to maintain the contrary. And yet Burns was looked upon by the dilettanti of his time simply as a clever improvable creature, who might possibly be drilled by cultivation into a poet of that school of which Dr Blacklock was nearly the last specimen. Where had he addicted himself to the Chloe and Strephon platitudes, from which indeed he made rather a narrow escape-would have been his fame? The secret of his success was this; that he addressed himself to the natural feelings, emotions, and thoughts which are common to the peer and the peasantto all who are not brutalised by ut ter ignorance and debauchery-to all who are emphatically men, and who have not abandoned their humanity. Avoiding alike dark allegories and sparkling conceits, he strove to follow nature in thought and in expression; and in consequence he has achieved a popularity almost unexampled for the wideness of its range. But-say the dilettanti-education, and artistic education too, is required in order to appreciate art. Indeed! Let us select the instance of a Highland landscape, not as transferred to canvass, but as any one may see it, starting from Edinburgh or Glasgow, for little more than the charge of a pound sterling to cover the whole expenses of the trip. You stand upon a bridge spanning a burn which leaps down through the rocks in a hundred waterfalls to the loch, under a canopy of the bursting sycamore and weeping birch fresh with the first green gladsomeness of the spring. Before you lies the loch, not dead as the days of summer, but rippled by the breath of the morning breeze, which fills the sail of yon little boat steering towards the Ladye's Isle, and sends it through the water dancing like a maiden in her glee. There are the islands-four, five, perhaps twenty in view, for they so overlap each other that the eye can hardly distinguish where one ends and where another begins; but each, be sure, has its own especial beauty, and is recognisable by its own features, just as you will find in a human sisterhood, where it is difficult to award the palm. One island is overby a grove of stately beech-trees, hich the sward is blue with blossoms of the hyacinth; another is dark with pines, which all through the winter have maintained their solemn hue, and are only now relenting from their gloom under the influence of the warm and the wooing wind; a third is grown over with oak coppice, and hazels kindling into bloom, with frequent tufts of primroses sheltering below; a fourth is green as emerald, but bears no tree, for the sheep are nibbling over its pasture, and down among the rocks, and in the dried bent grass, the seagulls are brooding upon their nests. Pardon us for our impatience in taking you to the islands-which, indeed, we only ask you just now to contemplate from afar. You see how they blend together, harmonious from their very variety; and yonder, on the opposite side, are the curved bays, and the cottage smokes, and the climbing woods, and, above them all, the stupendous Cruachan, upon whose forehead rests a film of cloud. Mark that landscape-mark it well-and then ask yourselves whether artistic education is required in order to comprehend its beauty? There can be but one answer. Well, then, let that scene be transferred as carefully and truthfully as may be to canvass-let us suppose that as perfect a transcript as colouring can effect is made-and will it not give as much delight to the uneducated spectator as the real scene which he has gazed upon, allowing for the necessary difference between reality and verisimilitude? We apprehend that to be indisputable. So with figures and grouping—what pleases the eye and rivets the attention in life, must produce the same effect when faithfully represented. The first question which every man-be his accomplishments or acquirements what they may asks himself, when he contemplates a picture bearing to be a representation of scenery or life, is this-Is that picture natural? If unnatural, he is justified in passing away from it at once. If, in his judgment, natural, then there is much scope for criticism, and means of testing the amount of genius or talent of the painter. Because a painter may be quite natural, and still fail to please. For example, he may select subjects which are in themselves disgusting or intensely vulgar, and may portray them accurately enough—but the ordinary taste Often of mankind revolts from the copy, as it would revolt from the original. Vulgar painting is very hideous and detestable, not only to the higher and richer classes, but to those in humbler circumstances, who have a singularly acute discrimination in such matters, and know, almost instinctively, when the line of propriety is transgressed. Or the painter may, through want of skill or genuine feeling, choose to depict his subject in a disagreeable or unfavourable point of view. and often, at home and abroad, have we contemplated a sunset amongst scenery, which, could we have transferred it adequately to canvass, would have made our fortune in art. Conscious of our own deficiency in representative power, we have been fain to linger at the casement, and breathe out the last puffs of our cigar, in admiration of the apparition of the ascending moon. But on the next morning, what saw we ? The mountain opposite, the lake