is equally full of gesticulation, equally voluble, and without meaningand their tragic actors are solemn puppets, moved by rules, pulled by wires, and with their mouths stuffed with rant and bombast. This is the harm that can be said of them; they themselves are doubtless best acquainted with the good, and are not too diffident to tell it. Though other people abuse them, they can still praise themselves. I once knew a French lady who said all manner of good things and forgot them the next moment; who maintained an argument with great wit and eloquence, and presently after, changed sides without knowing that she had done so; who invented a story and believed it on the spot; who wept herself and made you weep with the force of her descriptions, and suddenly drying her eyes, laughed at you for looking grave. Is not this like acting? Yet it was not affected in her, but natural, involuntary, incorrigible. The hurry and excitement of her natural spirits were like a species of intoxication, or she resembled a child in thoughtlessness and incoherence. She was a Frenchwoman. It was nature, but nature that had nothing to do with truth or consistency. In one of the Paris Journals lately, there was a criticism on two pictures by Girodet, of Bonchamps and Cathelineau, Vendean chiefs. The paper is well written, and points out the defects of the portraits very fairly and judiciously. These persons are there called "Illustrious Vendeans." The dead dogs of 1812 are the Illustrious Vendeans of 1824. Monsieur Chateaubriand will have it so, and the French are too polite a nation to contradict him. They split on this rock of complaisance, surrendering every principle to the fear of giving offence, as we do on the opposite one of party-spirit and rancorous hostility, sacrificing the best of causes and our best friends to the desire of giving offence, to the indulgence of our spleen and of an illtongue. We apply a degrading appellation, or bring an opprobrious charge against an individual, and such is our tenaciousness of the painful and disagreeable, so fond are we of brooding over grievances, and so incapable are our imaginations of raising themselves above the lowest scurrility or the dirtiest abuse, that should the person attacked come out an angel from the contest, the prejudice against him remains nearly the same, whether the charge is proved or disproved. An unpleasant association has been created; and this is too delightful an exercise of the understanding with the English public easily to be parted with. John Bull would as soon give up an estate as a bugbear. Having been once gulled, he is not soon ungulled. He is too knowing for that. Nay, he resents the attempt to undeceive him, as an injury. The French apply a brilliant epithet to the most vulnerable characters; and gloss over a life of treachery or infamy. With them the immediate or last impression is every thing; with us, the first, if it is sufficiently strong and gloomy, never wears out! The French critic observes that M. Girodet has given General Bonchamps, though in a situation of great difficulty and danger, a calm and even smiling air, and that the portrait of Cathelineau, instead of a hero, looks only like an angry peasant. In fact, the lips in the first portrait are made of marmalade, the complexion is cosmetic, and the smile ineffably engaging; while the eye of the peasant Cathelineau darts a beam of light, such as no eye, however illustrious, was ever illumined with. But so it is, the Senses, like a favourite lap-dog, are pampered and indulged at any expense; the Imagination, like a gaunt hound, is starved and driven away. Danger and death, and ferocious courage and stern fortitude, however the subject may exact them, are uncourtly topics, and kept out of sight: but smiling lips and glistening eyes are pleasing objects, and there you find them. The style of portrait requires it. It is of this varnish and glitter of sentiment that we complain (perhaps it is no business of ours,) as what must for ever intercept the true feeling and genuine rendering of nature in French art— as what makes it spurious and counterfeit, and strips it of simplicity, force, and grandeur. Whatever pleases, whatever strikes, holds out a temptation to the French artist too strong to be resisted; and there is too great a sympathy in the public mind with this view of the subject to quarrel with or severely criticise what is so congenial with its own feelings. A premature and superficial sensibility is the grave of French genius and of French taste. Beyond the momentary impulse of a lively organisation, all the rest is mechanical and pedantic; they give you rules and theories for truth and nature, the unities for poetry, and the dead body for the living soul of art. They colour a Greek statue ill, and call it a picture; they paraphrase a Greek tragedy, and overload it with long-winded speeches, and think they have a national drama of their own. Any other people would be ashamed of such preposterous pretensions. In invention, they do not get beyond models; in imitation, beyond details. Their microscopic vision hinders them from seeing nature. I observed two young students the other day near the top of Montmartre, making oil