3. Minerva, who sprung armed from Jupiter’s brain.
4. Minerva, the daughter of Jupiter and Corypha, whose father Oceanus invented four-wheeled chariots.
5. Minerva, the daughter of Pallantis, who fled from her father, and is, therefore, represented with wings on her feet, in the same manner as Mercury.
The second Minerva, of Egypt, is imagined to have been the most ancient. The Phœnicians also had a Minerva, the daughter of Saturn, and the inventress of arts and arms. From one of these two, the Greeks derived their Minerva.
Minerva was worshipped by the Athenians before the age of Cecrops, in whose time Athens was founded, and its name taken from Minerva, whom the Greek called Ἁθηνη. It was proposed to call the city either by her name or that of Neptune, and as each had partizans, and the women had votes equal to the men, Cecrops called all the citizens together both men and women; the suffrages were collected; and it was found that all the women had voted for Minerva, and all the men for Neptune; but the women exceeding the men by one voice, Athens was called after Minerva. A temple was dedicated to her in the city, with her statue in gold and ivory, thirty-nine feet high, executed by Phydias.
Mr. Matthews at Home, 1826.
“Life is darken’d o’er with woe.”—Der Freischütz.
Mr. Matthews at Home, 1826.
It would be as difficult for most persons, who think Mr. Matthews acts easily, to act as he does, as it would be difficult to make such persons comprehend, that his ease is the result of labour, and that his present performance is the result of greater labour than his exhibitions of former years. An examination of the process by which he has attained the extraordinary ability to “command success,” would be a fatiguing inquiry to most readers, though a very curious one to some. He has been called a “mimic;” this is derogation from his real powers, which not only can represent the face, but penetrate the intellect. An expert swimmer is not always a successful diver: Mr. Matthews is both. His faculty of observation “surpasses show.” He leaves the features he contemplates, enters into the mind, becomes joint tenant of its hereditaments and appurtenances with the owner, and describes its secret chambers and closets. This faculty obtained lord Chesterfield his fame, and enabled him to persuade the judgment; but he never succeeded by his voice or pen in raising the passions, like Mr. Matthews, who, in that respect, is above the nobleman. The cause of this superiority is, that Mr. Matthews is the creature of feeling—of excitation and depression. This assertion is made without the slightest personal knowledge or even sight of him off the stage; it is grounded on a generalized view of some points in human nature. If Mr. Matthews were not the slave of temperament, he never could have pictured the Frenchman at the Post Office, nor the gaming Yorkshireman. These are prominences seized by his whole audience, on whom, however, his most delicate touches of character are lost. His high finish of the Irish beggar woman with her “poor child,” was never detected by the laughers at their trading duett of “Sweet Home!” The exquisite pathos of the crathur’s story was lost. To please a large assemblage the points must be broad. Mr. Matthews’s countenance of his host drawing the cork is an excellence that discovers itself, and the entire affair of the dinner is “pleasure made easy” to the meanest capacity. The spouting child who sings the “Bacchanal Song” in “Der Freischütz” from whence the engraving is taken, is another “palpable hit,” but amazingly increased in force to some of the many who heard it sung by Phillips. The “tipsy toss” of that actor’s head, his rollocking look, his stamps in its chorus, and the altogetherness of his style in that single song, were worth the entirety of the drama—yet he was seldom encored. To conclude with Mr. Matthews, it is merely requisite to affirm that his “At Home” in the year 1826, evinces rarer talent than the merit of a higher order which he unquestionably possesses. He is an adept at adaptation beyond compeer.