The Germ Part 7

One picture, that I saw that Spring, I shall not easily forget. It was among those, I believe, brought from the other rooms, and had been hung, obviously out of all chronology, immediately beneath that head by Raphael so long known as the "Berrettino," and now said to be the portrait of Cecco Ciulli.

The picture I speak of is a small one, and represents merely the figure of a woman, clad to the hands and feet with a green and grey raiment, chaste and early in its fashion, but exceedingly simple. She is standing: her hands are held together lightly, and her eyes set earnestly open.

The face and hands in this picture, though wrought with great delicacy, have the appearance of being painted at once, in a single sitting: the drapery is unfinished. As soon as I saw the figure, it drew an awe upon me, like water in shadow. I shall not attempt to describe it more than I have already done; for the most absorbing wonder of it was its literality. You knew that figure, when painted, had been seen; yet it was not a thing to be seen of men. This language will appear ridiculous to such as have never looked on the work; and it may be even to some among those who have. On examining it closely, I perceived in one corner of the canva.s.s the words _Ma.n.u.s Animam pinxit_, and the date 1239.

I turned to my Catalogue, but that was useless, for the pictures were all displaced. I then stepped up to the Cavaliere Ercoli, who was in the room at the moment, and asked him regarding the subject of authorship of the painting. He treated the matter, I thought, somewhat slightingly, and said that he could show me the reference in the Catalogue, which he had compiled. This, when found, was not of much value, as it merely said, "Schizzo d'autore incerto," adding the inscription.{4} I could willingly have prolonged my inquiry, in the hope that it might somehow lead to some result; but I had disturbed the curator from certain yards of Guido, and he was not communicative. I went back therefore, and stood before the picture till it grew dusk.

{4}I should here say, that in the catalogue for the year just over, (owing, as in cases before mentioned, to the zeal and enthusiasm of Dr. Aemmester) this, and several other pictures, have been more competently entered. The work in question is now placed in the _Sala Sessagona_, a room I did not see--under the number 161. It is described as "Figura mistica di Chiaro dell' Erma," and there is a brief notice of the author appended.

The next day I was there again; but this time a circle of students was round the spot, all copying the "Berrettino." I contrived, however, to find a place whence I could see _my_ picture, and where I seemed to be in n.o.body's way. For some minutes I remained undisturbed; and then I heard, in an English voice: "Might I beg of you, sir, to stand a little more to this side, as you interrupt my view."

I felt vext, for, standing where he asked me, a glare struck on the picture from the windows, and I could not see it. However, the request was reasonably made, and from a countryman; so I complied, and turning away, stood by his easel. I knew it was not worth while; yet I referred in some way to the work underneath the one he was copying. He did not laugh, but he smiled as we do in England: "_Very_ odd, is it not?" said he.

The other students near us were all continental; and seeing an Englishman select an Englishman to speak with, conceived, I suppose, that he could understand no language but his own. They had evidently been noticing the interest which the little picture appeared to excite in me.

One of them, and Italian, said something to another who stood next to him. He spoke with a Genoese accent, and I lost the sense in the villainous dialect. "Che so?" replied the other, lifting his eyebrows towards the figure; "roba mistica: 'st' Inglesi son matti sul misticismo: somiglia alle nebbie di la. Li fa pensare alla patria,

"E intenerisce il core Lo d ch' han detto ai dolci amici adio."

"La notte, vuoi dire," said a third.

There was a general laugh. My compatriot was evidently a novice in the language, and did not take in what was said. I remained silent, being amused.

"Et toi donc?" said he who had quoted Dante, turning to a student, whose birthplace was unmistakable even had he been addressed in any other language: "que dis-tu de ce genre-la?"

"Moi?" returned the Frenchman, standing back from his easel, and looking at me and at the figure, quite politely, though with an evident reservation: "Je dis, mon cher, que c'est une specialite dont je me fiche pas mal. Je tiens que quand on ne comprend pas une chose, c'est qu' elle ne signifie rein."

My reader thinks possibly that the French student was right.

Reviews

_The Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich: a Long-vacation Pastoral. By Arthur Hugh Clough. Oxford: Macpherson. London: Chapman and Hall.--1848_

The critic who should undertake to speak of all the poetry which issues from the press of these present days, what is so called by courtesy as well as that which may claim the t.i.tle as of right, would impose on himself a task demanding no little labor, and entailing no little disgust and weariness. Nor is the trouble well repaid. More profit will not accrue to him who studies, if the word can be used, fifty of a certain cla.s.s of versifiers, than to him who glances over one: and, while a successful effort to warn such that poetry is not their proper sphere, and that they must seek elsewhere for a vocation to work out, might embolden a philanthropist to a.s.sume the position of scare-crow, and drive away the unclean birds from the flowers and the green leaves; on the other hand, the small results which appear to have hitherto attended such endeavors are calculated rather to induce those who have yet made, to relinquish them than to lead others to follow in the same track. It is truly a disheartening task.

To the critic himself no good, though some amus.e.m.e.nt occasionally, can be expected: to the criticised, good but rarely, for he is seldom convinced, and annoyance and rancour almost of course; and, even in those few cases where the voice crying "in the wilderness" produces its effect, the one thistle that abandons the attempt at bearing figs sees its neighbors still believing in their success, and soon has its own place filled up. The sentence of those who do not read is the best criticism on those who will not think.

It is acting on these considerations that we propose not to take count of any works that do not either show a purpose achieved or give promise of a worthy event; while of such we hope to overlook none.

We believe it may safely be a.s.sumed that at no previous period has the public been more buzzed round by triviality and common-place; but we hold firm, at the same time, that at none other has there been a greater or a grander body of genius, or so honorable a display of well cultivated taste and talent. Certainly the public do not seem to know this: certainly the critics deny it, or rather speak as though they never contemplated that such a position would be advanced: but, if the fact be so, it will make itself known, and the poets of this day will a.s.sert themselves, and take their places.

