Volume Iii Part 35 (1/2)
Jovius had a villa, situated on a peninsula, bordered by the Lake of Como. It was built on the ruins of the villa of Pliny, and in his time the foundations were still visible. When the surrounding lake was calm, the sculptured marbles, the trunks of columns, and the fragments of those pyramids which had once adorned the residence of the friend of Trajan, were still viewed in its lucid bosom. Jovius was the enthusiast of literature, and the leisure which it loves. He was an historian, with the imagination of a poet, and though a Christian prelate, almost a wors.h.i.+pper of the sweet fictions of pagan mythology; and when his pen was kept pure from satire or adulation, to which it was too much accustomed, it became a pencil. He paints with rapture his gardens bathed by the waters of the lake; the shade and freshness of his woods; his green slopes; his sparkling fountains, the deep silence and calm of his solitude! A statue was raised in his gardens to Nature! In his hall stood a fine statue of Apollo, and the Muses around, with their attributes. His library was guarded by a Mercury, and there was an apartment adorned with Doric columns, and with pictures of the most pleasing subjects dedicated to the Graces! Such was the interior!
Without, the transparent lake here spread its broad mirror, and there was seen luminously winding by banks covered with olives and laurels; in the distance, towns, promontories, hills rising in an amphitheatre, blus.h.i.+ng with vines, and the first elevation of the Alps, covered with woods and pasture, and sprinkled with herds and flocks.
It was in a central spot of this enchanting habitation that a cabinet or gallery was erected, where Jovius had collected with prodigal cost the portraits of celebrated men; and it was to explain and to describe the characteristics of these ill.u.s.trious names that he had composed his eulogies. This collection became so remarkable, that the great men his contemporaries presented our literary collector with their own portraits, among whom the renowned Fernandez Cortes sent Jovius his before he died, and probably others who were less ent.i.tled to enlarge the collection; but it is equally probable that our caustic Jovius would throw them aside. Our historian had often to describe men more famous than virtuous; sovereigns, politicians, poets, and philosophers, men of all ranks, countries, and ages, formed a crowded scene of men of genius or of celebrity; sometimes a few lines compress their character, and sometimes a few pages excite his fondness. If he sometimes adulates the living, we may pardon the illusions of a contemporary; but he has the honour of satirising some by the honest freedom of a pen which occasionally broke out into premature truths.
Such was the inspiration of literature and leisure which had embellished the abode of Jovius, and had raised in the midst of the Lake of Como a cabinet of portraits; a n.o.ble tribute to those who are ”the salt of the earth.”
We possess prints of Rubens's house at Antwerp. That princely artist perhaps first contrived for his _studio_ the circular apartment with a dome, like the rotunda of the Pantheon, where the light descending from an aperture or window at the top, sent down a single equal light,--that perfection of light which distributes its magical effects on the objects beneath.[258] Bellori describes it _una stanza rotonda con un solo occhio in cima_; the _solo occhio_ is what the French term _oeil de boeuf_; we ourselves want this _single eye_ in our technical language of art. This was his precious museum, where he had collected a vast number of books, which were intermixed with his marbles, statues, cameos, intaglios, and all that variety of the riches of art which he had drawn from Rome:[259] but the walls did not yield in value; for they were covered by pictures of his own composition, or copies by his own hand, made at Venice and Madrid, of t.i.tian and Paul Veronese. No foreigners, men of letters, or lovers of the arts, or even princes, would pa.s.s through Antwerp without visiting the house of Rubens, to witness the animated residence of genius, and the great man who had conceived the idea. Yet, great as was his mind, and splendid as were the habits of his life, he could not resist the entreaties of the hundred thousand florins of our Duke of Buckingham, to dispose of this _studio_.
The great artist could not, however, abandon for ever the delightful contemplations he was depriving himself of; and as subst.i.tutes for the miracles of art he had lost, he solicited and obtained leave to replace them by casts which were scrupulously deposited in the places where the originals had stood.
