In my low cell how cheat the sullen hours?
Vain the complaint! For Fancy can impart
(To Fate superior, and to Fortune’s doom)
Whate’er adorns the stately-storied hall:
She, mid the dungeon’s solitary gloom,
Can dress the Graces in their Attic pall:
Bid the green landscape’s vernal beauty bloom;
And in bright trophies clothe the twilight wall.’
Having repeated these lines to ourselves, we sit quietly down in our chairs to con over our task, abstract the idea of exclusive property, and think only of those images of beauty and of grandeur, which we can carry away with us in our minds, and have every where before us. Let us take some of these, and describe them how we can.
There is one—we see it now—the Man with a Hawk, by Rembrandt. ‘In our mind’s eye, Horatio!’ What is the difference between this idea which we have brought away with us, and the picture on the wall? Has it lost any of its tone, its ease, its depth? The head turns round in the same graceful moving attitude, the eye carelessly meets ours, the tufted beard grows to the chin, the hawk flutters and balances himself on his favourite perch, his master’s hand; and a shadow seems passing over the picture, just leaving a light in one corner of it behind, to give a livelier effect to the whole. There is no mark of the pencil, no jagged points or solid masses; it is all air, and twilight might be supposed to have drawn his veil across it. It is as much an idea on the canvas, as it is in the mind. There are no means employed, as far as you can discover—you see nothing but a simple, grand, and natural effect. It is impalpable as a thought, intangible as a sound—nay, the shadows have a breathing harmony, and fling round an undulating echo of themselves,