Of these it is our desire to speak truthfully, indeed, and without compromise, but always as bearing in mind that the inventor is more than the commentator, and the book more than the notes; and that, if it is we who speak, we do so not for ourselves, nor as of ourselves.

The work of Arthur Hugh Clough now before us, (we feel warranted in the dropping of the _Mr._ even at his first work,) unites the most enduring forms of nature, and the most unsophisticated conditions of life and character, with the technicalities of speech, of manners, and of persons of an Oxford reading party in the long vacation. His hero is

"Philip Hewson, the poet, Hewson, the radical hot, hating lords and scorning ladies;"

and his heroine is no heroine, but a woman, "Elspie, the quiet, the brave."

The metre he has chosen, the hexametral, harmonises with the spirit of primitive simplicity in which the poem is conceived; is itself a background, as much as are "Knoydart, Croydart, Moydart, Morrer, and Ardnamurchan;" and gives a new individuality to the pa.s.sages of familiar narrative and every day conversation. It has an intrinsic appropriateness; although, at first thought of the subject, this will, perhaps, be scarcely admitted of so old and so stately a rhythmical form.

As regards execution, however, there may be noted, in qualification of much pliancy and vigour, a certain air of experiment in occasional pa.s.sages, and a license in versification, which more than warrants a warning "to expect every kind of irregularity in these modern hexameters." The following lines defy all efforts at reading in dactyls or spondees, and require an almost complete transposition of accent.

"There was a point which I forgot, which our gallant Highland homes have;"-- "While the little drunken Piper came across to shake hands with Lindsay:"-- "Something of the world, of men and women: you will not refuse me."

In the first of these lines, the omission of the former "_which_,"

would remove all objection; and there are others where a final syllable appears clearly deficient; as thus:--

"Only the road and larches and ruinous millstead between"

[_them_]:-- "Always welcome the stranger: I may say, delighted to see [_such_] Fine young men:"-- "Nay, never talk: listen now. What I say you can't apprehend"

[_yet_]:-- "Laid her hand on her lap. Philip took it. She did not resist"

[_him_]:--

Yet the following would be scarcely improved by greater exactness:

"Roaring after their prey, do seek their meat from G.o.d;"

Nor, perhaps, ought this to be made correct:

"Close as the bodies and intertwining limbs of athletic wrestlers."

The aspect of _fact_ pervading "the Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich,"--(in English, "the hut of the bearded well," a somewhat singular t.i.tle, to say the least,) is so strong and complete as to render necessary the few words of dedication, where, in inscribing the poem, (or, as the author terms it, "trifle,") to his "long-vacation pupils," he expresses a hope, that they "will not be displeased if, in a fiction, purely fiction, they are here and there reminded of times enjoyed together."

As the story opens, the Oxford party are about to proceed to dinner at "the place of the Clansmen's meeting." Their characters, discriminated with the nicest taste, and perfectly worked out, are thus introduced:

"Be it recorded in song who was first, who last, in dressing.

Hope was the first, black-tied, white-waistcoated, simple, his Honor; For the postman made out he was a son to the Earl of Ilay, (As, indeed, he was to the younger brother, the Colonel); Treated him therefore with special respect, doffed bonnet, and ever Called him his Honor: his Honor he therefore was at the cottage; Always his Honor at least, sometimes the Viscount of Ilay.

"Hope was the first, his Honor; and, next to his Honor, the Tutor.

Still more plain the tutor, the grave man nicknamed Adam, White-tied, clerical, silent, with antique square-cut waistcoat, Formal, unchanged, of black cloth, but with sense and feeling beneath it; Skilful in ethics and logic, in Pindar and poets unrivalled; _Shady_ in Latin, said Lindsay, but _topping_ in plays and Aldrich.

"Somewhat more splendid in dress, in a waistcoat of a lady, Lindsay succeeded, the lively, the cheery, cigar-loving Lindsay, Lindsay the ready of speech, the Piper, the Dialectician: This was his t.i.tle from Adam, because of the words he invented, Who in three weeks had created a dialect new for the party.

"Hewson and Hobbes were down at the _matutine_ bathing; of course Arthur Audley, the bather _par excellence_ glory of headers: Arthur they called him for love and for euphony: so were they bathing There where in mornings was custom, where, over a ledge of granite, Into a granite bason descended the amber torrent.

There were they bathing and dressing: it was but a step from the cottage, Only the road and larches and ruinous millstead between.

Hewson and Hobbes followed quick upon Adam; on them followed Arthur.

"Airlie descended the last, splendescent as G.o.d of Olympus.

When for ten minutes already the fourwheel had stood at the gateway; He, like a G.o.d, came leaving his ample Olympian chamber."--pp. 5, 6.

A peculiar point of style in this poem, and one which gives a certain cla.s.sic character to some of its more familiar aspects, is the frequent recurrence of the same line, and the repeated definition of a personage by the same attributes. Thus, Lindsay is "the Piper, the Dialectician," Arthur Audley "the glory of headers," and the tutor "the grave man nicknamed Adam," from beginning to end; and so also of the others.

Omitting the after-dinner speeches, with their "Long constructions strange and plusquam-Thucydidean," that only of "Sir Hector, the Chief and the Chairman;" in honor of the Oxonians, than which nothing could be more unpoetically truthful, is preserved, with the acknowledgment, ending in a sarcasm at the game laws, by Hewson, who, as he is leaving the room, is accosted by "a thin man, clad as the Saxon:"

"'Young man, if ye pa.s.s thro' the Braes o'Lochaber, See by the Loch-side ye come to the Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich.'"--p. 9.