‘There was old Proteus coming from the sea,
And aged Triton blew his wreathed horn.’
But Legitimacy did not ‘sit squat, like a toad,’ in one corner of it, poisoning the very air, and keeping the free-born spirit aloof from it!
There were one or two pictures (old favourites) that I wished to see again, and that I was told still remained. I longed to know whether they were there, and whether they would look the same. It was fortunate I arrived when I did; for a week later the doors would have been shut against me, on occasion of the death of the King. His bust is over the door, which I had nearly mistaken for a head of Memnon—or some Egyptian God. After passing through the modern French Exhibition (where I saw a picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and a vile farrago of Bourbon-Restoration pictures,) I came within sight of the Grand Gallery of the Louvre, which is at present only railed off. One or two English stragglers alone were in it. The coolness and stillness were contrasted with the bustle, the heat, and the smell of the common apartments. My thoughts rushed in and filled the empty space. Instead of the old Republican door-keepers, with their rough voices and affectation of equality, a servant in a court-livery stood at the gate. On presenting myself, I inquired if a Monsieur Livernois (who had formerly ushered me into this region of enchantment) were still there; but he was gone or dead. My hesitation and foreign accent, with certain other appeals, procured me admittance. I passed on without further question. I cast a glance forward, and found that the Poussins were there. At the sight of the first, which I distinctly recollected (a fine green landscape, with stately ruins,) the tears came into my eyes, and I passed an hour or two in that state of luxurious enjoyment, which is the highest privilege of the mind of man, and which perhaps makes him amends for many sorrows. To my surprise, instead of finding the whole changed, I found every thing nearly in its place, as I proceeded through the first compartments, which I did slowly, and reserving the Italian pictures for a bon bouche. The colours even seemed to have been mellowed, and to have grown to the walls in the last twenty years, as if the pictures had been fixed there by the cramping-irons of Victory, instead of hanging loose and fluttering, like so much tattered canvass, at the sound of English drums, and breath of Prussian manifestoes. Nothing could be better managed than the way in which they had blended the Claudes and Poussins alternately together—the ethereal refinement and dazzling brilliancy of the one relieving and giving additional zest to the sombre, grave, massive character of the other. Claude Lorraine pours the spirit of air over all objects, and new-creates them of light and sunshine. In several of his master-pieces which are shewn here, the vessels, the trees, the temples and middle distances glimmer between air and solid substance, and seem moulded of a new element in nature. No words can do justice to their softness, their precision, their sparkling effect. But they do not lead the mind out of their own magic circle. They repose on their own beauty; they fascinate with faultless elegance. Poussin’s landscapes are more properly pictures of time than of place. They have a fine moral perspective, not inferior to Claude’s aërial one. They carry the imagination back two or four thousand years at least, and bury it in the remote twilight of history. There is an opaqueness and solemnity in his colouring, assimilating with the tone of long-past events: his buildings are stiff with age; his implements of husbandry are such as would belong to the first rude stages of civilization; his harvests are such (as in the Ruth and Boaz) as would yield to no modern sickle; his grapes (as in the Return from the Promised Land) are a load to modern shoulders; there is a simplicity and undistinguishing breadth in his figures; and over all, the hand of time has drawn its veil. Poussin has his faults; but, like all truly great men, there is that in him which is to be found nowhere else; and even the excellences of others would be defects in him. One picture of his in particular drew my attention, which I had not seen before. It is an addition to the Louvre, and makes up for many a flaw in it. It is the Adam and Eve in Paradise, and it is all that Mr. Martin’s picture of that subject is not. It is a scene of sweetness and seclusion ‘to cure all sadness but despair.’ There is the freshness of the first dawn of creation, immortal verdure, the luxuriant budding growth of unpruned Nature’s gifts, the stillness and the privacy, as if there were only those two beings in the world, made for each other, and with this world of beauty for the scene of their delights. It is a Heaven descended upon earth, as if the finger of God had planted the garden with trees and fruits and flowers, and his hand had watered it! One fault only can be found by the critical eye. Perhaps the scene is too flat. If the ‘verdurous wall of Paradise’ had upreared itself behind our first parents, it would have closed them in more completely, and would have given effect to the blue hills that gleam enchantment in the distance. Opposite, ‘in darkness visible,’ hangs the famous landscape of the Deluge by the same master-hand, a leaden weight on the walls with the ark ‘hulling’ on the distant flood, the sun labouring, wan and faint, up the sky, and the heavens, ‘blind with rain,’ pouring down their total cisterns on the weltering earth. Men and women and different animals are struggling with the wide-spread desolation; and trees, climbing the sides of rocks, seem patiently awaiting it above. One would think Lord Byron had transcribed his admirable account of the Deluge in his Heaven and Earth from this noble picture, which is in truth the very poetry of painting.—One here finds also the more unequivocal productions of the French school (for Claude and Poussin[[15]] were in a great measure Italian,) Le Brun, Sebastian Bourdon, some of Le Sueur’s expressive faces, and the bland expansive style of Philip Champagne—no mean name in the history of art. See, in particular, the exquisite picture of the Sick Nun, (the Nun was his own daughter, and he painted this picture as a present to the Convent, in gratitude for her recovery,)—and another of a Religious Communion, with attendants in rich dresses.
One finds no considerable gap, till one comes to the Antwerp pictures; and this yawning chasm is not ill supplied by the Luxembourg pictures, those splendid solecisms of Rubens’s art. Never was exhibited a greater union of French flutter and Gothic grace, of borrowed absurdity and inherent power. He has made a strange jumble of the Heathen mythology, his own wives, and the mistresses of Louis XIII. His youthful Gods are painted all light and air, and figure in quaintly enough, with some flaunting Dowager dressed in the height of the fashion in the middle of the 17th century, or with some strapping quean (his queens are queans) with her robes of rich stuffs slipping off her shoulders, and displaying limbs that, both for form and hue, provoke any feeling but indifference. His groups spring from the bold licentious hand of genius; and decorated in the preposterous finery of courtly affectation, puzzle the sense. I do not think with David (the celebrated French painter) that they ought to be burnt, but he has himself got possession of their old places in the Luxembourg, and perhaps he is tolerably satisfied with this arrangement. A landscape with a rainbow by Rubens (a rich and dazzling piece of colouring) that used to occupy a recess half-way down the Louvre, was removed to the opposite side. The singular picture (the Defeat of Goliath, by Daniel Volterra,) painted on both sides on slate, still retained its station in the middle of the room. It had hung there for twenty years unmolested. The Rembrandts keep their old places, and are as fine as ever, with their rich enamel, their thick lumps of colour, their startling gloom, and bold execution—their ear-rings, their gold-chains, and fur-collars, on which one is disposed to lay furtive hands, so much have they the look of wealth and substantial use! The Vandykes are more light and airy than ever. There is a whole heap of them; and among the rest that charming portrait of an English lady with a little child (as fine and true a compliment as was ever paid to the English female character,) sustained by sweetness and dignity, but with a mother’s anxious thoughts passing slightly across her serene brow. The Cardinal Bentivoglio (which I remember procuring especial permission to copy, and left untouched, because, after Titian’s portraits, there was a want of interest in Vandyke’s which I could not get over,) is not there.[[16]] But in the Dutch division, I found Weenix’s game, the battle-pieces of Wouvermans, and Ruysdael’s sparkling woods and waterfalls without number. On these (I recollect as if it were yesterday) I used, after a hard day’s work, and having tasked my faculties to the utmost, to cast a mingled glance of surprise and pleasure, as the light gleamed upon them through the high casement, and to take leave of them with a non equidem invideo, miror magis.
