[52]. There is a very striking and spirited picture of this subject by an ingenious living artist (Mr. Alston), in the present exhibition of the Royal Academy. The academic skill in it is admirable, and many of the forms are truly elegant and beautiful; but I may be permitted to add, that the scene (as he represents it) too much resembles the courtly designs of Vitruvius or Palladio, rather than ‘a temple not made with hands, eternal in the heavens’; and that the angels seem rather preparing to dance a minuet or grand ballet on the marble pavement which they tread, than descending the air in a dream of love, of hope, and gratitude.
[53]. I apprehend that natural is of more importance than acquired sensibility. Thus, any one, without having been at an opera, may judge of opera dancing, only from having seen (with judicious eyes) a stag bound across a lawn, or a tree wave its branches in the air. In all, the general principles of motion are the same.
[54]. In answer to a criticism by Mr. Godwin on his poem called Sympathy.
[55]. ‘Liberty is a custom of England,’ said a Member of Congress; who seems also to be of opinion, that it is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance.
[56]. I by no means wish to preclude Mr. Phillips from trying annually to naturalize his favourite mode of oratory at watering-places in this country, or in Evangelical Societies held at the Egyptian-hall, where it is not out of character. He may there assure his hearers, with great impunity, that Dr. Franklin’s orthodoxy was never called in question; and rank Moses and Mahomet together as true prophets, (by virtue of the first letter of their names) in opposition to the infidelity of Paine and Priestly, who go together for the same reason—
Like Juno’s Swans, link’d and inseparable.
[57]. The best speeches are the worst reported, the worst are made better than they are. They both find a convenient newspaper level.
[58]. His Lordship is said to speak French with as little hesitation as he does his native tongue; and once made a speech in that language to the Congress for three hours without interruption. The sentiments, we may be sure, were not English. Or was it on that occasion that Prince Tallyrand made his observation, ‘that speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts’? I cannot agree with Mr. Hobhouse in his compliment to the expression which Isabey has given to Lord Castlereagh’s face in the insulated figure of him in the picture of the Congress. An old classical friend of Mr. Hobhouse’s would have supplied a better interpretation of it. But I do not think the French artist has done his Lordship justice. His features are marked, but the expression is dormant.
[59]. See his panegyric on the late King, his defence of the House of Commons, and his eulogy on the practical liberty of the English Constitution in his Liverpool Dinner Speech.
[60]. Letter to **** ****** on the Rev. W. L. Bowles’s Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope. By the Right Hon. Lord Byron. Third Edition. Murray.