Receives no more than can the fluid air.’
As an illustration of the same thing, there are two Claudes at Burleigh, which certainly do not come up to the celebrity of the artist’s name. They did not please me formerly: the sky, the water, the trees seemed all too blue, too much of the colour of indigo. But I believed, and wondered. I could no longer admire these specimens of the artist at present, but assuredly my admiration of the artist himself was not less than before; for since then, I had seen other works by the same hand,
——‘inimitable on earth
By model or by shading pencil drawn,’—
surpassing every idea that the mind could form of art, except by having seen them. I remember one in particular that Walsh Porter had (a bow-shot beyond all others)—a vernal landscape, an ‘Hesperian fable true,’ with a blue unclouded sky, and green trees and grey turrets and an unruffled sea beyond. But never was there sky so soft or trees so clad with spring, such air-drawn towers or such halcyon seas: Zephyr seemed to fan the air, and Nature looked on and smiled. The name of Claude has alone something in it that softens and harmonises the mind. It touches a magic chord. Oh! matchless scenes, oh! orient skies, bright with purple and gold; ye opening glades and distant sunny vales, glittering with fleecy flocks, pour all your enchantment into my soul, let it reflect your chastened image, and forget all meaner things! Perhaps the most affecting tribute to the memory of this great artist is the character drawn of him by an eminent master, in his Dream of a Painter.
‘On a sudden I was surrounded by a thick cloud or mist, and my guide wafted me through the air, till we alighted on a most delicious rural spot. I perceived it was the early hour of the morn, when the sun had not risen above the horizon. We were alone, except that at a little distance a young shepherd played on his flageolet as he walked before his herd, conducting them from the fold to the pasture. The elevated pastoral air he played charmed me by its simplicity, and seemed to animate his obedient flock. The atmosphere was clear and perfectly calm: and now the rising sun gradually illumined the fine landscape, and began to discover to our view the distant country of immense extent. I stood awhile in expectation of what might next present itself of dazzling splendour, when the only object which appeared to fill this natural, grand, and simple scene, was a rustic who entered, not far from the place where we stood, who by his habiliments seemed nothing better than a peasant; he led a poor little ass, which was loaded with all the implements required by a painter in his work. After advancing a few paces he stood still, and with an air of rapture seemed to contemplate the rising sun: he next fell on his knees, directed his eyes towards heaven, crossed himself, and then went on with eager looks, as if to make choice of the most advantageous spot from which to make his studies as a painter. “This,” said my conductor, “is that Claude Gelée of Lorraine, who, nobly disdaining the low employment to which he was originally bred, left it with all its advantages of competence and ease to embrace his present state of poverty, in order to adorn the world with works of most accomplished excellence.”’
There is a little Paul Brill at Burleigh, in the same room with the Rembrandts, that dazzled me many years ago, and delighted me the other day. It looked as sparkling as if the sky came through the frame. I found, or fancied I found, those pictures the best that I remembered before, though they might in the interval have faded a little to my eyes, or lost some of their original brightness. I did not see the small head of Queen Mary by Holbein, which formerly struck me so forcibly; but I have little doubt respecting it, for Holbein was a sure hand; he only wanted effect, and this picture looked through you. One of my old favourites was the Head of an Angel, by Guido, nearly a profile, looking up, and with wings behind the back. It was hung lower than it used to be, and had, I thought, a look less aërial, less heavenly; but there was still a pulpy softness in it, a tender grace, an expression unutterable—which only the pencil, his pencil, could convey! And are we not then beholden to the art for these glimpses of Paradise? Surely, there is a sweetness in Guido’s heads, as there is also a music in his name. If Raphael did more, it was not with the same ease. His heads have more meaning; but Guido’s have a look of youthful innocence, which his are without. As to the boasted picture of Christ by Carlo Dolce, if a well-painted table-cloth and silver-cup are worth three thousand guineas, the picture is so, but not else. Yet one touch of Paul Veronese is worth all this enamelling twice over. The head has a wretched mawkish expression, utterly unbecoming the character it professes to represent. But I will say no more about it. The Bath of Seneca is one of Luca Jordano’s best performances, and has considerable interest and effect. Among other historical designs, there is one of Jacob’s Dream, with the angels ascending and descending on a kind of stairs. The conception is very answerable to the subject; but the execution is not in any high degree spirited or graceful. The mind goes away no gainer from the picture. Rembrandt alone perhaps could add any thing to this subject. Of him it might be said, that ‘his light shone in darkness!’—The wreaths of flowers and foliage carved in wood on the wainscots and ceiling of many of the rooms, by the celebrated Grinling Gibbons in Charles the Second’s time, shew a wonderful lightness and facility of hand, and give pleasure to the eye. The other ornaments and curiosities I need not mention, as they are carefully pointed out by the housekeeper to the admiring visitor. There are two heads, however, (one of them happens to have a screen placed before it) which I would by no means wish any one to pass over, who is an artist, or feels the slightest interest in the art. They are, I should suppose unquestionably, the original studies by Raphael of the heads of the Virgin and Joseph in his famous picture of the Madonna of the Crown. The Virgin is particularly beautiful, and in the finest preservation, as indeed are all his genuine pictures. The canvas is not quite covered in some places; the colours are as fresh as if newly laid on, and the execution is as firm and vigorous as if his hand had just left it. It shews us how this artist wrought. The head is, no doubt, a highly-finished study from nature, done for a particular purpose, and worked up according to the painter’s conception, but still retaining all the force and truth of individuality. He got all he could from Nature, and gave all he could to her in return. If Raphael had merely sketched this divine face on the canvas from the idea in his own mind, why not stamp it on the larger composition at once? He could work it up and refine upon it there just as well, and it would almost necessarily undergo some alteration in being transferred thither afterwards. But if it was done as a careful copy from Nature in the first instance, the present was the only way in which he could proceed, or indeed by which he could arrive at such consummate excellence. The head of the Joseph (leaning on the hand and looking down) is fine, but neither so fine as the companion to it, nor is it by any means so elaborately worked up in the sketch before us.