In the third or Italian division of the Gallery, there is a profusion of Albanos, with Cupids and naked Nymphs, which are quite in the old French taste. They are certainly very pleasing compositions, but from the change produced by time, the figures shew like beauty-spots on a dark ground. How inferior is he to Guido, the painter of grace and sentiment, two of whose master-pieces enchanted me anew, the Annunciation and the Presentation in the Temple. In each of these there is a tenderness, a delicacy of expression like the purest affection, and every attitude and turn of a limb is conscious elegance and voluptuous refinement. The pictures, the mind of the painter, are instinct and imbued with beauty. It is worth while to have lived to have produced works like these, or even to have seen and felt their power! Painting of old was a language which its disciples used not merely to denote certain objects, but to unfold their hidden meaning, and to convey the finest movements of the soul into the limbs or features of the face. They looked at nature with a feeling of passion, with an eye to expression; and this it was that, while they sought for outward forms to communicate their feelings, moulded them into truth and beauty, and that surrounds them with an atmosphere of thought and sentiment. To admire a fine old picture is itself an act of devotion, and as we gaze, we turn idolaters. The moderns are chiefly intent on giving certain lines and colours, the mask or material face of painting, and leave out the immortal part of it. Thus a modern Exhibition Room (whether French or English) has a great deal of shew and glitter, and a smell of paint in it. In the Louvre we are thrown back into the presence of our own best thoughts and feelings, the highest acts and emanations of the mind of man breathe from the walls, shadowy tears and sighs there keep vigils, and the air within it is divine!
The ideal is no less observable in the portraits than in the histories here. Look at the portrait of a man in black, by Titian (No. 1210). There is a tongue in that eye, a brain beneath that forehead. It is still; but the hand seems to have been just placed on its side; it does not turn its head, but it looks towards you to ask, whether you recognise it or not? It was there to meet me, after an interval of years, as if I had parted with it the instant before. Its keen, steadfast glance staggered me like a blow. It was the same—how was I altered! I pressed towards it, as it were, to throw off a load of doubt from the mind, or as having burst through the obstacles of time and distance that had held me in torturing suspense. I do not know whether this is not the most striking picture in the room—the least common-place. There may be other pictures more delightful to look at; but this seems, like the eye of the Collection, to be looking at you and them. One might be tempted to go up and speak to it! The allegorical portrait of the Marchioness of Guasto is still here, transparent with tenderness and beauty—Titian’s Mistress, that shines like a crystal mirror—the Entombing of Christ, solemn, harmonious as the coming on of evening—the Disciples at Emmaus—and the Crowning with Thorns, the blood here and there seeming ready to start through the flesh-colour, which even English artists have not known enough how to admire. The Young Man’s Head, with a glove that used so much to delight, I confess, disappointed me, and I am convinced must have been painted upon. There are other Titians, and a number of Raphaels—the Head of a Student muffled in thought—his own delightful Head (leaning on its hand) redolent of youthful genius, and several small Holy Families, full of the highest spirit and unction. There are also the three Marys with the Dead Body of Christ, by L. Caracci; the Salutation by Sebastian del Piombo; the noble Hunting-piece, by Annibal Caracci; the fine Landscapes of Domenichino (that in particular of the story of Hercules and Achelous, with the trunk of a tree left in the bed of a mountain-torrent); and a host besides, ‘thick as the autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa,’ and of the same colour! There are so many of these select and favourite pictures left, that one does not all at once feel the loss of others which are more common in prints and in the mouth of fame; and the absence of which may be considered as almost an advantage for a first recognition and revival of old associations. But afterwards we find a want of larger pictures to answer to the magnitude of the Collection, and to sustain the balance of taste between the Italian and the other schools. We have here as fine Claudes and Poussins as any in the world, but not as fine Raphaels, Correggios, Domenichinos, as there are elsewhere,—as were once here. There are wanting, to make the gallery complete, six or eight capital pictures, the Transfiguration, the St. Peter Martyr, &c.; and among others (not already mentioned,) the Altarpiece of St. Mark, by Tintoret, and Paul Veronese’s Marriage at Cana. With these it had been perfect, ‘founded as the rock, as broad and general as the casing air;’ without these it is ‘coop’d and cabin’d in by saucy doubts and fears.’ The largest Collection in the world ought to be colossal, not only in itself, but in its component parts. The Louvre is a quarter of a mile in length, and equal (as it is) to Mr. Angerstein’s, the Marquess of Stafford’s, the Dulwich Gallery, and Blenheim put together. It was once more than equal to them in every circumstance to inspire genius or console reflection. We still see the palace of the Thuilleries from the windows, with the white flag waving over it: but we look in vain for the Brazen Horses on its gates, or him who placed them there, or the pale bands of warriors that conquered in the name of liberty and of their country!
