There is no incompatibility between strength and softness, as is sometimes supposed by frivolous people. Weakness is not refinement. A shadow may be twice as deep in a finely coloured picture as in another, and yet almost imperceptible, from the gradations that lead to it, and blend it with the light. Correggio had prodigious strength, and greater softness. Nature is strong and soft, beyond the reach of art to imitate. Softness then does not imply the absence of considerable extremes, but it is the interposing a third thing between them, to break the force of the contrast. Guido is more soft than strong. Rembrandt is more strong than soft.
10. And lastly. That truth is, to a certain degree, beauty and grandeur, since all things are connected, and all things modify one another in nature. Simplicity is also grand and beautiful for the same reason. Elegance is ease and lightness, with precision.
This last head appears to contain a number of gratis dicta, got together for the sake of completing a decade of propositions. They have, however, some show of truth, and we should add little clearness to them by any reasoning upon the matter. So we will conclude here for the present.
FONTHILL ABBEY
| London Magazine. | November 1822. |
The old sarcasm—Omne ignotum pro magnifico est—cannot be justly applied here. Fonthill Abbey, after being enveloped in impenetrable mystery for a length of years, has been unexpectedly thrown open to the vulgar gaze, and has lost none of its reputation for magnificence—though, perhaps, its visionary glory, its classic renown, have vanished from the public mind for ever. It is, in a word, a desert of magnificence, a glittering waste of laborious idleness, a cathedral turned into a toy-shop, an immense Museum of all that is most curious and costly, and, at the same time, most worthless, in the productions of art and nature. Ships of pearl and seas of amber are scarce a fable here—a nautilus’s shell surmounted with a gilt triumph of Neptune—tables of agate, cabinets of ebony and precious stones, painted windows ‘shedding a gaudy, crimson light,’ satin borders, marble floors, and lamps of solid gold—Chinese pagodas and Persian tapestry—all the miniature splendour of Solomon’s Temple is displayed to the view—whatever is far-fetched and dear-bought, rich in the materials, or rare and difficult in the workmanship—but scarce one genuine work of art, one solid proof of taste, one lofty relic of sentiment or imagination!
The difficult, the unattainable, the exclusive, are to be found here in profusion, in perfection; all else is wanting, or is brought in merely as a foil or as a stop-gap. In this respect the collection is as satisfactory as it is unique. The specimens exhibited are the best, the most highly finished, the most costly and curious, of that kind of ostentatious magnificence which is calculated to gratify the sense of property in the owner, and to excite the wondering curiosity of the stranger, who is permitted to see or (as a choice privilege and favour) even to touch baubles so dazzling and of such exquisite nicety of execution; and which, if broken or defaced, it would be next to impossible to replace. The same character extends to the pictures, which are mere furniture-pictures, remarkable chiefly for their antiquity or painful finishing, without beauty, without interest, and with about the same pretensions to attract the eye or delight the fancy as a well-polished mahogany table or a waxed oak-floor. Not one great work by one great name, scarce one or two of the worst specimens of the first masters, Leonardo’s Laughing Boy, or a copy from Raphael or Correggio, as if to make the thing remote and finical—but heaps of the most elaborate pieces of the worst of the Dutch masters, Breughel’s Sea-horses with coats of mother-of-pearl, and Rottenhammer’s Elements turned into a Flower-piece. The Catalogue, in short, is guiltless of the names of any of those works of art
‘Which like a trumpet make the spirits dance;’
and is sacred to those which rank no higher than veneering, and where the painter is on a precise par with the carver and gilder. Such is not our taste in art; and we confess we should have been a little disappointed in viewing Fonthill, had not our expectations been disabused beforehand. Oh! for a glimpse of the Escurial! where the piles of Titians lie; where nymphs, fairer than lilies, repose in green, airy, pastoral landscapes, and Cupids with curled locks pluck the wanton vine; at whose beauty, whose splendour, whose truth and freshness, Mengs could not contain his astonishment, nor Cumberland his raptures;
‘While groves of Eden, vanish’d now so long,