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ANCIENT HISTORY NOT ADAPTED TO FICTION.

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on the anatomy and philosophy of expression, dissented from

this view.

But I must not prolong my stay in old Athens, although these glimpses of life, two or three thousand years old, cannot fail to be entertaining. After all, Cheapside is only a Greek street under another name. Even the toyshop was there, with every variety of playthings, from the ivory bed to the clay doll painted. Nursery rhymes were widely circulated; and the veritable English "BOGY" enjoyed its reign of terror, as "Akko," or "Alphito." Perhaps a "Parent's Assistant," by a popular Greek Edgeworth, may yet reward some educational unroller of manuscripts.

Meanwhile, the question naturally arises, why ancient life and history are so rarely adapted to the purposes of instructive fiction. A tale of manners should refer to antiquity so remote as to become venerable, or present a vivid reflection of scenes passing round us. The novel accordingly has a twofold aspect, as it portrays the past, or present-our ancestors, or ourselves. And with regard to the former, it may be historical or domestic; or both may be blended and interwoven; the historical being the pattern, and the domestic the thread in which it is worked. Perhaps the Quentin Durward of Scott affords the happiest example of the united, as the Vicar of Wakefield of the separated, elements. Few travellers, however, have penetrated into the country of the rich ancients. Greek and Latin life, with one or two exceptions, remains unpainted. People know it chiefly from languid epics. The Anacharsis of Barthelemy is not free from the defects of Glover. Becker compares his characters to antique statues, in French costume and lace ruffles. "Telemachus" still stands alone.

JULY 21ST.

SITTING under a tree this evening, with the Faëry Queen in my hand, it was curious to watch the sunset falling like dew

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drops through the boughs, and spotting the page with golden green. I remembered how often, at Cambridge, in the chapel

SPENSER COMPARED WITH PAINTERS.

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of King's, I had read the Bible in the glow of the painted windows, until every letter seemed to be illuminated like an old missal. Spenser ought to be studied, as he wrote, in the sun. His system of composition resembled the Venetian style of painting, as his rich epithets answer to its warmth of tone. His landscapes are English, with southern light streaming round them, as in these verses:

Now when the rosy-fingered morning faire,

Weary of aged Tithone's saffron bed,

Had spread her purple robe through dewy aire,
And the high hills Titan discovered.

The warm blush of the morning, and the far-off purple rim of the hills, have the lucid depth and splendour of Titian. And if the colour of Spenser be Venetian, his combinations are often Flemish. A picture of Rubens is a commentary on a stanza.

He has been justly regarded as the painter's poet. They who esteem him least, admire his rare eye for effect and artistic arrangement. Hence Walpole told his arid correspondent, Mr. Cole, that he was building a bower, and feared that he must go and read Spenser, wading through all his allegories to get at a picture. He would easily have found it. For Spenser is not the representative of a single school, but the abstract and epitome of each. The brilliant flush of his general manner belongs to Rubens; his feminine expression reflects the serenity of Guido; the melody of his language breathes the bloom of Correggio; his wilder contortions of imagination recal the fierce audacity of Spranger; and his dark sketches of ugliness and crime foretel Salvator Rosa: not as we see him in the tossing pines, the driving hurricanes, and the swarthy brigands of his landscape: but as he startles us in his historical portraits, especially in the "Regulus" at Cobham. I might add that Spenser's passion for sumptuous processions, splendid companies, and variegated festivals, proclaims his relation

ship to Paul Veronese, who is unsurpassed for his exquisite disposal of lights, Eastern dresses, and gorgeous array of priests and warriors.

Spenser's portraits are, in the truest sense, Venetian. Titian, taking up the rude back grounds of Philippo Lippi, raised landscape-painting into a separate branch of art; but the historical pencil succeeded equally in trees and nature. In the Faëry Queen, the harmony between faces and scenery is striking. I venture to suggest another peculiarity in the poet's characters. The senatorial dignity of Titian's heads is felt by every spectator; Spenser awakens the same feeling of awe and interest, by the beautiful haze of his allegory. The softening shade into which he withdraws his heroes and heroines, both deepens the lustre of their features, and lends a solemnity to their expression.

With all his beauties, he is not, and will not be, a favourite of the many. His cantos are never read for their story. The criticism of Pope's old lady is still true. They are picture-galleries, of which the eye of taste never grows weary. It sinks down into the verdant depth of a stanza, as of the greenest landscape of Albano. But allegory has defects inherent and unconquerable. Gay worlds of fiction, hanging upon nothing, and launched into the wide expanse of imagination, must be shone over and warmed by common feelings and life. When that light and heat are wanting, the eye may be dazzled, but the heart is untouched. The reader strays through an enchanted garden, and sighs for the familiar voices of affection, and the charms of home endearment. Like the Trojan exile in the Latin paradise, he opens his arms in vain to a shadowy Anchises; and the child cannot embrace his father in the Elysium of fancy.

These are the difficulties of parabolic description. If Spenser could not bend the bow, what hand may try? The English taste

SYDNEY SMITH AND MISS SEWARD.

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turns aside from allegory in its fairest form. Opie complained that no landscape was admired, except a view of some particular place; and Payne Knight declared that he had seen more delight manifested at a piece of wax-work, or a mackerel painted on a deal board, than he had ever observed to be excited by the Apollo, or Transfiguration.

JULY 22ND.

JOHNSON says something about the impossibility of a conversationist being honest. No account can answer his cheques. To keep up appearances, he draws gold under other names. Talkers in books are not exempt from the difficulties or penalties of their brethren round the table. Henceforth, Mr. Sydney Smith must. relinquish the most striking feature in his famous portrait of a poor ecclesiastic: "A picture is drawn of a clergyman with 1307. per annum, who combines all moral, physical, and intellectual advantages: a learned man, dedicating himself intensely to the care of his parish; of charming manners and dignified deportment; six feet two inches high, beautifully proportioned, with a magnificent countenance, expressive of all the cardinal virtues and the Ten Commandments."-(Works, T. iii. 200.) The proprietor of the phrase is Miss Seward, in a letter to G. Hardinge (T. ii. 250), about a gentleman who was not so good as he looked: "So reserved as were his manners! and his countenance! a very tablet upon which the Ten Commandments seemed written."

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