the decline or fall of that empire.' After some further strictures, Coleridge ends thus:- The true key to the declension of the Roman Empire-which is not to be found in all Gibbon's immense workmay be stated in two words: the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation.'

Frank. Coleridge's two words are not so decisively clear as one could wish. The 'key' sticks in the lock. But his criticism on Gibbon certainly gives food for thought.

Benison. Gibbon, however, completed a great book, and has left it to the world, to read, criticise, do what they will or can with; whereas Coleridge dreamed of writing many great books, and wrote none. He is but a king of shreds and patches. Markham. Even the Lakers' did not always admire each other. 'Coleridge's ballad of The Ancient Mariner (says Southey) is, I think, the clumsiest attempt at German sublimity I ever saw.' And now, if you are not tired out, I will finish with some specimens of criticism on works of the last generation which (whatever differences of opinion may still be afloat concerning them) enjoy at present a wide and high reputation. The articles on Wordsworth and Keats are famous in their way, but the ipsissima verba are not generally familiar. Take a few from Jeffrey's review of The Excursion (Edinburgh Review, November 1814).

'This will never do. . . . The case of Mr. Wordsworth, we presume, is now manifestly hopeless; and we give him up as altogether incurable and beyond the power of criticism, a tissue of moral

and devotional ravings, "strained raptures and fantastical sublimities "a puerile ambition of singularity engrafted on an unlucky predilection for truisms.'

In the next number, I see, is a review of Scott's Lord of the Isles,

beginning, 'Here is another genuine lay of the great Minstrel.'

that

Frank. One must own much of the Excursion is very prosaic; but that does not, of course, justify the tone of this review.

Markham. And here is the Quarterly Review, January 1819, on The Revolt of Islam. Mr. Shelley, indeed, is an unsparing imitator.' 'As a whole it is insupportably dull.' 'With minds of a certain class, notoriety, infamy, anything is better than obscurity; baffled in a thousand attempts after fame, they will make one more at whatever risk, and they end commonly, like an awkward chemist who perseveres in tampering with his ingredients, till, in an unlucky moment, they take fire, and he is blown up by the explosion.' 'A man like Mr. Shelley may cheat himself. . . finally he sinks like lead to the bottom, and is forgotten. So it is now in part, so shortly will it be entirely with Mr. Shelley:-if we might withdraw the veil of private life, and tell what we now know about him, it would be indeed a disgusting picture that we should exhibit, but it would be an unanswerable comment on our text.'

Now a few flowers of criticism from Mr. Gifford's review of Endymion, a poem, in the Quarterly Review, April 1818. Mr. Keats (if that be his real name, for we almost doubt that any man in his senses would put his real name to such a rhapsody.' "The author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt; but he is more unintelligible, almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and absurd than his prototype.' 'At first it appeared to us that Mr. Keats had been amusing himself, and wearing out his readers with an immeasurable game at boutsrimés; but, if we recollect rightly, it is an indispensable condition at this play, that the rhymes when filled up shall have a meaning; and our author, as we have

already hinted, has no meaning.' The reviewer ends thus: 'But enough of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his simple neophyte. If anyone should be bold enough to purchase this "Poetic Romance," and so much more patient than ourselves as to get beyond the first book, and so much more fortunate as to find a meaning, we entreat him to make us acquainted with his success; we shall then return to the task which we now abandon in despair, and endeavour to make all due amends to Mr. Keats and to our readers.'

Benison. You remember Byron's kind remarks on the same subject? In a letter from Ravenna, October 20, 1820, he writes, "There is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables that I am ashamed to look at them.' 'Why don't they review and praise Solomon's Guide to Health? it is better sense, and as much poetry as Johnny Keats'." 'No more Keats, I entreat, flay him alive; if some of you don't, I must skin him myself. There is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the manikin.'

Markham. The Quarterly in March 1828 had another generous and appreciative article beginning-'Our readers have probably forgotten all about "Endymion, a Poem," and the other works of this young man [Mr. John Keats], and the all but universal roar of laughter with which they were received some ten or twelve years ago.'