sketches of a ruinous hovel in one corner of the road. Paris lay below, glittering grey and gold (like a spider's web) in the setting sun, which shot its slant rays upon their shining canvass, and they were busy in giving the finishing touches. The little outhouse was in itself picturesque enough: it was covered with moss which hung down in a sort of drooping form, as the rain had streamed down it, and the walls were loose and crumbling in pieces. Our artists had repaired every thing; not a stone was out of its place: no traces were left of the winter's flaw in the pendent moss. One would think the bricklayer and gardener had been regularly set to work to do away every thing like sentiment or keeping in the object before them. Oh, Paris! it was indeed on this thy weak side (thy inability to connect any two ideas into one) that thy barbarous and ruthless foes entered in! The French have a great dislike to any thing obscure. They cannot bear to suppose for a moment there should be any thing they do not understand they are shockingly afraid of being mystified. Hence they have no idea either of mental or aerial perspective. Every thing must be distinctly made out and in the foreground: for if it is not so clear that they can take it up bit by bit, it is wholly lost upon them, and they turn away as from an unmeaning blank. This is the cause of the stiff, unnatural look of their portraits. No allowance is made for the veil that shade as well as an oblique position casts over the different parts of the face; every feature, and every part of every feature, is given with the same flat effect; and it is owing to this perverse fidelity of detail, that that which is literally true, is naturally false. The side of a face seen in perspective does not present so many markings as the one that meets your eye full; but if it is put into the vice of French portrait, wrenched round by incorrigible affectation and con ceit, (that insist upon knowing all that is there, and set it down formally though it is not to be seen,) what can be the result, but that the portrait will look like a head stuck in a vice; will be flat, hard, and finished; will have the appearance of reality, and at the same time look like paint; in short, will be a French portrait? That is, the artist, from a pettiness of view, and a want of more enlarged and liberal notions of art, comes forward not to represent nature, but like an impertinent commentator, to explain what she has left in doubt, to insist on that which she passes over or touches only slightly, to throw a critical light on what she casts into shade, and to pick out the details of what she blends into masses. I wonder they allow the existence of the term clairobscur at all; but it is a word, and a word is a thing they can repeat and remember. A French gentleman formerly asked me what I thought of a landscape in their exhibition. I said, I thought it too clear. He made answer that he should have conceived that to be impossible. I replied, that what I meant was, that the parts of the several objects were made out with too nearly equal distinctness all over the picture; that the leaves of the trees in shadow were as distinct as those in light, the branches of the trees at a distance as plain as of those near. The perspective arose only from the diminution of objects; and there was no interposition of air. I said, one could not see the leaves of a tree a mile off, but this, I added, appertained to a question in metaphysics. He shook his head, thinking that a young Englishman could know as little of abstruse philosophy as of fine art, and no more was said. I owe to this gentleman (whose name was Merrimei, and who I understand is still living) a grateful sense of many friendly attentions, and many useful suggestions, and I take this opportunity of acknowledging my obligations. Some one was observing of Madame Pasta's acting, that its chief merit consisted in its being natural. To which it was replied, "Not so, for that there was an ugly and a handsome nature." There is an old proverb that Home is home, be it never so homely; and so it may be said of nature; that whether ugly or handsome, it is nature still. Besides beauty, there is truth, which is always one principal thing. It doubles the effect of beauty, which is mere affectation without it, and even reconciles us to deformity. Nature, the truth of nature in imitation, denotes a given object, a "forgone conclusion" in reality, to which the artist is to conform in his copy. In nature real objects exist, real causes act, which are only supposed to act in art, and it is in the subordination of the arbitrary and superficial combinations of fancy to the more stable and powerful law of reality that the perfection of art consists. A painter may arrange fine colours on his palette; but if he merely does this, he does nothing. It is accidental or arbitrary. The difficulty and the charm of the combination begins with the truth of imitation, that is, with the resemblance to a given object in nature, or, in other words, with the strength, truth, and delicacy of our impressions, which is verified by a reference to a known and independent class of objects as the test. Art is so far the developement or the