between, the fir-sprinkled or glacier-streaked mountain, had all disappeared; and down the valley drove a thick volume of fog, enough to have broken the heart of Macintosh, ere he had secured his patent. That over, came a drizzle; and then a clear rain, accompanied by the gabbling of hundreds of exulting ducks; and, looking from the same window which we occupied the night before, it was impossible to recognise the identity of the spot. That is the case all the world over. We like what is bright and sunnywe detest what is damp and lugubrious. There is undoubtedly a grandeur and awe in the conflict of the elements; and, in painting, storm-scenes may be brought in with overpowering effect, if strictly suited to the nature of the scenery selected for the purpose. There lies a great deal in association. For example, we remember that, a good many years ago, there was exhibited in our Scottish Academy a picture by Horatio MacCulloch, an artist who requires no compliment beyond the mention of his name. The subject was Glencoe. You looked up the valley in the lazy light of a summer afternoon, the clouds appearing to rest upon the distant summits in pure listlessness, and reddeer gazing in the front. We speak of it simply from recollection, and we admired it greatly; but in the same Exhibition, if we recollect aright, there was another picture of Glencoe by John C. Brown, an associate of the Academy, in which the valley was depicted in the grey of a winter morning, with the fog clearing from the snowbesprinkled bills, and lit up with the conflagration of the houses of the Macdonalds, the victims of that foul and perfidious conspiracy. In giving a story to his picture or landscape, Brown did what very often Claude Lorraine and even Poussin failed in doing; for these great artists, after having made their landscape, sought about for a historical subject through which they might give it a name; whereas Mr Brown, in the higher and finer spirit of art, gave the poetry of association to the object which he selected, in its peculiar phase of light and shadow, to depict. The first criterion of excellence we take to be verisimilitude; that is, accurate correspondence to nature. The second lies in the associations which the painter is able to excite in the minds of the beholders. Many good painters reach the first stage; but it requires genius and thought and inspiration in order to compass the other. In the present exhibition of the Scottish Academy there is a picture by John Faed, which strongly illustrates our meaning. It is called "Reason and Faith," and is said to be an allegory; but, with all our admiration for the beauty of the design and colouring, we cannot accept it as such. It is simply an exquisitely-drawn and elaborately-finished picture of a youth and maiden-the former apparently unconscious that he is within reach of the fangs of an enormous speckled serpent -the latter blind, and groping her way. It conveys no sort of ideal impression to the mind, any more than does the absurd paragraph from the Edinburgh Review, which seems to have suggested the work. We are free to confess that allegory is not a form of composition for which we have any especial liking-still there are allegories, ancient and modern, which have deservedly commanded the admiration of the world. But then the allegory must be a just one, and its application evident; which we venture to think, with deference, is not the case in the present instance. It is rather a new thing to tell us that Reason, when personified, should be represented as deaf, and that Faith should be deprived of eyesight! Hitherto we have understood that it was emphatically the function of Reason to hear, because, without hearing, there can be no reply; and that Faith would cease to be faith, if it lost sight of the glittering of the eternal Day-star. Also we cannot clearly comprehend why Faith should have become all of a sudden peripatetic, and adopted this strange freak of wandering about the world in company with Reason, whose unfortunate infirmity precludes the possibility of conversation. Spenser, the greatest allegorist of our country, represents Faith as an inmate of the House of Holinesse : "Thus as they gan of sundrie things devise, And round about her head did shine like heaven's light." "She was araied all in lilly white, And in her right hand bore a cup of gold, And in her other hand she fast did hold Wherein darke things were writt, hard to be understood." Such was the conception of the poet; and we certainly think that Mr Faed would have done better by adhering to it, than in attempting to embody the vague crudities of the reviewer. At the risk of being set down as partisans and promoters of what is contemptuously termed "low art," we assert our position and profess our belief that artistic education is not necessary for the due appreciation of a picture. As a corollary, we add that a picture which fails to interest the great mass of spectators cannot be one of a high class, nor can it possess real merit. We are not ignorant of the extraordinary effects which can be produced by colour, nor of the tricks for they are little more -which sometimes are resorted to by clever artists for the sake of attract So ing notice. In poetry and in music we are accustomed to the same