But now enough. Only I should like to read you just one thing more, which is less known, and presents, perhaps, the extreme example of literary misjudgment, by a man of true literary genius Thomas De Quincey's elaborate review of Carlyle's translation of Wilhelm Meister, in the London Magazine for August and September 1824. Not the basest of Egyptian superstition, not Titania under enchantment, not Caliban in drunkenness, ever shaped to themselves an

idol more weak or hollow than modern Germany has set up for its worship in the person of Goethe.' A blow or two from a few vigorous understandings will demolish the 'puny fabric of babyhouses of Mr. Goethe.' For the style of Goethe 'we profess no respect,' but it is much degraded in the translation, on which the reviewer expends many choice epithets of contempt. The work is totally without interest as a novel,' and abounds with 'overpowering abominations.' 'Thus we have made Mr. Von Goethe's novel speak for itself. And whatever impression it may leave on the reader's mind, let it be charged upon the composer. If that impression is one of entire disgust, let it not be forgotten that it belongs exclusively to Mr. Goethe.'

The reviewer is annoyed to think that some discussion may still be necessary before Mr. Goethe is allowed to drop finally into oblivion.

Benison. You have not quoted any of Professor Wilson's trenchant Blackwoodisms against the Cockney School."'

Markham. It did not seem worth while. All the bragging and bullying has long ceased to have any meaning.

Frank. And Maga's' own pet poets, where are they?

You

Benison. Let echo answer. might easily, Markham, bring together some specimens of misapplied eulogy-of praise loud and lavish, given (and not by foolish or insincere voices) to names and works which proved to have no sort of stability. Meanwhile, many thanks for your Curiosities.

Frank here, whom I half suspect of a tendency to authorship, may take a hint not to care too much for censure or praise, but do his work well, be it little or great, and, as Schiller says: werfe es schweigend in die unendliche Zeit, -'cast it silently into everlasting time.'

may here be of interest to know that for centuries there had subsisted in the North of Europe a school of wood-carvers; not merely a few scattered men occupied on figure-heads for the ships which sail from Copenhagen and other ports of the Baltic-a handicraft which, as we have seen, yielded but a precarious livelihood to the old and the young Thorwaldsen-but a considerable body of artisans, or artists in wood, who went to the primeval pine forests of Norway, Sweden and Northern Russia, felled timber, sawed planks, carved barge-boards, lintels, and rude but picturesque furniture for wooden houses and wooden churches.

The history of art throughout the world, whether on the banks of the Nile, of the Tigris and Euphrates, in the states of Ancient Greece, or in Rome, is indissolubly identified with the materials found on the spot. Granite, sand-stone, brick-clays, marbles, have severally determined in no small degree the specific form of national arts. The granite and primary rocks which bound the iron coasts of Scandinavia are too difficult of workmanship to enter largely into the constructive or plastic arts. Hence, resource has naturally been had to the pine forests. The International Exhibition of Paris proved how woodcarving is turned to secular as well as to sacred uses throughout Scandinavia; and the Exhibition at St. Petersburg in 1870, both in its structure and contents, gave further illustration to an art which, if rude and primitive, has claim to nationality. The traveller in these latitudes finds himself not in the stone period' or 'the iron period,' but in what may be termed 'the wood period.' Villages are of wood, churches are of wood, and when he enters a museum such as that of 'Northern Antiquities' in Christiania, he discovers the historic basis, in a long line of descent, for this art

born of the forest. At least as far back as the thirteenth century, are doors from churches and chairs from houses, carved with dragons, runic knots, and other grotesque devices known to Northern antiquaries.

This slight digression may be brought within the argument by one or two brief remarks. First that Thorwaldsen was true to the lineage of Scandinavian art so long as he carved, like his forefathers, in wood. Secondly, that the ambitious Dane, when he migrated to Italy and began to carve in Carrara marble, surrendered a large part of his nationality. Thirdly, that the style of Thorwaldsen in some degree remained as it had begun, 'wooden :' that Apollos, Graces, and other newly-made acquaintances, from Olympus and Parnassus, even when chiselled in finest marble, never quite threw off the stiffness and awkwardness of the wooden figure-heads carved in the Dockyard of Copenhagen.

