though it might impeach his judgment or prudence. He was, in fact, wiser, and saw more of the matter, than any one of his neighbours, who might advise him to the contrary; but he was not so wise as the collective experience or common sense of mankind on the subject, which his more cautious friends merely echoed. It is only the man of genius who has any right or temptation to make a fool of himself, by setting up his own unsupported opinion against that of the majority. He feels himself superior to any individual in the crowd, and therefore rashly undertakes to act in defiance of the whole mass of prejudice and opinion opposed to him. It is safe and easy to go in the stage-coach from London to Salisbury: but it would require great strength, boldness, and sagacity, to go in a straight line across the country." A CABINET OF PORTRAITS.-NO. I. -"Adde Vultum habitumque hominis: quem tu vidisse beatus, HOR. Sat. II. iv. 91-93. A Venetian General of the name of Magius was long exposed to the calumny of his fellow-citizens, because he had failed to conduct to a successful issue a particular expedition, which they had confided to his command. Instead of composing a long memoir, which might never have been read, in justification of his proceedings, he employed the first artists of his day, and among others Paul Veronese, to execute on vellum a series of highly finished miniature paintings, descriptive of the adventures and sufferings, which he had endured in endeavouring to accomplish the enterprise with which he had been intrusted. He published these paintings in a small volume of eighteen pages, and thus placed before the eyes of his countrymen a short and striking sketch of the difficulties, which first impeded his progress, and finally prevented his success in the arduous service upon which he had been despatched. Those who wish to learn more respecting this specimen of pictorial biography, may satisfy themselves by referring to the last series of Mr. D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature. I allude to it for no other purpose, than to justify myself in writing the portraiture of some of those great and illustrious characters, who have achieved for themselves a glorious immortality in the memory of mankind. If the artist be permitted to usurp the functions of the author, there can be no just reason, why the author may not in his turn usurp the functions of the artist. Indeed, as books can be copied to any extent, at pleasure, by the invention of printing, and as each successive copy is quite as valuable as the original, a portrait, which it is desirable to perpetuate, is more likely to reach posterity by means of the author's pen, than it is by means of the artist's pencil. Colours fade, and canvass perishes; but the press flourishes in immortal vigour, and gives to every image, which it once marks as its own, an eternity of duration, which cannot be attained by any other process. Almost every popular work of the last century contained, opposite to the title-page, a picture of the author's person, with a few dry distiches underneath it, declaring that those, who were desirous of seeing the picture of the author's mind, must look for it in the pages of the work which he then published. The practice has, of late years, fallen into disuse,-perhaps, because authors, improving in modesty as well as in intelligence, have become more ashamed than they were formerly, of printing themselves by the side of their productions; but in the time of Addison it was so prevalent, as to induce him to remark, that a reader seldom perused a book with pleasure, until he knew whether the writer of it was a black or a fair man, of a mild or a choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like instructive and interesting nature. The existence of this curiosity in the mind of the public is proved, beyond all disputing, by the extraordinary pains which have been taken in all ages to gratify it. Every writer of biography, from the time of Tacitus down to that of Moore, has felt his work to be incomplete, until he has added to the account of his hero's parentage and education, an account of his personal appearance, and of his bodily defects and accomplishments. Critics have descended from their stilts to describe in plain and intelligible language, the weak and perishable frame in which the soul of genius took up its mortal abode; and even moralists have not disdained to relax the austerity of their lucubrations, by registering information of a similar character. On the path which has thus been opened to the public, it is my intention now to tread; and I trust that, before I arrive at the termination of it, I shall be able to form, from the detached pictures which my literary predecessors have left of their contemporaries, such a cabinet of written miniatures, as will repay me for the trouble of collecting, and my reader for the trouble of examining it. The subject, which I have proposed for this paper, is so extensive in itself, and so various in its