There was their Dacian mother—he, their sire,
Butcher’d to make a Roman holyday—
All this rush’d with his blood—shall he expire
And unaveng’d?—Arise! ye Goths and glut your ire!’
[33]. Why do the French confound the words exhibition and exposure? One of which expresses what is creditable, and the other what is disgraceful. Is it that the sense of vanity absorbs every other consideration, turning the sense of shame, in case of exposure, into a source of triumph, and the conscious tingling feeling of ostentation in a display of talent into a flagrant impropriety? I do not lay much stress on this word-catching, which is a favourite mode of German criticism. We say, for instance, indiscriminately, that ‘a thing redounds to our credit or our disgrace.’
[34]. It were to be wished that the French sculptors would come over and look at the Elgin Marbles, as they are arranged with great care and some pomp in the British Museum. They may smile to see that we are willing to remove works of art from their original places of abode, though we will not allow others to do so. These noble fragments of antiquity might startle our fastidious neighbours a little at first from their rude state and their simplicity, but I think they would gain upon them by degrees, and convince their understandings, if they did not subdue their affections. They are indeed an equally instructive lesson and unanswerable rebuke to them and to us—to them for thinking that finishing every part alike is perfection, and to us who imagine that to leave every part alike unfinished is grandeur. They are as remote from finicalness as grossness, and combine the parts with the whole in the manner that nature does. Every part is given, but not ostentatiously, and only as it would appear in the circumstances. There is an alternate action and repose. If one muscle is strained, another is proportionably relaxed. If one limb is in action and another at rest, they come under a different law, and the muscles are not brought out nor the skin tightened in the one as in the other. There is a flexibility and sway of the limbs and of the whole body. The flesh has the softness and texture of flesh, not the smoothness or stiffness of stone. There is an undulation and a liquid flow on the surface, as the breath of genius moved the mighty mass: they are the finest forms in the most striking attitudes, and with every thing in its place, proportion, and degree, uniting the ease, truth, force, and delicacy of Nature. They shew nothing but the artist’s thorough comprehension of, and entire docility to that great teacher. There is no petit-maitreship, no pedantry, no attempt at a display of science, or at forcing the parts into an artificial symmetry, but it is like cutting a human body out of a block of marble, and leaving it to act for itself with all the same springs, levers, and internal machinery. It was said of Shakspeare’s dramas, that they were the logic of passion; and it may be affirmed of the Elgin Marbles, that they are the logic of form.—One part being given, another cannot be otherwise than it is. There is a mutual understanding and re-action throughout the whole frame. The Apollo and other antiques are not equally simple and severe. The limbs have too much an appearance of being cased in marble, of making a display of every recondite beauty, and of balancing and answering to one another, like the rhymes in verse. The Elgin Marbles are harmonious, flowing, varied prose. In a word, they are like casts after the finest nature. Any cast from nature, however inferior, is in the same style. Let the French and English sculptors make casts continually. The one will see in them the parts everywhere given—the other will see them everywhere given in subordination to, and as forming materials for a whole.
[35]. For some account of Madame Pasta’s acting in Nina, I take the liberty to refer to a volume of Table-Talk, just published.
[36]. At Milan, a short time ago, a gentleman had a Homer, in Greek and Latin, among his books. He was surlily asked to explain what it meant. Upon doing so, the Inspector shook his head doubtingly, and said, ‘it might pass this time,’ but advised him to beware of a second. ‘Here, now, is a work,’ he continued, pointing to ——’s Lives of the Popes, containing all the abominations (public and private) of their history, ‘You should bring such books as this with you!’ This is one specimen of that learned conspiracy for the suppression of light and letters, of which we are sleeping partners and honorary associates. The Allies complain at present of Mr. Canning’s ‘faithlessness.’ Oh! that he would indeed play them false and earn his title of ‘slippery George!’ Faithful to anything he cannot be—faithless to them would be something. The Austrians, it is said, have lately attempted to strike the name of Italy out of the maps, that that country may neither have a name, a body, or a soul left to it, and even to suppress the publication of its finest historians, that it may forget it ever had one. Go on, obliging creatures! Blot the light out of heaven, tarnish the blue sky with the blight and fog of despotism, deface and trample on the green earth; for while one trace of what is fair or lovely is left in the earth under our feet, or the sky over our heads, or in the mind of man that is within us, it will remain to mock your impotence and deformity, and to reflect back lasting hatred and contempt upon you. Why does not our Eton scholar, our classic Statesman, suggest to the Allies an intelligible hint of the propriety of inscribing the name of Italy once more on the map,
‘Like that ensanguined flower inscribed with woe’—
of taking off the prohibition on the Histories of Guicciardini and Davila? Or why do not the English people—the English House of Commons, suggest it to him? Is there such a thing as the English people—as an English House of Commons? Their influence is not felt at present in Europe, as erst it was, to its short-lived hope, bought with flat despair. The reason is, the cause of the people of Europe has no echo in the breasts of the British public. The cause of Kings had an echo in the breast of a British Monarch—that of Foreign Governments in the breasts of British Ministers! There are at present no fewer than fifteen hundred of the Italian nobility of the first families proscribed from their country, or pining in dungeons. For what? For trying to give to their country independence and a Constitutional Government, like England! What says the English House of Lords to that? What if the Russians were to come and apply to us and to them the benefits and the principles of the Holy Alliance—the bayonet and the thumbscrew? Lord Bathurst says, ‘Let them come;’—and they will come when we have a servile people, dead to liberty, and an arbitrary government, hating and ready to betray it!