The story of the young Dane is soon told. Thorwaldsen, at the age of eleven, entered as a free student the Academy of Arts at Copenhagen; at seventeen he gained the staall silver medal, at nineteen the large silver medal; at twenty-one he won the small gold medal, at twentythree the large gold medal. During this somewhat brilliant career, the youth's talents attracted attention; in fact, a subscription was raised, and the Danish Academy, which to this day gives generous aid to art and its professors, conferred a pension on the sculptor of promise, who was about to bring unexampled distinction on his native city. That city, when the boy Thorwaldsen walked through its streets, wore a widely different aspect from the Copenhagen which now meets the traveller's eye. It had not been devastated by the great fire; it had not been destroyed by the English fleet. Old Copenhagen was not spoilt; yet new Copenhagen had not arisen

as one of the chief art capitals in Europe. The palace of Christiansborg was not built; into the castle of Rosenborg had not been gathered the memorials of the Danish kings; the Museum of Northern Antiquities was scarcely begun; the Classic, Christian, and Ethnological collections were still scattered, or did not exist at all; the foundation was not laid of the new Frauen Kirche, now famous for Thorwaldsen's Christ and Apostles;' and of course the crowning pride of the nation's art treasures, the Thorwaldsen Museum, had scarcely a potential existence even in the imagination of the sculptor whose embryo genius must have been almost as unknown to himself as to the world at large. Copenhagen evidently had in those days few charms for Thorwaldsen. She failed to inspire him with patriotism. He left the city of his birth in 1796 with but little regret; love of country was not awakened till the weight of years warned the artist to prepare for himself a sepulchre among his people.

Thorwaldsen became severed in a double sense from the land of his birth firstly by change of domicile, secondly by the adoption of a style classic, and therefore foreign. Yet we were scarcely aware, before we examined on the spot the history of Northern art and academies during the second half of last century, how strong was the bias towards classic art given to Thorwaldsen in his early training. The so-called national movement had not set in. At the present moment there exists what is called the national party, animated by the idea that Scandinavia, including of course Denmark, ought to break loose from allegiance to classic and Italian schools, in order to fashion for itself an art true to humanity and to nature in northern latitudes. We inciine to think that the best hope for the future lies in this direction. The

school of Scandinavia in its present phase is of peasant origin; painters are for the most part the sons of sailors, fishermen, and tillers of the soil. We shall have to regret in the sequel that Thorwaldsen did not cherish with affection the Norse spirit. The special point, however, is that the young sculptor, while studying in the Academy of Copenhagen, was not taught any legiti timate national art, but a bastard classic art. The French school, as

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represented by Poussin, Lebrun, David, and others, is identified with the rise of the arts in the capitals of Copenhagen and Stockholm. Sweden appeared contemporaneously with Thorwaldsen three sculptors of high renown-Sergel, Byström, and Fogelberg-artists who, in the majority of their works, showed themselves servile disciples of the prevailing classicism. In Denmark, also, the sculptor Wiedewelt gave currency to the widespread revival which, having been animated by the discoveries in Pompeii and Herculaneum, was strengthened through the teachings of Winckelmann. Thus the path wherein Thorwaldsen trod became from the very first clearly defined.

Thorwaldsen reached Rome on March 8, 1797, and so important was the event in his life's history that he was accustomed to say, 'I was born on the 8th of March, 1797; before that day I did not exist.' Goethe only a year before had written, A true new birth dates from the day I entered Rome.' John Gibson, who migrated southwards twenty years later, had like reason to date his intellectual birth from his arrival in Italy. It is interesting to read in the autobiography of the sculp tor whom we would venture to call England's Thorwaldsen, the following acknowledgment:- One of the great advantages I derived from residing in Rome was the listening to conversations on art, not only