ramifications, that I scarcely know from what point I ought to commence the discussion of it. It strikes me, however, that it will not be inconvenient, before I proceed further, to bestow a short notice upon some of those illustrious personages, who have displayed more than ordinary care to transmit to posterity a well-finished resemblance of their form and features, to contrast with their finical and preposterous anxiety the more than Mahometan reluctance of others, to see an image of themselves, traced out upon canvass, even by the most accurate and intelligent artists,-and to show therefrom, that we should have had no correct delineation of either of these two classes of men, had it not been for the pen and ink sketches, which contemporary writers have incidentally drawn of them. In the first of the two classes, the "Madman of Macedonia" stands pre-eminent. The edict, by which he prohibited any painter, except Apelles, from taking a picture, and any sculptor, except Lysippus, from executing a statue of him, is too well known to need farther mention. It is not, perhaps, equally notorious, that the issuing of a similar edict was once gravely meditated, though subsequently abandoned, by one of the ablest sovereigns of our own country,— I mean by Queen Elizabeth. The auecdote, singular as it may appear, rests upon authority which it is impossible to question. In the Archæologia of the Society of Antiquaries, (Vol. ii. p. 169,) there is a copy of a proclamation, dated 1563, in the hand-writing of Mr. Secretary Cecil, which forbids " all manner of persons to draw, paint, grave, or pourtrayt her Majesty's personage or visage for a time, until by some perfect pattern or example the same may be by others followed." Even some of her wisest successors have not been free from this miserable vanity. If we are to believe Pope, "Charles to late time to be transmitted fair Louis the Fourteenth was actuated by similar feelings, and would not permit either his poets to speak of him, or his painters to draw him, except as the handsomest man of his age and court. Even the sage philosopher of Ferney was infected with this paltry ambition, and would not sit to any but the firstrate artists, even for a silhouette of his contemptible features. I cannot help suspecting that each of these distinguished characters had such an extravagant opinion of his or her own personal beauty, as to deem it impossible for any artist of ordinary talent to form a copy of it, capable of giving an adequate idea of the grace of the prototype; and if such a notion did influence them, then I must add, that each and all of them would have acted more wisely in refusing to be painted at all than in submitting to be painted by particular artists. Indeed, there have been many celebrated persons who could not be induced by any considerations, either of friendship or interest, to suffer a picture of themselves to be taken. Porphyrius informs us, that Plotinus, a Platonic philosopher of considerable reputation, who flourished in the third century, would on no account submit to be exhibited upon canvass." Is it not sufficient," said he,* "that we have to drag about with us through life that figure, in which Nature has imprisoned our souls, but we must even leave to posterity a figure of that figure, as if it were a work that deserved admiration?" Bayle, who quotes this passage in his Dictionary, under the article of Plotinus, overwhelms it with his praise :-" Qu'il y a de grandeur dans cette pensée. Il n'y a que de petites ames qui le puissent contester." After such a declaration one cannot avoid feeling some surprise at finding that Bayle once sent a picture of himself as a present to his mother; but that surprise is somewhat diminished, upon learning that he sent it before either his soul or body had acquired full growth and maturity. It is the only picture which the world has of him, and, according to the author of his life, is so spirited a likeness that it is easy to discover in it his wit and vivacity,as easy, I take it, as to discover a hanging look in a convicted criminal. At a later period of his life he acted up to the doctrine which he preached, and would neither sit for his picture, nor allow it to be placed as a frontispiece to his Dictionary, though earnestly requested so to do by the publishers of the English translation of it. To such a proposition he confessed that he had a reluctance which he could not conquer; and he therefore implored his friends to pardon the weakness, if weakness they should be pleased to call it, which led him to send a refusal to their request. The great Dr. Barrow, who personally was a little lean fretful man, delighting much in tobacco, because he conceived that it regulated his thinking, was the slave of the same prejudice. Archbishop Tillotson relates, that no picture of him was ever made from the life, and that the effigies of him on his tomb did any thing but resemble him. Madame des Houliers, a poetess too much admired in her own day, and too little regarded in ours, had