1851, is due the credit of having taken the final step and brought 'Nature-printing' into the condition of a practical art. Under the superintendence of the director of that establishment, M. Auer, one of the overseers, Andrew Worring, overcame the technical difficulties which had hitherto attended it. The Chevalier von Heufler applied it in 1853 to the representation of the mosses of Transylvania, and this was the first botanical work illustrated by Nature-printing which has issued from the press. The Ferns' of Mr. Henry Bradbury is the second. The process as perfected by Worring included all the principal features that had been one by one brought into operation by his predecessors. The impression of the plant was taken by the roller-press upon a polished plate of lead, as in Kyhl's attempts, and the defects of this metal were avoided by obtaining from the original lead an electrotype copper fac-simile which could be used like an ordinary engraved copper-plate. A method which was much employed formerly in the illustrations of works on natural history, of applying inks of various colours to the same plate, adds to the excellence of the prints. Where there are three or four colours, as in flowers with their leaves, the darkest colour, such as that of the roots, is applied first, until each part in succession has received the appropriate tint, when the whole is printed off at once. In chromo-lithography every colour is printed separately from as many stones. In Nature-printing' the plates have an embossed or raised appearance. This is effected by placing several thicknesses of blanketing behind the paper, which is thus forced into the hollows of the copper-plate when it passes through the press. The strong relief adds greatly to the force and definition of the figures, a character often deficient in pictures printed in colours by other processes. The history which we have briefly related is drawn from the Lecture on Nature-Printing,' delivered by Mr. Henry Bradbury at the Royal Institution. He has investigated with great research the progress of the invention, and has assigned to each of the rival claimants his real contribution to the art. Mr. Bradbury has exemplified the process with a splendour equal to the care with which he has traced it. The magnificent volume on the 'Ferns of Great Britain' is due to his skill and enterprise, and he has well vindicated the fame of his countrymen in this branch of printing, and well sustained his rivalry with the Royal Press of Vienna. In turning over the beautiful plates it is hard to say which is most to be admired-the elegance and delicacy of the objects represented, the almost miraculous fidelity with which they have been reproduced, or the ingenuity and patience by which such results have been obtained. Not merely the forms, but the delicate veining of the foliage and the fruit heaps heaps on the fertile leaves, are brought clearly out; the veins, indeed, appear more distinctly than in the real objects, and in this respect are an assistance to the botanist in deciphering, as it were, the fern itself. It is no unimportant feature that these plates have been produced in a tithe of the time which would have been occupied in drawing and engraving them. The rapidity of the process may be judged from the fact that Professor von Ettigshausen and M. Pokorny have issued a large volume illustrative of the flowering plants of Austria, containing 500 folio and 30 quarto plates, representing 600 species of plants, often in several examples, and the whole have been executed in the short space of about a year and a half. As may be supposed, the representations of flowers are less perfect than those of leaves, and the ferns are, therefore, especially adapted to the method; nevertheless there is a great value in the fidelity of the general character of flowers copied by this means, and particularly in a botanical point of view, since the habit or facies of a plant is that which it is most difficult to describe in words. Though the volume on the British ferns is what the French term an ouvrage de luxe, and as such deserves a place in the drawing-room wherever a love of nature exists, it is not alone valuable for its pictorial merits. The text which accompanies the plates is written by one whose knowledge of the British ferns is surpassed by none, and whose views on their classification are just and sensible. Mr. Moore's reputation was already established by his excellent little Handbook,' but he has here been enabled to display more largely the stores of experience which he has accumulated by the constant study and long cultivation of these plants. His work will be an admirable guide to the amateur, and we cannot too strongly recommend it. A promising future lies before the art of Nature-printing,' if it can be carried further in one remaining direction, that of economy, and this, we imagine, is merely a question of time. Cheap series of prints of the British grasses, of the common trees, of noxious weeds, and the like, would be a most desirable acquisition for village and other schools, and we trust that Mr. Bradbury will apply the skill he has acquired in the art to increasing the means of diffusing an exact knowledge of familiar objects, the foundation of solid education. If the commercial success of his 'British Ferns' should induce him to render this further service, one more item, in the estimation of botanists, will be added to the value of the interesting family of plants which he may be almost said to have transplanted in their native integrity to the pages of his work. ART. ART. III.-1. Ilias. London, 1854. Milano, 1823. THE great Epic poets of the world are members of a brotherhood still extremely limited and not likely to be enlarged. It may indeed well be disputed, with respect to some of the claimants, whether they are or are not entitled to stand upon the roll. There will also be differences of opinion as to the precedence among those whose right to appear there is universally confessed. Pretensions are sometimes advanced under the influence of temporary or national partialities, which the silent action of the civilised mind of the world effectually puts down. Among these there could be none more obviously untenable than that set up on behalf of Milton in the celebrated Epigram of Dryden, which seemed to place him at the head of the poets of the world, and made him combine the great qualities of Homer and of Virgil. Somewhat similar ideas were broached by Cowper in his Table Talk, in lines which, as they are less familiarly remembered, may be quoted here: 'Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared, But