away from, to take flight), a name typically applied to Pulex irritans, a well-known blood-sucking insect-parasite of man and other mammals, remarkable for its powers of leaping, and nearly cosmopolitan. In ordinary language the name is used for any species of Siphonaptera (otherwise known as Aphaniptera), which, though formerly regarded as a suborder of Diptera (q.v.), are now considered to be a separate order of insects. All Siphonaptera, of which more than 100 species are known, are parasitic on mammals or birds. The majority of the species belong to the family Pulicidae, of which P. irritans may be taken as the type; but the order also includes the Sarcopsyllidae, the females of which fix themselves firmly to their host, and the Ceratopsyllidae, or bat-fleas.
Fleas are wingless insects, with a laterally compressed body, small and indistinctly separated head, and short thick antennae situated in cavities somewhat behind and above the simple eyes, which are always minute and sometimes absent. The structure of the mouth-parts is different from that seen in any other insects. The actual piercing organs are the mandibles, while the upper lip or labrum forms a sucking tube. The maxillae are not piercing organs, and their function is to protect the mandibles and labrum and separate the hairs or feathers of the host. Maxillary and labial palpi are also present, and the latter, together with the labrum or lower lip, form the rostrum.
Fleas are oviparous, and undergo a very complete metamorphosis. The footless larvae are elongate, worm-like and very active; they feed upon almost any kind of waste animal matter, and when full-grown form a silken cocoon. The human flea is considerably exceeded in size by certain other species found upon much smaller hosts; thus the European Hystrichopsylla talpae, a parasite of the mole, shrew and other small mammals, attains a length of 5½ millimetres; another large species infests the Indian porcupine. Of the Sarcopsyllidae the best known species is the “jigger” or “chigoe” (Dermatophilus penetrans), indigenous in tropical South America and introduced into West Africa during the second half of last century. Since then this pest has spread across the African continent and even reached Madagascar. The impregnated female jigger burrows into the feet of men and dogs, and becomes distended with eggs until its abdomen attains the size and appearance of a small pea. If in extracting the insect the abdomen be ruptured, serious trouble may ensue from the resulting inflammation. At least four species of fleas (including Pulex irritans) which infest the common rat are known to bite man, and are believed to be the active agents in the transmission of plague from rats to human beings.
(E. E. A.)
FLÈCHE (French for “arrow”), the term generally used in French architecture for a spire, but more especially employed to designate the timber spire covered with lead, which was erected over the intersection of the roofs over nave and transepts; sometimes these were small and unimportant, but in cathedrals they were occasionally of large dimensions, as in the flèche of Notre-Dame, Paris, where it is nearly 100 ft. high; this, however, is exceeded by the example of Amiens cathedral, which measures 148 ft. from its base on the cresting to its finial.