Of this feeling of the local residences of genius, the Italians appear to have been not perhaps more susceptible than other people, but more energetic in their enthusiasm. Florence exhibits many monuments of this sort. In the neighbourhood of _Santa Maria Novella_, Zimmerman has noticed a house of the celebrated Viviani, which is a singular monument of grat.i.tude to his ill.u.s.trious master, Galileo. The front is adorned with the bust of this father of science, and between the windows are engraven accounts of the discoveries of Galileo; it is the most beautiful biography of genius! Yet another still more eloquently excites our emotions--the house of Michael Angelo: his pupils, in perpetual testimony of their admiration and grat.i.tude, have ornamented it with all the leading features of his life; the very soul of this vast genius put in action: this is more than biography!--it is living as with a contemporary!
FOOTNOTES:
[256] The room is a small wainscoted apartment in the second floor, commanding a pleasant view.
[257] The above inscription is a fac-simile of that upon the gla.s.s.
The word _fifth_ in the third line has been erased by Pope for want of room to complete it properly. It is scratched on a small pane of red gla.s.s, and has been removed to Nuneham Courtney, the seat of the Harcourt family, on the banks of the Thames, a few miles from Oxford.
[258] Harrewyns published, in 1684, a series of interesting views of the house, and some of the apartments, including this domed one. The series are upon one folio sheet, now very rare.
[259] Rubens was an ardent collector, and lost no chance of increasing his stores; in the appendix to Carpenter's ”Pictorial Notices of Vand.y.k.e” is printed the correspondence between himself and Sir D.
Carleton, offering to exchange some of his own pictures for antiques in possession of the latter, who was amba.s.sador from England to Holland, and who collected also for the Earl of Arundel.
WHETHER ALLOWABLE TO RUIN ONESELF?
The political economist replies that it is!
One of our old dramatic writers, who witnessed the singular extravagance of dress among the modellers of fas.h.i.+on, our n.o.bility, condemns their ”superfluous bravery,” echoing the popular cry--
”There are a sort of men, whose coining heads Are mints of all new fas.h.i.+ons, that have done More hurt to the kingdom, by superfluous bravery, Which the foolish gentry imitate, than a war Or a long famine. _All the treasure by This foul excess is got into the merchants', Embroiderers', silkmen's, jewellers', tailors' hands, And the third part of the land too!_ the n.o.bility Engrossing _t.i.tles only_.”
Our poet might have been startled at the reply of our political economist. If the n.o.bility, in follies such as these, only preserved their ”t.i.tles,” while their ”lands” were dispersed among the industrious cla.s.ses, the people were not sufferers. The silly victims ruining themselves by their excessive luxury, or their costly dress, as it appears some did, was an evil which, left to its own course, must check itself; if the rich did not spend, the poor would starve. Luxury is the cure of that unavoidable evil in society--great inequality of fortune!
Political economists therefore tell us that any regulations would be ridiculous which, as Lord Bacon expresses it, should serve for ”the repressing of waste and excess by _sumptuary laws_.” Adam Smith is not only indignant at ”sumptuary laws,” but a.s.serts, with a democratic insolence of style, that ”it is the highest impertinence and presumption in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense by sumptuary laws. They are themselves always the greatest spendthrifts in the society; let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will.” We must therefore infer that governments by extravagance may ruin a state, but that individuals enjoy the remarkable privilege of ruining themselves without injuring society!
Adam Smith afterwards distinguishes two sorts of luxury: the one exhausting itself in ”durable commodities, as in buildings, furniture, books, statues, pictures,” will increase ”the opulence of a nation;” but of the other, wasting itself in dress and equipages, in frivolous ornaments, jewels, baubles, trinkets, &c., he acknowledges ”no trace or vestige would remain; and the effects of ten or twenty years' profusion would be as completely annihilated as if they had never existed.” There is, therefore, a greater and a lesser evil in this important subject of the opulent, unrestricted by any law, ruining his whole generation.