communication of knowledge; but there can be no knowledge unless it be of some given or standard object, which exists independently of the representation, and bends the will to an obedience to it. The strokes of the pencil are what the artist pleases-are mere blunders and caprice without meaning, unless they point to nature. Then they are right or wrong, true or false, as they follow in her steps and copy her style. Art must anchor in nature, or it is the sport of every breath of folly. Natural objects convey given or intelligible ideas, which art embodies and represents, or it represents nothing, is a mere chimera or bubble: and further, natural objects or events cause certain feelings, in expressing which, art manifests its power, and genius its prerogative. The capacity of expressing these movements of passion is in proportion to the power with which they are felt; and this is the same as sympathy with the human mind placed in actual situations and influenced by the real causes that are supposed to act. Genius is the power which equalizes or identifies the imagination with the reality or with nature. Certain events happening to us naturally produce joy, others sorrow; and these feelings, if excessive, lead to other consequences, such as stupor or ecstasy, and express themselves by certain signs in the countenance, or voice, or gestures; and we admire and applaud an actress accordingly, who gives these tones and gestures as they would follow in the order of nature, because we then know that her mind has been affected in like manner, that she enters deeply into the resources of nature, and understands the riches of the human heart. For nothing else can impel and stir her up to the imitation of the truth. The way in which real causes act upon the feelings, is not arbitrary, is not fanciful; it is as true as it is powerful and unforeseen, the effects can only be similar when the exciting causes have a correspondence with each other, and there is nothing like feeling but feeling. The sense of joy can alone produce the smile of joy; and in proportion to the sweetness, the unconsciousness, and the expression of the last, we may be sure is the fulness and sincerity of the heart from which it proceeds. The elements of joy at least are there, in their integrity and perfection. The death or absence of a beloved object is nothing as a word, as a mere passing thought, till it comes to be dwelt upon, and we begin to feel the revulsion, the long dreary separation, the stunning sense of the blow to our happiness, as we should in reality. The power of giving this sad bewildering effect of sorrow on the stage is derived from the power of sympathizing with what we should feel in reality. That is, a great dramatic genius is one that approximates the effects of words or of supposed situations in the mind most near to the deep and vivid effects of real and inevitable ones. Joy produces tears; the violence of passion turns to childish weakness; but this could not be foreseen by study, nor taught by rules, nor mimicked by observation. Natural acting is therefore fine, because it implies and calls forth the finest and best feelings that the supposed characters and circumstances can possibly give birth to it reaches the height of the subject. The conceiving or entering into a part in this sense is every thing: the acting follows easily or of course. But art without nature is a nickname, a word without, meaning, a conclusion without any premises to go upon. The beauty of Madame Pasta's acting in Nina then proceeds upon this principle. It is not what she does at any particular juncture, but she seems to be the character, and to be incapable of divesting herself of it. This is true acting: any thing else is playing tricks, may be clever and ingenious, is French opera dancing, recitations, heroics, or hysterics; but it is not true nature, or true art. THE COMPLAINT OF AMANIEU DES ESGAS, One of the Troubadours of Catalonia, who flourished about the end of the Thirteenth Century, under James II. King of Aragon. WHEN thou shalt ask why round thee sighing My mournful friends appear; They'll tell thee Amanieu is dying, And thou wilt smile to hear. They will reproach thee with my fate,- Since death is better than the hate I suffer evermore ! Why chid'st thou that, in mournful numbers, The kiss we give to one that slumbers And long I strove my thoughts to hide, With secret care I should have died- Oh! once I smiled, in proud derision, The woe of others seems a vision, Mayst thou yet feel the chilling void My soul has known too long, When this brief life, thy scorn destroy'd, Is ended with my song! LAY OF THE WANDERING ARAB.* AWAY-away! my barb and I Free as the wave, fleet as the wind, And leave a world of slaves behind! Nor e'er feel lonely, though alone ;- To mount a drowsy Sultan's throne. An Arab maid my only love. Here Freedom dwells without a fear, Who ever brings a fetter here, To chain the Desert's fiery child? What though the Frank may name with scorn It is not sands that form a waste, Nor laughing fields a happy clime ;- Free as the wave, fleet as the wind, And leave a world of slaves behind! M. E. .. J. * These lines were suggested by a note on "The Bride of Abydos." |