at one time very strong objections to portrait-painting, and expressed them not unpleasingly in a short poem, which she wrote on the vanity of the practice. But alas! he knows little of woman, who expects consistency in her words and actions. Before many years elapsed, Madame des Houliers, who had acquired in the interim an honourable notoriety by refusing to become the paramour of the great Condé, yielded, like weaker mortals, to the desire of being painted, and composed a second poem, retracting ali the opinions she had avowed in her first. The history of human eccentricity, which is almost as large as the volume of human nature, would, if examined closely, furnish me with many more instances to illustrate this part of my subject; but those already cited are sufficient for my purpose, and I shall proceed to show from them that the written sketch of the author is requisite to fill up deficiencies in the portrait of the artist, where a portrait does exist, and to supply it entirely, where it does not. The pictures of Alexander, which were painted by Apelles, and the statues, which were executed by Lysippus, have long since disappeared from the gaze of a world, which must otherwise have admired them; but I would venture to bet any wager, if such a bet could now be decided, that neither the pictures of the one, nor the statues of the other, contained any vestige of the wry neck and unequal shoulders of the all-conquering son of Philip. Even those, who pretend to be most careless about their personal appearance, do not love to see their bodily deformities too faithfully represented. Is it likely then, that he, who sought with eagerness pre-eminence of every description, and treated with jealous cruelty all who stood between him and the attainment of it, would have encouraged and patronized artists, who * Οὐ γὰρ ἀρκεῖ φέρειν ἃ ἡ φύσις εἴδωλον ἡμῖν περιτέθεικεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ εἰδώλου ἔιδωλον συγχωρεῖν αὐτὸν ἀξιοῦν πολυχρονιώτερον καταλιπεῖν, ὡς δη τι τῶν ἀξιοθεάτων ἔργων. Porphyrii Vila Plotin. ad init. dared to expose his want of that true proportion, which is the very essence of personal beauty? We may depend upon it, that Lysippus would not have received his treasures, nor Apelles his favourite mistress, had they not devised some method of concealing in their works the lamentable defects in his person. The historian, who survived him, could remark in safety, that the courtiers of Alexander held their necks awry to reconcile their master to his neck not sitting straight upon his shoulders; but there would have been hemp for the head and fetters for the heel of any contemporary artist, who had ventured to express by his pencil so unpalatable a truth. The same fate, in all probability, would have befallen the painter, who had dared to pourtray queen Elizabeth with the same large, high, and prominent nose, which the memoirs of her day inform us that she possessed. Had "beastly Skel. ton" never written bawdy verses for "heads of houses to quote," we should have been ignorant, that the same disgraceful distemper, which robbed Sir W. Davenant of a nose, had also robbed Cardinal Wolsey of an eye. Origi nal portraits of that proud prelate exist in considerable numbers; but not one of them exhibits his full face. The painters about the court discovered that his eminence had a blind side, and consulted their interest by concealing that discovery from the public. All the pictures which we have of him are in profile, and represent merely one side of his face,-of course not that side, which was ungraced by an eye. These facts, which speak for themselves, render further observation on this point unnecessary. He, who recollects how painters flatter in the present time, will not be unthankful for the means of detecting how, and whom they flattered in the past. Beauty has always been considered so potent and advantageous a quality, that, in acting the cicerone to my readers, I must beg leave to introduce thei first of all to those fortunate individuals, who have been most eminently gifted with it. I could quote very grave authority for the propriety of this determination, if I thought it required any other than the annunciation of my individual will and pleasure. For instance, Addison affirms, that beautiful persons have the privilege of being first regarded in ordinary conversation,an excellent reason for their being first regarded in my gallery of written portraits. Montaigne asserts, that beauty has the first place in the commerce of men,-an admirable justification for my giving it the same place in my literary speculations. Cyrus, Alexander, and Cæsar, three masters of the world, never neglected it even in affairs of the gravest importance,-á conclusive argument for its not being neglected by me, who am unfortunately the world's slave, in an affair of scarcely any importance at all. Besides, if beauty answer to any of the definitions, which philosophers have given of it,-if it be either a short-lived tyranny, acccording to Socrates, or