No. VI. (A continuation of the Parallel between Poetry and Painting.) Pictoribus atque Poetis Quidlibet audendi semper fuit æqua potestas, HORATIUS. Poets and Painters ever were allowed COLMAN. THE masters of the pencil often take their ideas, and borrow the passions they would exhibit, from the writings of the poet; while the painter is himself but the copyist, and the poet the original. 'Tis observed of Raphael, the most famous in his art, that he formed the Jupiter in his Psyche, by the admirable description of that deity in Virgil, when Venus addressed her petition to him. Nor is the poet, in his turn, less obliged to the great pieces of the painter, who often sits to the poet, while he forms his ideas and, inspired by the lively and passionate figures expressed in colours, translates the painter, and turns the picture into verse. The sister arts, to heighten their images, and strikę our minds with greater force, agree to represent human qualities as persons, and to endow them with their peculiar properties. They describe virtues in the form of goddesses, and vices in that of furies, and give to each their emblematical distinctions. Thus Justice holds her sword in one hand, and her balance in the other; while Fame is provided with wings and a silver trumpet. And thus the portraits of Sin and Death, as animated beings, are admirably drawn by Spenser, and afterwards by Milton, to move detestation and terror. The heroic pen and pencil equally conspire to preserve to men the memory of their illustrious progenitors, to record their great deeds, to rescue their names from oblivion, and, in spite of mortality and the tomb, to continue the existence of heroes and heroines; they annihilate intervening time, and make past ages in a manner present, that the living and the dead may converse together, and that the virtues and achievements of ancestors may inspire their sons with generous resolutions to imitate their great example. To be thus transmitted to posterity as objects of praise and admiration, is that allur ing idea of immortality, by the impulse of which so many great spirits have in all ages been animated and pushed on to the most hazardous enterprizes. As it is the property of heroic pieces of paint ing, as well as of epic poems, to excite pleasure and admiration, by setting before us the important actions of illustrious persons; so they agree in this, that in each distinct work of this kind of Painting and Poetry, there is but one principal agent, and but one chief action, to which all the other real or imaginary characters in a regular subordination must be referred. If this relation and connection of the characters and the under actions is not preserved, that is, if they do not conspire to carry on and influence the main design, the unity in each is broken. It is the end of each of these species, not only to move the passions, but to inspire generous sentiments, and convey to the mind moral and divine instruction. Besides the admirable pieces of devotion which are frequent in foreign countries, who can view in our own the cartoons of Raphael, and see Ananias struck dead in an instant by the breath of an apostle, and not receive awful impressions of divine vengeance, and of indignation at the guilt of perjury? If any man cannot find enough in Elymas the sorcerer, deprived in a moment of his sight, and groping for his way at noon-day, to reverence the power and justice of the Supreme Being, he must himself be another miracle of intellectual blindness. Is it possible to observe the silent eloquence, earnest aspect, and devout air of St. Paul preaching, or to contemplate the various shapes and characters of attention, contrition, shame, confusion, admiration, and complacency, so perfectly expressed in the several faces of the audience, and not be touched with the like passions? I shall dismiss this head, when I have observed that the painter and the poet have many peculiar advantages to make men wiser and better, by conveying excellent sentiments, and exciting generous passions; yet the spectators of one, and the readers of the other, are for the most part so entirely taken up with the art and beauty of the pieces, that they seldom attend to the moral instruction; whence it comes to pass, that these masters have many admirers, and but few converts. The pieces of great artists, by the improvements they receive from time, are heightened in their value; and many painters have been admired and applauded in after-ages, who were neglected and decried while they lived. Corregio's pictures are now celebrated among the most excellent works of that art; yet in his life-time they were so little regarded, that the author wanted bread, with one of the best pencils of Europe in his hand. Mr. Dryden, in his verses to Sir Godfrey Kneller, has beautifully expressed the advan tages that good pictures receive from age: For Time shall with his ready pencil stand, Retouch your figures with his ripening hand, This last observation indeed cannot be exactly applied to poetry, since time often obscures rather than beautifies the diction of the poet; yet the other part of the parallel holds; and it is a common remark, that many eminent poets are less valued by their contemporaries than by posterity. There cannot be a more evident demonstration of this, than the fate of our great Milton, whose poem, which is justly now acknowledged to be the most admirable production of British genius, lay many years, to the great dishonour of that age, unread, and little respected. After ages, who are free from the delusions of faction, envy, and personal dislike, will impartially judge of poems, and decree them the esteem due to that merit, which the passions of the times in which the authors lived would not suffer contemporaries |