Part 11 (2/2)

hats, it seems that this rejoicing night is the twenty-ninth of May, the anniversary of our second Charles's restoration; that happy day when, according to our old ballad, ”The king enjoyed his own again.” This might be one reason for the artist choosing a scene contiguous to the beautiful equestrian statue of Charles the First.

In the distance we see a house on fire; an accident very likely to happen on such a night as this.

On this spot once stood the cross erected by Edward the First, as a memorial of affection for his beloved queen Eleanor, whose remains were here rested on their way to the place of sepulture. It was formed from a design by Cavalini, and destroyed by the religious fury of the Reformers. In its place, in the year 1678, was erected the animated equestrian statue which now remains. It was cast in bra.s.s, in the year 1633, by Le Soeur; I think by order of that munificent encourager of the arts, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel. The parliament ordered it to be sold, and broken to pieces; but John River, the brazier who purchased it, having more taste than his employers, seeing, with the prophetic eye of good sense, that the powers which were would not remain rulers very long, dug a hole in his garden in Holborn, and buried it unmutilated. To prove his obedience to their order, he produced to his masters several pieces of bra.s.s, which he told them were parts of the statue. M. de Archenholtz adds further, that the brazier, with the true spirit of trade, cast a great number of handles for knives and forks, and offered them for sale, as composed of the bra.s.s which had formed the statue.

They were eagerly sought for, and purchased,--by the loyalists from affection to their murdered monarch,--by the other party, as trophies of triumph.

The original pictures of Morning and Noon were sold to the Duke of Ancaster for fifty-seven guineas; Evening and Night to Sir William Heathcote, for sixty-four guineas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NIGHT.]

SIGISMONDA

----------------Let the picture rust, Perhaps Time's price-enhancing dust,-- As statues moulder into earth, When I'm no more, may mark its worth; And future connoisseurs may rise, Honest as ours, and full as wise, To puff the piece, and painter too, And make me then what Guido's now.

HOGARTH'S EPISTLE.

A compet.i.tion with either Guido, or Furino, would to any modern painter be an enterprise of danger: to Hogarth it was more peculiarly so, from the public justly conceiving that the representation of elevated distress was not his _forte_, and his being surrounded by an host of foes, who either dreaded satire, or envied genius. The connoisseurs, considering the challenge as too insolent to be forgiven, before his picture appeared, determined to decry it. The painters rejoiced in his attempting what was likely to end in disgrace; and to satisfy those who had formed their ideas of Sigismonda upon the inspired page of Dryden, was no easy task.

The bard has consecrated the character, and his heroine glitters with a brightness that cannot be transferred to the canva.s.s. Mr. Walpole's description, though equally radiant, is too various, for the utmost powers of the pencil.

Hogarth's Sigismonda, as this gentleman poetically expresses it, ”has none of the sober grief, no dignity of suppressed anguish, no involuntary tear, no settled meditation on the fate she meant to meet, no amorous warmth turned holy by despair; in short, all is wanting that should have been there, all is there that such a story would have banished from a mind capable of conceiving such complicated woe; woe so sternly felt, and yet so tenderly.” This glowing picture presents to the mind a being whose contending pa.s.sions may be felt, but were not delineated even by Corregio. Had his tints been aided by the grace and greatness of Raphael, they must have failed.

The author of the Mysterious Mother sought for sublimity, where the artist strictly copied nature, which was invariably his archetype, but which the painter, who soars into fancy's fairy regions, must in a degree desert. Considered with this reference, though the picture has faults, Mr. Walpole's satire is surely too severe. It is built upon a comparison with works painted in a language of which Hogarth knew not the idiom,--trying him before a tribunal, whose authority he did not acknowledge, and from the picture having been in many respects altered after the critic saw it, some of the remarks become unfair. To the frequency of these alterations we may attribute many of the errors: the man who has not confidence in his own knowledge of the leading principles on which his work ought to be built, will not render it perfect by following the advice of his friends. Though Messrs. Wilkes and Churchill dragged his heroine to the altar of politics, and mangled her with a barbarity that can hardly be paralleled, except in the history of her husband,--the artist retained his partiality; which seems to have increased in exact proportion to their abuse. The picture being thus contemplated through the medium of party prejudice, we cannot wonder that all its imperfections were exaggerated. The painted harlot of Babylon had not more opprobrious epithets from the first race of reformers than the painted Sigismonda of Hogarth from the last race of patriots.

When a favourite child is chastised by his preceptor, a partial mother redoubles her caresses. Hogarth, estimating this picture by the labour he had bestowed upon it, was certain that the public were prejudiced, and requested, if his wife survived him, she would not sell it for less than five hundred pounds. Mrs. Hogarth acted in conformity to his wishes, but after her death the painting was purchased by Messrs.

Boydell, and exhibited in the Shakspeare Gallery. The colouring, though not brilliant, is harmonious and natural: the att.i.tude, drawing, etc.

may be generally conceived by the print. I am much inclined to think, that if some of those who have been most severe in their censures, had consulted their own feelings, instead of depending upon connoisseurs, poor Sigismonda would have been in higher estimation. It has been said that the first sketch was made from Mrs. Hogarth, at the time she was weeping over the corse of her mother.

Hogarth once intended to have appealed from the critics' fiat to the world's opinion, and employed Mr. Basire to make an engraving, which was begun, but set aside for some other work, and never completed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIGISMONDA, WITH THE HEART OF HER HUSBAND.]

MARTIN FOLKES, ESQ.

Martin Folkes was a mathematician and antiquary of much celebrity in the philosophical annals of this country. He was at the early age of twenty-four admitted a member of the Royal Society, where he was greatly distinguished. Two years afterwards he was chosen one of the council, and was named by Sir Isaac Newton himself as vice president: he was afterwards elected president, and held this high office till a short time before his death, when he resigned it on account of ill-health. In the Philosophical Transactions are numerous memoirs of this learned man: his knowledge in coins, ancient and modern, was very extensive: and the last work he produced was concerning the English Silver Coin from the Conquest to his own time. He was president of the Society of Antiquaries at the time of his death, which happened on the 28th of June, 1754, at the age of sixty-four. A few days before his death he was struck with a fit of the palsy, and never spoke after this attack.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTRAIT OF MARTIN FOLKES, ESQ.]

THE c.o.c.kPIT.

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