I am no teller of stories; but there is one belonging to Burleigh-House, of which I happen to know some of the particulars. The late Earl of Exeter had been divorced from his first wife, a woman of fashion, and of somewhat more gaiety of manners than ‘lords who love their ladies like.’ He determined to seek out a second wife in an humbler sphere of life, and that it should be one who, having no knowledge of his rank, should love him for himself alone. For this purpose, he went and settled incognito (under the name of Mr. Jones) at Hodnet, an obscure village in Shropshire. He made overtures to one or two damsels in the neighbourhood, but they were too knowing to be taken in by him. His manners were not boorish, his mode of life was retired, it was odd how he got his livelihood, and at last, he began to be taken for a highwayman. In this dilemma he turned to Miss Hoggins, the eldest daughter of a small farmer, at whose house he lodged. Miss Hoggins, it might seem, had not been used to romp with the clowns: there was something in the manners of their quiet, but eccentric guest that she liked. As he found that he had inspired her with that kind of regard which he wished for, he made honourable proposals to her, and at the end of some months, they were married, without his letting her know who he was. They set off in a post-chaise from her father’s house, and travelled homewards across the country. In this manner they arrived at Stamford, and passed through the town without stopping, till they came to the entrance of Burleigh-Park, which is on the outside of it. The gates flew open, the chaise entered, and drove down the long avenue of trees that leads up to the front of this fine old mansion. As they drew nearer to it, and she seemed a little surprised where they were going, he said, ‘Well, my dear, this is Burleigh-House; it is the home I have promised to bring you to, and you are the Countess of Exeter!’ It is said, the shock of this discovery was too much for this young creature, and that she never recovered it. It was a sensation worth dying for. The world we live in was worth making, had it been only for this. Ye Thousand and One Tales of the Arabian Night’s Entertainment! hide your diminished heads! I never wish to have been a lord, but when I think of this story.
PICTURES AT OXFORD AND BLENHEIM
Rome has been called the ‘Sacred City:’—might not our Oxford be called so too? There is an air about it, resonant of joy and hope: it speaks with a thousand tongues to the heart: it waves its mighty shadow over the imagination: it stands in lowly sublimity, on the ‘hill of ages;’ and points with prophetic fingers to the sky: it greets the eager gaze from afar, ‘with glistering spires and pinnacles adorned,’ that shine with an internal light as with the lustre of setting suns; and a dream and a glory hover round its head, as the spirits of former times, a throng of intellectual shapes, are seen retreating or advancing to the eye of memory: its streets are paved with the names of learning that can never wear out: its green quadrangles breathe the silence of thought, conscious of the weight of yearnings innumerable after the past, of loftiest aspirations for the future: Isis babbles of the Muse, its waters are from the springs of Helicon, its Christ-Church meadows, classic, Elysian fields!—We could pass our lives in Oxford without having or wanting any other idea—that of the place is enough. We imbibe the air of thought; we stand in the presence of learning. We are admitted into the Temple of Fame, we feel that we are in the sanctuary, on holy ground, and ‘hold high converse with the mighty dead.’ The enlightened and the ignorant are on a level, if they have but faith in the tutelary genius of the place. We may be wise by proxy, and studious by prescription. Time has taken upon himself the labour of thinking; and accumulated libraries leave us leisure to be dull. There is no occasion to examine the buildings, the churches, the colleges, by the rules of architecture, to reckon up the streets, to compare it with Cambridge (Cambridge lies out of the way, on one side of the world)—but woe to him who does not feel in passing through Oxford that he is in ‘no mean city,’ that he is surrounded with the monuments and lordly mansions of the mind of man, outvying in pomp and splendour the courts and palaces of princes, rising like an exhalation in the night of ignorance, and triumphing over barbaric foes, saying, ‘All eyes shall see me, and all knees shall bow to me!’—as the shrine where successive ages came to pay their pious vows, and slake the sacred thirst of knowledge, where youthful hopes (an endless flight) soared to truth and good, and where the retired and lonely student brooded over the historic or over fancy’s page, imposing high tasks for himself, framing high destinies for the race of man—the lamp, the mine, the well-head from whence the spark of learning was kindled, its stream flowed, its treasures were spread out through the remotest corners of the land and to distant nations. Let him then who is fond of indulging in a dream-like existence go to Oxford and stay there; let him study this magnificent spectacle, the same under all aspects, with its mental twilight tempering the glare of noon, or mellowing the silver moonlight; let him wander in her sylvan suburbs, or linger in her cloistered halls; but let him not catch the din of scholars or teachers, or dine or sup with them, or speak a word to any of the privileged inhabitants; for if he does, the spell will be broken, the poetry and the religion gone, and the palace of enchantment will melt from his embrace into thin air!