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pointed out*, that those, early masters whose predominant characteristics were aspiration and sanctity, chose, as a fit interpreter for the saintly forms in the foreground, a sky whose purity and simplicity should be expressive of the infinity of heaven

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luminous distance' of evening, with its pale green, or the morning's still small voice of level twilight behind purple hills,' so suggestive of 'spiritual hope, of longing and escape.' In corroboration of this remark it will be observed that pictures in which one artist has painted the figures and another the landscape, are not often noted for their harmony or their truth. A still more intimate union has, indeed, been attempted; and there are pictures in which a Venetian hand has supplied the colouring to a Florentine design. If such pictures are among the wonders of art, they are seldom its best examples. The colouring of Titian would have sensualised, and the radiance of Coreggio have etherialised the conceptions of Michael Angelo; but the loss of his sublime strength, thus neutralised, would not have been compensated for by any accession of alien qualities. Nor more successful, probably, would have been the experiment, in case those earlier masters, to whom we have alluded, had been able to add the Florentine vigour of design and variety of composition to their own especial merits-spiritual elevation, and the quietude of pathetic beauty. It is common, indeed, to express an edifying amazement on account of their want of variety, relief, &c. While many an eloquent connoisseur has been doling out to them his supercilious and qualified commendations, young ladies, fresh from the boarding school, have turned for a moment from the Guido or the Carlo Dolce which they were copying, to glance at a Saint of Pinturrichio, Perugino, or the old Seer of Fiesole; and have compassionately wondered that the austere should be unbending also, that the ascetic should be unfamiliar, and that the absorbed should reply to their inquiries with such unloquacious eyes. Objections brought against great works, not on the ground of faults but of deficiencies, are for the most part frivolous and vexatious; for no excellency is attained except by sacrifice. Every great poem as well as picture by necessity includes some high qualities in a greater, and some in a lesser degree; and, to be perfect or approach perfection, it must possess them in a due proportion. This proportion is determined, not by external rule, but inwardly, by the imagination, which conceived the poem originally, and conceived it as a whole. Accordingly, the law of just keeping is to be accounted the truth of the imagination. If this proportionate truth

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be wanting, not only will the result be unsatisfactory, but the work will thus be proved to have been spurious in its origin; since a work of art, to be genially produced, must be homogeneous or harmonised. It is impossible for a healthy imagination to beget hybrids or monsters: these are not natural conceptions: but it is very easy for an unsteady and uninspired hand to join together a piece of ill-assorted though splendid patchwork.

Meanwhile, a first-rate poem supposes a still higher unity. It is not only the product of the imagination; it is the offspring and exponent of the poet's total being. Now, the being of man is one; his various faculties exhibiting but different modes of intellectual action, and his manifold principles of thought branching out from a single stem. The unity of the poet's nature ought, therefore, to be imaged in his intellectual progeny. Every portion of it, as it grows, must be a true reflection from his own mind, or from nature as contemplated by that mind; its elements, however complex, must be fused into a crystalline oneness; its parts must be graduated by a just law of proportion. The result of all, namely, a perfect truth of keeping will, consequently, be but an expansion of that truth which was inherent in the impulse and germinal idea from which the poem sprang. These observations are borne out by the fact that every first-rate poet is felt to be the regent of a separate sphere, and the master of a complete poetic world of his own; in which, while every element is proportionate to every other element, it is not less distinguished by its dissimilarity, both as to relative proportion and intrinsic character, from the corresponding element in the work of other poets. Their mode of viewing life, character, and nature is as different in the several great poets, as is the species of thought, sentiment, or passion which they express. A corresponding diversity will be always found in their styles, however free from mannerism. In one it is expressive, in another suggestive; in one energetic, in another adroit. In Dante it is intense, in Milton solemn, in Homer divinely familiar and friendly, in Shakspeare elastic and joyously strong, unexhausted in resource, and incalculable as the curves of shells or the endless variety of outline in forests and clouds. In all it is truthful. For art in its versatility is a shadow of nature's infinitude; and many revelations still leave the depths of truth unfathomed.*

* The same diversity will be found in the mode in which different poets exhibit the faculty of what is called poetical painting. The ' representations in the "Fairy Queen," in "Paradise Lost," and in