capriccios, and deal with them goodhumouredly, because we know that their effect can only be ephemeral. Pre-Raphaelitism was simply a delusion of this kind, calculated to astonish, and, from its novelty, to excite for a time a good deal of attention; but it is now, if not extinct, at least greatly on the decline. The truth is, that the pre-Raphaelites, as they called themselves, were very far from being discoverers of any new principle. All that was good in their system was already known and practised-the absurdities, exaggerations, and ridiculous parade of minutiœ, we admit to have been their own. long as the novelty lasted, the pictures of Messrs Millais and Hunt were gazed at by crowds of curious spectators; for, like the ancient Athenians, the Londoners" and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing; " but the charm departed with the gloss. Let it not be supposed that we are insensible to the merits of either of the gentlemen mentioned above, or that we deny them the p03session of accomplishment and powers greatly above the average. We admit their genius, but we maintain it to have been misdirected. Remarkable they must be, whatever theories of art they may adopt; but they cannot expect, by persevering in a false style, to gain a favourable verdict from the public. Genius is a term much abused and much misunderstood. In poetry it has been preferred as an apology for every kind of extravagance and eccentricity; and the language of the apologists is as decided and peremptory as if no rules of criticism were applicable to the productions of genius. So is it in the other arts; and in consequence of this silly and preposterous adulation, many men who might have risen to real eminence have been seduced into expending their whole energies in vague and unsatisfactory efforts. Pegasus, say the indiscriminate worshippers of genius, will not submit to the yoke. They got this notion out of one of Schiller's ballads, and have ever since been harping upon it; but the fact is that they know no more about Pegasus than they do about the pedigree of Eclipse. Let them revert to the classics, and they will find that Pegasus was in reality a most tractable creaturethat he was trained in the ring by Minerva-was used as a cavalry charger by Bellerophon-and finally became the pet of the Muses. And yet some wiseacres would have us regard him in the light of a celestial mustang! Metaphors are dangerous things for the unpractised. Genius may be not inaptly typified by a steed; but who is the rider or the charioteer? Certainly the poet himself, who, if he cannot control the motions of his charger, is in infinite danger of sharing the fate of Phæton. Not the horses of the Sun, nor those of Achilles, could be trusted without the bit and rein; for the more fiery the animal is, the stronger should be the hand, and the steadier the judgment of the master. And now for our application of this preamble. Pre-eminent among modern artists for richness of fancy, a delicacy of colouring almost ethereal, and deep poetic feeling, stands Joseph Noel Paton; and never, perhaps, was there a reputation more honourably won, or more cheerfully or cordially acknowledged than his. His two magnificent pictures of the "Quarrel and the "Reconciliation" of Oberon and Titania, are less the reflex of the genius of Shakespeare as exhibited in the delicious Midsummer Night's Dream, than new and exquisite creations of the fancy of the painter, Indeed, the amount of fancy, both rich and varied, which Mr Paton has thrown into these works, is quite extraordinary; and notwithstanding the number of the figures, the quaintness of the details, and the multiplicity of the grouping, such has been the skill of the artist that these pictures have not suffered in general effect. Mr Paton is free of fairy-land; nor, were he to sleep ever so long in the Athenian forest or beneath the Eildon tree, could he present us with more beautiful revelations than those which he has already received and depicted. Some critics, we remember, who had a predilection for impasto, rather objected to the extreme delicacy of Mr Paton's tinting, which, though admirably suited to such subjects as the above, would, they hinted, be entirely out of place in subjects of a graver nature. That was, in fact, no criticism at all; for criticism could not begin until Mr Paton had tried his hand on a new class of subjects. They admitted that his style of colouring was appropriate to the subject he had selected-and what more could they have desired? Others insinuated an opinion that Mr Paton, with all his command of fancy, would not be able to produce a picture of a higher and more emotional class-arguing, we presume, that, because the painter was rich in fancy, he must necessarily be deficient in pathetic expression. Such men are utter sceptics in the universality of genius; and it is they who attempt to yoke Pegasus to one pair of harrows. It would be quite as sensible to argue, after a perusal of Midsummer Night's Dream, that Shakespeare could not, by possibility, have written Hamlet or Macbeth. Mr Paton, however, very soon gave a practical answer to both classes of critics. His "Vision of Dante," and not less his picture of the dead maiden, of which we cannot at this moment recall the specific