he is also subject to undue depreciation, as well as flattered by extravagant worship. We ourselves have been assured in a company composed of Professors of a German University, ardent admirers of Shakespeare, that within the sphere of their knowledge Milton was only regarded as of equal rank with Klopstock. It is not, we trust, national vanity or religious prejudice, nor is it the mere wonder inspired by the wide range of his attainments and performances, which makes us claim that he should be numbered in the first class of epic poets-in that class of which Homer is the head, distinguished before all competitors by a clear and even a vast superiority. It would be difficult to institute any satisfactory comparison between Milton and Homer; so different, so wanting in points of contact are the characters partly of the men, but much more of their works. Perhaps the greatest and the most pervading merit of the Iliad is its fidelity and vividness as a mirror of man and of the visible sphere in which he lived, with its infinitely varied imagery both actual and ideal; while that which most excites our admiration in Milton is the elasticity and force of genius by which he has travelled beyond that sphere, and bodied forth forth to us new worlds in the unknown, peopled with inhabitants so immeasurably different from our own race. Homer's task was one which admitted of and received what we may call a perfect accomplishment; Milton's was an undertaking beyond the strength of man, incapable of anything more than faint adumbration, and one of which the more elevated the spectator's point of view, the more keenly he must find the defects glare upon him. The poems of Milton give us reason to think that his conceptions of character were masculine and powerful; but the subject did not admit of their being really tested. A comparison between Milton and Dante would be somewhat more practicable, but it would not accord with the composition of the group, which we shall here attempt to present, and which has Homer for its centre. Again, Dante might far better than Milton be compared with Homer; for while he is in the Purgatorio and Paradiso more heavenly than Milton, he is also throughout the Divina Commedia truly and profoundly human. He is incessantly conversant with the nature and the life of man; and though he draws in outline only, yet by the strength and depth of his touch he has produced figures, for example, Francesca and Ugolino, that have as truly become the common property of mankind as Achilles and Ulysses, as Lear and Hamlet. Still the theological basis and the extraterrene theatre of Dante's poem remove him to a great distance from Homer, from whom he seems to have derived little, and with whom we may therefore feel assured he could have been but little acquainted. The poets, whom it is most natural to compare with Homer, are those who have supplied us in the greatest abundance with points of contact between their own orbits and his, and who at the same time are such manifest children of genius as to entitle them to the honour of being worsted in such a conflict. These conditions we presume to be most clearly fulfilled by Virgil and Tasso; and we will begin with the elder of the pair. Perhaps Chapman has gone too far when he says 'Virgil hath nothing of his own, but only elocution; his invention, matter, and form, being all Homer's.' * Yet no small part of this sweeping proposition can undoubtedly be made good. With an extraordinary amount of admitted imitation and of obvious similarity on the surface, the Æneid stands, as to almost every fundamental particular, in the strongest contrast with the Iliad. As to metre, figures, names, places, persons and times, the two works, where they do not actually concur, stand in as near relations one to another as seem to be attainable without absolute Vol. 101.-No. 201. *Commentary on Il., ii. G identity identity of subject; yet we doubt whether any two great poems can be named which are so profoundly discordant upon almost every point that touches their interior spirit-upon everything that relates to the truth of our nature, to the laws of thought and action, and to veracity in the management of the higher subjects, such as history, morality, polity, and religion. The immense powers of Virgil as a poet had been demonstrated before he wrote the Æneid. He had shown their full splendour in the Georgics; though the 60s, or (so to speak) the heart, even of that great work was touched with paralysis by his Epicurean and self-centering philosophy. The Eneid does not bear a fainter impression of his genius. The beauty and majesty of its verse, the imposing splendour of its most elaborate delineations, the power of the author in unfolding, when he strives to do it, the resources of passion, and even perhaps the skill which he has shown in the general construction of his plot, cannot be too highly praised. But while its general nature as an epic (for the epic poem is pre-eminently ethical) brought his defects into fuller view, the particular object he proposed to himself was fatal to the attainment of the very highest excellence. While Homer sang for national glory, the poem of Virgil is toned throughout to a spirit of courtierlike adulation. No muse, however vigorous, can maintain an upright gait under so base a burden. And yet, in regard to its external form, the Æneid is perhaps, as a whole, the most majestic poem that the European mind has in any age produced. We often hear of the lofty march of the Iliad; but though its versification is always appropriate and therefore never mean, it only rises into stateliness, or into a terrible sublimity, when Homer has occasion to brace his energies for an effort. He is invariably true to his own conception of the bard,* as one who should win and delight the soul of the hearer; and so, when he has strung himself, like a bow, for some great passage of his action, 'has brought the string to his breast, the iron to the bow,' and has hit his mark, he unbends himself again. Thus he ushers in with true grandeur the marshalling of the Greek army in the Second Book, partly by the invocation of the Muses, and partly by an assemblage of no less than six consecutive similes, which describe respectively the flash of the Greek arms, the resounding tramp, the swarming numbers, the settling down of the ranks as they form the line, the busy marshalling by the commanders, the majesty of Agamemnon pre-eminent among them. Having done this he sets himself about the Catalogue, with no contempt indeed of poetical embellishment by epithets, and with an occasional * Od., xvii. 385. |