which came into it, or issued out of it, we could not discover any communication that it had with the tongue." So deceitful -who can know it? As the poet writes of Madame la Marquise, "Could we find out her heart through that velvet and lace! She will show us her shoulder, her bosom, her face, It takes, in such cases, a Balzac, or better, to dépouiller son être intérieur de la mince écorce qui suffit au monde. An Interior is the title of one of Mr. Procter's poems, beginning, "Unloose your heart, and let me see What's hid within that ruby round; The anatomy is morbid, and so the anatomist finds it; but his practical conclusion is, Why should I hate, because I read But sometimes a too devoted, little devout, student of morbid anatomy is insatiably eager to anatomise a Regan, that by what breeds about her heart he may learn the heart secrets of a Goneril and the rest; eager to see, in sacred phrase profanely applied, a sword pass through one heart, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. THE AN INSPIRED ARTIST. EXODUS XXXV. 31. HE children of Israel were instructed by Moses in the fact, that the Lord had called by name Bezaleel, the son of Uri, and had "filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship; and to devise curious works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in the cutting of stones, to set them, 134 and in carving of wood, to make any manner of cunning work." With Bezaleel was associated, in the same gift of artistic inspiration, Aholiab, of the tribe of Dan; both of them being expressly and exceptionally filled with wisdom of heart, to work all manner of work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, and in scarlet, and in fine linen, and of the weaver, even of all who devise cunning work. Every good gift, and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights. Shakspeare's, for the drama; Milton's, for the epic; Newton's, for science; Raffaelle's, to paint the Transfiguration; Handel's, to compose the Messiah; Beethoven's, to plan out and build There are divers inspirations, and up his colossal symphonies. these are of them. The polemical aspects of theopneustia, in its technical, theological, and exclusive sense, may, and must, here be left out of sight and out of mind. But, reserving the differentia, whether in degree or in kind, or both, of biblical inspiration in the accepted sense, there are diversities of gifts, from the same Spirit, or inspiring source; and these manifestations of the Spirit are, in the apostle's words, given to every man to profit withal. To one is given, by that Divine Spirit, the gift of inventive insight; to another, of poetic creation, by the same Spirit; to another, of scientific discovery, by the same Spirit; to another, of political economics; to another, of pictorial art; to another, of oratorical enthusiasm; to another, of medical discernment; to another, of musical composition; to another, of mechanical sagacity; to another, of critical research. But all these worketh that one and the self same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will. Fra Giovanni da Fiesoli, known as Beato Angelico, never commenced any work-whether an elaborate fresco or an illumination for a missal-without praying; and he always, we are assured, carried out the first impression, "believing it to be an inspiration"; he never retouched or altered anything left as finished. Mr. Ruskin affirms that when once we begin at all to understand the handling of any great executor, such as that of the three great Venetian painters, of Correggio, or Turner,1 the awe of it is something greater than can be felt from the most stupendous natural scenery. "For the creation of such a system as a high human intelligence, endowed with its ineffably perfect instruments of eye and hand, is a far more appalling manifestation of infinite power, than the making either of seas or mountains." In his Modern Painters the Professor, with deliberate emphasis, applies the word “inspired” to Turner: "Be it irreverent or not," he says, "this word I must always use; and the rest of what work I have before me is simply to prove the truth of it with respect to" the great artist just named.2 Of true Byzantine architecture the Emperor Justinian was the parent, as an historical critic shows, in his description of the new St. Sophia, "in the East the pride, in the West the wonder of the world"; the sublime unity and harmony of the design, above all, the lightness and vastness of the cupola, were "too marvellous for mere human science," even the skill of the famous architects Anthimus of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus being unequal to the conception. Accordingly, an angel, it is affirmed, revealed to the emperor many of the 1 This is said in reference to Mr. Kingsley's assertion, as a Cambridge (Sidney Sussex) tutor, conversant with optics, that Turner's work "beats optical work out of sight," and that he regards with absolute "awe" the combined delicacy and precision of Turner's hand. Mr. Ruskin emphatically approves the word "awe" as the right one in this case. See PP. 263-65 of the Oxford Professor's Two Paths. 