Pope’s verse is not admired, because it was once the fashion: it will be admired, let the fashion change how it will.
N.—When Sir Joshua Reynolds wanted to learn what real grace was, he studied it in the attitudes of children, not in the school of the dancing-master, or in the empty strut or mawkish languor of fashion. A young painter asked me the other day whether I thought that Guido was not chargeable with affectation? I told him that I thought not, or in a very trifling degree. I could not deny that Guido sometimes bordered on and reminded me of it; or that there was that which in any body else might be really so, but that in him it seemed only an extreme natural gentility. He puts his figures into attitudes that are a little too courtly and studied, but he probably could not help it.
H.—It was rather the excess of a quality or feeling in his mind, than the aiming to supply the defect of one.
N.—Yes; there is no suspicion of what he is doing. The odious part of affectation is when there is an evident design to impose on you with counterfeit pretensions. So in another point that might be objected to him, the impropriety of his naked figures, no mortal can steer clearer of it than he does. They may be strictly said to be clothed with their own delicacy and beauty. There is the ‘Venus attired by the Graces:’ what other painter durst attempt it? They are to be all beauties, all naked; yet he has escaped as if by miracle—none but the most vicious can find fault with it—the very beauty, elegance, and grace keep down instead of exciting improper ideas. And then again, the ‘Andromeda chained to the rock’—both are, I believe, in the drawing-room at Windsor: but there is no possible offence to be taken at them, nothing to shock the most timid or innocent, because there was no particle of grossness in the painter’s mind. I have seen pictures by others muffled up to the chin, that had twenty times as much vice in them. It is wonderful how the cause is seen in the effect. So we find it in Richardson. Clarissa is a story in the midst of temptation; but he comes clear and triumphant out of that ordeal, because his own imagination is not contaminated by it. If there had been the least hint of an immoral tendency, the slightest indication of a wish to inflame the passions, it would have been all over with him. The intention always will peep out—you do not communicate a disease if you are not infected with it yourself. Albano’s nymphs and goddesses seem waiting for admirers: Guido’s are protected with a veil of innocence and modesty. Titian would have given them an air of Venetian courtesans: Raphael would have made them look something more than mortal: neither would have done what Guido has effected, who has conquered the difficulty by the pure force of feminine softness and delicacy.
H.—I am glad to hear you speak so of Guido. I was beginning, before I went abroad, to have a ‘sneaking contempt’ for him as insipid and monotonous, from seeing the same everlasting repetitions of Cleopatras and Madonnas: but I returned a convert to his merits. I saw many indifferent pictures attributed to great masters; but wherever I saw a Guido, I found elegance and beauty that answered to the ‘silver’ sound of his name. The mind lives on a round of names; and it is a great point gained not to have one of these snatched from us by a sight of their works. As to the display of the naked figure in works of art, the case to me seems clear: it is only when there is nothing but the naked figure that it is offensive. In proportion as the beauty or perfection of the imitation rises, the indecency vanishes. You look at it then with an eye to art, just as the anatomist examines the human figure with a view to science. Other ideas are introduced. J. —, of Edinburgh, had a large, sprawling Danae hanging over the chimney-piece of his office, where he received Scotch parsons and their wives on law-business: he thought it a triumph over Presbyterian prudery and prejudice, and a sort of chivalrous answer to the imputed barbarism of the North. It was certainly a paradox in taste, a breach of manners. He asked me if I objected to it because it was naked? ‘No,’ I said, ‘but because it is ugly: you can only have put it there because it is naked, and that alone shows a felonious intent. Had there been either beauty or expression, it would have conducted off the objectionable part. As it is, I don’t see how you can answer it to the kirk-sessions.’
N.—I remember Sir W. W— employed Sir Joshua and Dance, who was a very eminent designer, to ornament a music-room which he had built. Sir Joshua on this occasion painted his St. Cecilia, which he made very fine at first, but afterwards spoiled it; and Dance chose the subject of Orpheus. When I asked Miss Reynolds what she thought of it, she said she had no doubt of its being clever and well done, but that it looked ‘like a naked man.’ This answer was conclusive against it; for if the inspiration of the character had been given, you would have overlooked the want of clothes. The nakedness only strikes and offends the eye in the barrenness of other matter. It is the same in the drama. Mere grossness or ribaldry is intolerable; but you often find in the old comedy that the wit and ingenuity (as well as custom) carry off what otherwise could not be borne. The laughter prevents the blush. So an expression seems gross in one person’s mouth, which in another passes off with perfect innocence. The reason is, there is something in the manner that gives a quite different construction to what is said. Have you seen the Alcides, the two foreigners who perform such prodigious feats of strength at the theatre, but with very little clothing on? They say the people hardly know what to make of it. They should not be too sure that this is any proof of their taste or virtue.
H.—I recollect a remark of Coleridge’s on the conclusion of the story of Paul and Virginia by Bernardin St. Pierre. Just before the shipwreck, and when nothing else can save the heroine from perishing, an athletic figure comes forward stripped, but with perfect respect, and offers to swim with her to the shore; but instead of accepting his proposal, she turns away with affected alarm. This, Coleridge said, was a proof of the prevailing tone of French depravity, and not of virgin innocence. A really modest girl in such circumstances would not have thought of any scruple.
N.—It is the want of imagination or of an insight into nature in ordinary writers; they do not know how to place themselves in the situations they describe. Whatever feeling or passion is uppermost, fills the mind and drives out every other. If you were confined in a vault, and thought you saw a ghost, you would rush out, though a lion was at the entrance. On the other hand, if you were pursued by a lion, you would take refuge in a charnel-house, though it was full of spirits, and would disregard the dead bones and putrid relics about you. Both passions may be equally strong; the question is, which is roused first. But it is few who can get to the fountain-head, the secret springs of Nature. Shakspeare did it always; and Sir Walter Scott frequently. G— says he always was pleased with my conversation, before you broached that opinion; but I do not see how that can be, for he always contradicts and thwarts me. When two people are constantly crossing one another on the road, they cannot be very good company. You agree to what I say, and often explain or add to it, which encourages me to go on.
H.—I believe G— is sincere in what he says, for he has frequently expressed the same opinion to me.
N.—That might be so, though he took great care not to let me know it. People would often more willingly speak well of you behind your back than to your face; they are afraid either of shocking your modesty or gratifying your vanity. That was the case with —. If he ever was struck with any thing I did, he made a point not to let me see it: he treated it lightly, and said it was very well.