It is from a perfect truth of keeping that poetry chiefly derives its verisimilitude- -a quality without which it can make no appeal to the heart. Poetry professes to have witnessed that of which it makes report. If its witness be true, the sympathies of men will eventually seal that truth and receive that witness: if its tidings be but hearsay, its empiricism will be proved by the inconsistent babbling with which men describe what they have not known. Let a man's theme be ever so high or ever so low, he may have seen what he speaks of, or he may have only wished to see it. Burns, when he describes a daisy uprooted by the plough, is not more truthful than Dante, when Dante sings of the choirs that rejoice in heaven. The former sees with true poetic insight that which actually exists; the latter with a more creative eye, but with equal truthfulness, sees that which might exist, and which, if it existed, would appear as it presented itself to him in definite and authentic vision. It is thus that in arduous instances of fore-shortening, positions of the human form which could never have been observed, even in the model, by the outward eye of the painter, are faithfully exhibited by his inspired guesses. Dante's unshaken self-possession in the midst of the marvels around him, is itself a proof that his vision was true; for had it been false, that artificial excitement, which alone could have sustained the illusion, would have swept him into the vortices of splendour and motion which he describes; and he would have written with as unsteady a hand as his imitators have ever done. Self-possession, a thing very different from unimpassioned sedateness, is a note of mature greatness in poetry; and it is so noble a resultant of it that Repose itself, which has often been extolled as an ultimate merit in art, may, perhaps, derive no small part of its charm from the fact that it is among the modes by which self-possession is evinced. This is one of the characteristics, which mark the analogy between the inspiration of the true poet and that of the true prophet. Without it enthusiasm runs into madness, and passion is selfdestructive: without it greatness, instead of rolling onward in an ever ascending wave, perpetually tumbles over like a breaker, and loses itself in foam. Closely allied to self-possession is that rare attribute-poetic Moderation-which excludes such exDante's Inferno," have each a specific character, appropriate to the poems in which they are found respectively. The first are dream-like, fit for fairy-land; the second are cosmological: they are grand symbols of the universe; while Dante's Spirit-world, especially the first division of it, is described with matter-of-fact particularity.'- Appendix to Coleridge's Biographia Literaria,' — last edition.

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aggerated admiration of one especial excellence as might lead to the neglect of others. The highest poetry rests upon a right adjustment of contending claims. Some persons are advocates of the sensuous, and others of what has latterly been called the subjective; but poetry of the first order reconciles both demands, being of all things the most intellectual in its method and scope, while in its form and imagery it is the largest representation of visible things. Partaking at once of the nature both of Science and of Art, it spiritualises the outward world while it embodies the world of Thought. It composes also the border warfare between passion and imagination. Though passion frees a man from self, yet it sells him in bondage to outward things:- it clasps the material world like a vine, sucks out and circulates its life blood, stirs up heroic natures to high achievements, and yet, being servile in its nature, it makes the end of their wanderings a blind subjection to Fate. Passion is, therefore, the sanguine life of that tragic poetry which hailed in Bacchus a master, just as the poetry of mirth and grace boasted a protector in Mercury. The imagination, on the other hand, passes through all barriers, spurns the mountain tops and feeds on each succeeding object, but only till it has gained strength to outsoar it. This is the poetry which sought a patron in Apollo, the lord of light, deliverance, and healing. Passion by itself would violate the freedom, imagination would transcend the limits of art. Whatever qualities tend to maintain this twofold equipoise, to which the innumerable balances of poetry are subordinate, promote its keeping and its truth.

Poetry is a large thing, and poetic truth is but one department of it. There are few of its departments which have not been ably illustrated in the recent as well as the earlier periods of English literature; and to exalt any one of them with exclusive reverence, is among the last things we should desire. The root of theological heresy has been traced to a disposition arbitrarily to select and lift on high some one great verity, which in thus losing its relative position loses half its value. And no doubt such a disposition is equally fruitful in poetical and philosophical heresies. It has seemed to us, however, that we could not better illustrate our views respecting Mr. Taylor's poetry than by these imperfect remarks on that poetic truth, which we account his most striking characteristic; and which, from its intimate relations with strength and with beauty, we deem the foundation of excellence, not only in poetry, but in every art that possesses a moral origin, and subserves a human end.

ART. IV.

1. Sacred and Legendary Art. By Mrs. JAMESON. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1848.

2. Iconographie Chrétienne. Histoire de Dieu. Par M. DIDRON. Paris, 4to.: 1843.

3. Manuel d'Iconographie Chrétienne, Grecque et Latine, avec une Introduction et Notes. Par M. DIDRON. Paris, 8vo.: 1845.

UP to the Reformation, or nearly so, Art was the pensioner

and ally of religion. During the middle ages she was not only her favourite handmaid, but one of her most attractive teachers. The productions of religious Art were declared to be laymen's books;'-schoolmasters to teach ignorant people the way of faith, and stimulants to excite them to devotion. Yet, in many respects Art, and more especially the Art of the middle ages, to which these volumes principally relate, is the worst possible expositor both of religious facts and of religious doctrines. The least consideration of the manner in which the Legendary Art of the middle ages has dealt with the representation of incorporeal beings, and with spiritual teaching, will satisfy us of this. We shall see at once how the artist and the legend writer have borrowed from each other, and built upon each other; and how encouraged by this mutual reliance, the boundaries of the literal and the spiritual, the actual and the mythical, have been disregarded and overleapt by both,-until the involved and intricate result has become a ponderous system of dim allegory and puerile fable-too vast for the most capacious belief, and calculated, by its contradiction to all ordinary experience, to invite and encourage universal scepticism.

We will consider first a part of the subject which is not included in Mrs. Jameson's eloquent and beautiful volumes, but is excellently treated by M. Didron; - the manner in which the Divinity was represented in ancient religious Art.

Many centuries elapsed before Christians ventured to delineate in bodily form, the ineffable majesty of the Eternal Father, whom no man hath seen or can see. In the Duke of Devonshire's Benedictional of St. Ethelwold, an inestimable manuscript illustrated in the best manner of the tenth century,—the Holy Spirit is depictured as descending upon the Saviour, at his baptism, in the form of a dove, but no attempt is made to represent the awful Being, whose approving voice, benignly uttered from the heaven of heavens, gave a sanction to the solemn rite. In a subsequent page of the same manuscript, where the holy child

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