CHAPTER V
The gravity of the French character is a no less remarkable (though a less obvious) feature in it than its levity. The last is the quality that strikes us most by contrast to ourselves, and that comes most into play in the intercourse of common life; and therefore we are generally disposed to set them down as an altogether frivolous and superficial people. It is a mistake which we shall do well to correct on farther acquaintance with them; or if we persist in it, we must call to our aid an extraordinary degree of our native blindness and obstinacy. We ought never to visit their Theatres, to walk along their streets, to enter their houses, to look in their faces (when they do not think themselves observed,) to open their books, or take a view of their picture-galleries. Sterne seems to have been the first, as well as last traveller, who found out their weak side in this respect. ‘If the French have a fault, Monsieur le Comte,’ says he, ‘it is that they are too serious.’ This contradiction in their character has been little noticed, and they have never had the credit of it, though it stares one in the face everywhere. How we are to piece the two extremes together is another question. Is it that their whole character is a system of inconsequentiality? Or are they gay and trifling in serious matters, serious only in trifles? Or are their minds more of the cameleon-cast, that reflects all objects alike, whether grave or gay, and give themselves up entirely, and without resistance, to the prevailing impulse? Or is it owing to a want of comprehension, so that they are incapable of correcting one feeling by another, and thus run into extremes? Or that they have a greater scope and variety of resources, excelling us as much in gravity as in want of thought, outdoing us in tragedy and comedy, as they betake themselves to each, in the poetical or in the prosaic departments of life, only that they sometimes make a transposition of the two characters a little oddly, and pass from the one to the other without our well knowing why?
I have been frequently puzzled with this exception to the butterfly, airy, thoughtless, fluttering character of the French (on which we compliment ourselves,) and never more so than the first night I went to the theatre. The order, the attention, the decorum were such as would shame any London audience. The attention was more like that of a learned society to a lecture on some scientific subject, than of a promiscuous crowd collected together merely for amusement, and to pass away an idle hour. There was a professional air, an unvarying gravity in the looks and demeanour of the whole assembled multitude, as if every one had an immediate interest in the character of the national poetry, in the purity of the French accent, in the propriety of the declamation, in the conceptions of the actor, and the developement of the story, instead of its presenting a mob of idle boys and girls, of ignorant gaping citizens, or supercilious box-lobby loungers, affecting a contempt for the performance, and for every one around them. The least noise or irregularity called forth the most instant and lively disapprobation; and the vivacity of the French character displayed itself to advantage in earnest gesticulations and expressions of impatience. Not only was the strictest silence observed, as soon as the curtain drew up, but no one moved or attempted to move. The spell thrown over the customary or supposed restlessness and volatility of the French was in this respect complete. The uniformity of the appearance was indeed almost ridiculous; for the rows of heads in the seats of the pit no more stirred or projected the breadth of a finger beyond the line, than those of a regiment of recruits on parade, or than if a soldier were stationed to keep each chin in its place. They may be reduced to the state of automatons; but there were no traces of the monkey character left.[[17]] If the performance had been at Court, greater propriety could not have been maintained; but it was a French play (one of Racine’s) and acted before a Parisian audience: this seemed to be enough to ensure it a proper reception. One would suppose, from their interest in dramatic representations, that the French were a nation of actors. Perhaps it may be asked, ‘Is not that the case? and is it not their vanity, their own desire to shine, or their sympathy with whatever or whoever is a candidate for applause, that accounts for their behaviour?’ At least, their vanity makes them grave; and if it is this which rivets their attention, and silences their eternal loquacity, it must be allowed to produce effects which others would do well to imitate from better motives, if they have them![[18]]