2 Neither the least liberal nor the least competent of Mr. Ruskin's critics objected distinctly, at the time, to his applying the word "inspiration" to the gifts by which a great painter is made famous; the objection being based on the fact that as a certain stamp has already been given to the term by its application to prophecy, any lower application of it (as to art) is a misappropriation. Were we, it is urged, to extend the meaning a little further, were we to take its etymological sense, we should "characterise by the same term the breathing of the Spirit of God into the seer of Patmos, and the inflating of a football, or the puffing out of the moral windbag whom Mr. Ruskin has described." "On the whole, we are quite content with the meaning which the word had in Shakspeare's time. When any one has the same claims that old Gaunt had to speak of his prescience as a Divine afflatus, we will listen to him saying 'Methinks I am a prophet new inspired.' But we will not admit the pretensions of Turner."" objection would hold against the mere title of this paper. The same forms of the building; the great principle of the construction of the cupola, sought in vain by the science of the architects, flashed across the mind of Justinian himself in a dream.1 So again, the practice of antiphons in church music was introduced, according to the legend, through St. Ignatius having heard the angels singing psalms in alternate strains before the throne of God. Latter day criticism, and that of the light literature school, recognises in the sacred music of the great composers a mingled power that now softens us to meekness and contrition, now rouses and confirms us in faith and hope; that lifts us above the peddling cares and wretched necessities of life, and nerves us to the conviction that harps of glory and angelic choirs are no vain imaginings, but that we have (albeit the very faintest) their reflex here, " permitted to be shed on earth by the men upon whom Heaven has bestowed the Divine gift of genius." One must be convinced, this writer contends, when Handel's " gorgeous music peals upon the amazed ear," that the gran' maestro "had held discourse with the Higher and Better Influences," and that when, in his solitude, the fingers of the blind old composer swept over the keys, and the swelling sounds of the organ were wafted upwards, "something of that holy influence encircled him," which painting once symbolised under the guise of the angels who guard St. Cecilia. Montaigne speaks of the touches in painting that sometimes slip from the hand of the painter, so surpassing both his fancy and his art as to beget his own admiration and astonishment; while the poet is ravished and transported out of himself by sallies which, by the poet's own avowal, exceed his capacity, so that he "acknowledges them to proceed from something else than himself, and that he has them no more in his power than the orators say they have those extraordinary motions and agitations which sometimes push them beyond their designs." The old belief was, as well as the old saying, that poets are born, 1 The cupola did not seem, according to the historian Procopius, to rest on its supports, but to be let down by a golden chain from heaven. See Hist. Lat. Christ., vi. 570 seq. He not made. In the earliest ages certain it is, as Southey remarks, that they who possessed a gift of speech that enabled them to clothe ready thoughts in measured or elevated diction were held to be inspired. False oracles were uttered in verse, and true prophecies delivered in poetry; there was therefore some reason for the opinion. Among the early Greeks, says Gibbon, the inspiration of Homer did not differ from that of Calchas; his works and those of his successors were the scriptures of the nation. "With us, on the other hand, the inspiration of poets is merely a transient and voluntary illusion to which we submit ourselves." Mr. Grote, from the ancient standpoint, describes the poet-like the prophet, whom he so much resembles -as singing under heavenly guidance, inspired by the goddess. to whom he has prayed for her assisting impulse. She puts the word into his mouth, and the incidents into his mind. is a privileged man, chosen as her organ, and speaking from her revelations. It is true, the historian of Greece proceeds to show, that these expressions, of the muse inspiring and the poet singing a tale of past times, have passed from the ancient epic to compositions produced under very different circumstances, and have now degenerated into unmeaning forms of speech; but they gained currency originally in their genuine and literal acceptation. "If the hearers are disposed to accept what is related to them as a revelation from the muse, the æstrus of composition is quite sufficient to impart a similar persuasion to the poet whose mind is penetrated with it." Quoting some of the most characteristic stanzas among Lord Houghton's Palm Leaves, a critical author claims to detect," at the bottom of this," a sort of conviction that Heaven shoots inspirations through great minds in a state of emotion or agitation-a habit," in fact, of regarding genius and inspiration as in some degree allied. The more we examine the mechanism of thought, observes the author of a recent treatise on Mechanism in Thought and Morals, the more we shall see that the automatic unconscious action of the mind enters largely into all its processes. Our definite ideas he calls stepping stones; how we get from one to another we do not know; something carries us; we do |
