‘And bid alternate passions fall and rise.’
Pope, Essay on Criticism, 375.
[328]. After ‘is to us a mystery,’ add, from The Examiner: ‘Further, we are ready (for the benefit of the Fine Arts in this kingdom) to produce two casts from actual nature, which if they do not furnish practical proof of all that we have here advanced, we are willing to forfeit all that we are worth—a theory’ [see p. [331], present volume]. The article then ends with the ten principles and the following note: ‘We shall conclude with expressing a hope, that the Elgin Marbles may not be made another national stop-gap between nature and art.
‘In answer to some objections to what was said in a former article on the comparative propriety of removing these statues, we beg leave to put one question. It appears from the Report of the Committee, that the French Government were, in the year 1811, anxious to purchase the collection of Lord Elgin, who was then a prisoner in France. We ask then, supposing this to have been done, what would have become of it? Would not the Theseus and the Neptune have been solemnly sent back, like malefactors, “to the place from whence they came?”—Yes, to be sure.—The Rev. Dr. Philip Hunt, in the service of Lord Elgin, declares, in his evidence before the Committee, that no objection was made nor regret expressed by the inhabitants at the removal of the Marbles. In the notes to Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,[[69]] we find the following extract of a letter from Dr. Clarke to Lord Byron:—“When the last of the Metopes was taken from the Parthenon, and in moving it, great part of the superstructure, with one of triglyphs, was thrown down by the workmen whom Lord Elgin employed, the Disdar, who beheld the mischief done to the building, took his pipe from His mouth, dropped a tear, and in a supplicating tone of voice, said to Lusieri, ‘Telos! I was present.’”—It appears that Dr. Philip Hunt was not.’
330. Image and superscription. S. Matthew xxii. 20.
[332]. So from the ground [root]. Paradise Lost, v. 481.
Laborious foolery. See ante, note to p. [121].
[333]. Fair varieties. ‘And all the fair variety of things.’ Akenside, Pleasures of Imagination, I.
Mr. Westall. Richard Westall (1765–1836), chiefly remembered by his book-illustrations.
Angelica Kauffman. Maria Anna Angelica Kauffmann (1741–1807), a Swiss painter, chiefly of female characters.