Where ”the wealth of nations” is made the solitary standard of their prosperity, it becomes a fertile source of errors in the science of morals; and the happiness of the individual is then too frequently sacrificed to what is called the prosperity of the state. If an individual, in the pride of luxury and selfism, annihilates the fortunes of his whole generation, untouched by the laws as a criminal, he leaves behind him a race of the discontented and the seditious, who, having sunk in the scale of society, have to reascend from their degradation by industry and by humiliation; but for the work of industry their habits have made them inexpert; and to humiliation their very rank presents a perpetual obstacle.
Sumptuary laws, so often enacted and so often repealed, and always eluded, were the perpetual, but ineffectual, attempts of all governments to restrain what, perhaps, cannot be restrained--criminal folly! And to punish a man for having ruined himself would usually be to punish a most contrite penitent.
It is not surprising that before ”private vices were considered as public benefits,” the governors of nations inst.i.tuted sumptuary laws--for the pa.s.sion for pageantry and an incredible prodigality in dress were continually impoveris.h.i.+ng great families--more equality of wealth has now rather subdued the form of private ruin than laid this evil domestic spirit. The incalculable expenditure and the blaze of splendour of our ancestors may startle the incredulity of our _elegantes_. We find men of rank exhausting their wealth and p.a.w.ning their castles, and then desperately issuing from them, heroes for a crusade, or brigands for their neighbourhood!--and this frequently from the simple circ.u.mstance of having for a short time maintained some gorgeous chivalric festival on their own estates, or from having melted thousands of acres into cloth of gold; their sons were left to beg their bread on the estates which they were to have inherited.
It was when chivalry still charmed the world by the remains of its seductive splendours, towards the close of the fifteenth century, that I find an instance of this kind occurring in the _Pas de Sandricourt_, which was held in the neighbourhood of the sieur of that name. It is a memorable affair, not only for us curious inquirers after manners and morals, but for the whole family of the Sandricourts; for though the said sieur is now receiving the immortality we bestow on him, and _la dame_ who presided in that magnificent piece of chivalry was infinitely gratified, yet for ever after was the lord of Sandricourt ruined--and all for a short, romantic three months!
This story of the chivalric period may amuse. A _pas d'armes_, though consisting of military exercises and deeds of gallantry, was a sort of festival distinct from a tournament. It signified a _pas_ or pa.s.sage to be contested by one or more knights against all comers. It was necessary that the road should be such that it could not be pa.s.sed without encountering some guardian knight. The _chevaliers_ who disputed the _pas_ hung their blazoned s.h.i.+elds on trees, pales, or posts raised for this purpose. The aspirants after chivalric honours would strike with their lance one of these s.h.i.+elds, and when it rung, it instantly summoned the owner to the challenge. A bridge or a road would sometimes serve for this military sport, for such it was intended to be, whenever the heat of the rivals proved not too earnest. The sieur of Sandricourt was a fine dreamer of feats of chivalry, and in the neighbourhood of his castle he fancied that he saw a very spot adapted for every game; there was one admirably fitted for the barrier of a tilting-match; another embellished by a solitary pine-tree; another which was called the meadow of the Thorn; there was a _carrefour_, where, in four roads, four knights might meet; and, above all, there was a forest called _devoyable_, having no path, so favourable for errant knights who might there enter for strange adventures, and, as chance directed, encounter others as bewildered as themselves. Our chivalric Sandricourt found nine young _seigneurs_ of the court of Charles the Eighth of France, who answered all his wishes. To sanction this glorious feat it was necessary to obtain leave from the king, and a herald of the Duke of Orleans to distribute the _cartel_ or challenge all over France, announcing that from such a day ten young lords would stand ready to combat, in those different places, in the neighbourhood of Sandricourt's _chateau_. The names of this flower of chivalry have been faithfully registered, and they were such as instantly to throw a spark into the heart of every lover of arms! The world of fas.h.i.+on, that is, the chivalric world, were set in motion. Four bodies of a.s.sailants soon collected, each consisting of ten combatants. The herald of Orleans having examined the arms of these gentlemen, and satisfied himself of their ancient lineage and their military renown, admitted their claims to the proffered honour.