name, proved that he was master in sombre and subdued, as well as in varied colouring; and proved, moreover, that the measure of his imaginative and pathetic powers was not inferior to that of his fancy. Indeed, we are disposed to think that the "Vision of Dante " is, upon the whole, the finest and most powerful work which he has yet executed. But now we feel ourselves compelled to take the critical field, and, in all honesty, good faith, and love, to warn Mr Paton against launching into mysticism, and attempting to express, through the more sensuous art of painting, ideas which even poetry, with all its superior subtlety, is inadequate to convey. He, too, has fallen into the snare of allegory; and he must forgive us if we state our deliberate opinion-by no means quickly or rashly formed-that the picture which he has now exhibited, and which he terms "The Pursuit of Pleasure-a Vision of Human Life," is quite unworthy of his genius. Were Mr Paton other than he is, we might use gentler terms; but we esteem him too highly to be over-scrupulous when we think him in a position of danger. Whatever may be the amount of ad miration which an artist of his eminence is sure to receive from friends, whose partiality may sometimes, not unnaturally, give a bias to their judgment, we trust that he will at least listen patiently to what we have to say, and give us credit for sincerity, if he cannot acquiesce in our views. It may be a hard thing to be told, and a harder task to convince oneself, that the labour of more than a year has been misapplied; still, there never lived the artist yet-and the same remark applies to literature-who, in the course of his career, was not tempted to enter some path, which, if pursued, would have ended in disappointment; and Mr Paton can have no right to suppose himself the solitary exception. We have already indicated our opinion, that allegory is the most dangerous thing which a painter can attempt to deal with. Rubens tried it, and utterly failed; indeed, we could wish, for the reputation of Rubens, that all his allegories were defaced and obliterated henceforward from the view of the world; for they only exist to give a false and debasing idea of his really wonderful powers. Observe, that allegorical painting and painting from an allegory are by no means necessarily to be confounded. Some allegories, such as Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, have become as much poems, or tales invested with the elements of poetical belief, as the Iliad, the Eneid, or the Orlando of Ariosto; and these afford fair scope for the talents of the painter. In fact, we have, in this Exhibition, a picture of extraordinary merit, by an artist, Mr Alexander Green, who as yet is little known to the public, entitled "Christian and Faithful at Vanity Fair." We may be allowed to remark, in passing, our surprise that neither of the Art Associations in Edinburgh and Glasgow have purchased that picture; and we hope that their expenditure this year may not have been so large as to preclude the possibility of considering whether it would not be creditable to the country to include this really fine work of art, upon which an immensity of pains has been bestowed, among the number which they choose for distribution. An engraving from this picture would, we are sure, be im mensely popular. This, however, by the way; though it would have been but justice to Mr Green had we referred to his picture separately. The allegory, in such cases, ceases to be an allegory at all-it becomes the representation of a work of acknowledged and recognised fiction; which, in the second, if not the first stage of poetical belief, is tantamount to a reality. But allegory has many shades. Take the first canto of Spenser, and there is no difficulty, nor want of interest, epically derived, in portraying Una and the Red-Cross Knight on their pilgrimage or adventure. In the beginning, you have the human interest, albeit there is an allegory underneath. But the moment you come to special allegory, where are you? Let any man deliberately read the fourth canto of the first book of the Faery Queen - we allude to the description of the House of Prideand, despite the admiration which Spenser's extraordinary melody, graphic power, and great genius must command, he can hardly reconcile himself to the phantasmagoria exhibited in the procession and parade of the abstract vices; and if that be the case in poetry, how is it possible to suppose that such ideas can be adequately represented in painting? Poetry and painting ought to go hand-in-hand. We have already expressed our opinion as to the genius and powers of Mr Paton-would he venture to embody Spenser's procession from the "House of Pride?" How would he contrive to delineate such a figure as this? "And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony, Deformed creature, on a filthie swyne; His belly was up-blown with luxury, Andeke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne; And like a crane his neck was long and fyne; With which he swallowed up excessive feast, For want whereof poore people oft did pyne; And all the way, most like a brutish beast He spued up his gorge, that all did him detest." Or how would he deal with this other portrait ? "And next to him malicious Envy rode |