a sovereignty that needs no military power to sustain it, according to Carneades, or a silent fraud, which imposes on the senses without the aid of language, according to Theophrastus, or a privilege of nature, which no man can gainsay, according to Aristotle, how can I withstand its influence, or withhold from it that precedence, to which the opinion of so many sages declares it to be entitled? I therefore invite my readers to join with me in contemplating the beautiful countenance of him, who undertook every bodily exercise in vogue among his countrymen, and excelled in all that he undertook,-who was by turns the greatest buffoon, the greatest debauchee, the greatest philosopher, the greatest statesman, and the greatest soldier of his time,--who, like the cameleon, was always ready to take the impression of the objects by which he was surrounded, and who thus became at once the adored, the feared, and the hated of the ochlocracy of Athens. Need I mention the name of him, who could never be persuaded to learn to play on the flute, because he was' convinced that it would disfigure his beauty,-who intrigued with the Queen of Sparta, not because he loved her, but because he was fired with the ambition of begetting a race of kings for her country,-and who risked his life to preserve that of Socrates at the battle of Delium, because Socrates had previously incurred the same danger to preserve his at the battle of Potidea? If I mention the name of Alcibiades, it is only to rescue his memory from the infamous accusation which the malignity of later ages preferred against him and his master;-an accusation of which the groundlessness is evident, from the silence which the comic poets, their contemporaries, not only unrestrained by motives of delicacy or feelings of friendship, but even instigated by ardent and long-cherished hostility, have universally preserved respecting it. The personal accomplishments of Alcibiades were of that striking nature, that they must have exalted him above the common herd of mankind, even if he had been utterly unprovided with eloquence. On the other hand, the eloquence of Cicero was so extraordinary that it must have raised him to distinction, even if he had been unprovided with personal beauty. But, as Alcibiades was gifted with more than usual eloquence, so was Cicero with more than usual beauty. Though he had a particularly long neck, his features were regular and manly, and preserved to the last, if Seneca is to be trusted, a dignity, a comeliness, a cheerfulness, and a serenity, that never failed to imprint both affection and respect. Some ignorant sculptors, misled by the etymology, which Plutarch devised for his name, have placed upon his nose an excrescence or wart in the shape of a vetch; but, as Middleton observes, the etymology is more fanciful than correct, and even, if it were otherwise, would not justify us, in the absence of all evidence upon the point, in inferring, that, along with the name, he inherited the personal defects and blemishes of his ancestors. Observe the person of his great friend and rival, Hortensius. Who can refuse admiration to its grace and beauty? And yet much of it is due to the skilful taste of his tailor, and to the exquisite cleanliness of the keeper of his wardrobe. How carelessly does that snow-white toga descend from his shoulders! and yet not a fold or wrinkle in it is the effect of accident. The size and situation of each is calculated with mathematical accuracy, and, when once fixed, cannot be altered without detracting from the general effect of the whole man. Never was any thing so artificially arranged, except his look and gestures. He has just been consulting his mirror as to the mode in which he is to wear his eyes and limbs during the coming day. I would not be in his colleague's sandals for twice ten thousand sesterces, if he should again have the misfortune to jostle him in the narrow streets, whilst he is thus made up for public exhibition. The pecuniary compensation he would demand for such an injury defies calculation. That lurking devil in his eye assures ine that no man will discompose the structure of his robe with impunity, and speaks of nothing less than capital punishment for the wretch who has the audacity to displace a solitary fold in that well-plaited and precisely settled toga. Aristotle has somewhere said, that the right of command belongs to the beautiful. To those who are inclined to admit the correctness of this proposition, no person's right to universal empire can be better founded than that of Augustus Cæsar. From the minute description which Suetonius has given of him, it is evident that he possessed an eminent degree of personal beauty. His eyes were so peculiarly clear and brilliant, that he wished to have it believed that they were gifted with divine vigour. His courtiers, on discovering this foible, confirmed their master in it by prac tising the same gross flattery towards him, which was afterwards practised The following passage is extracted from Macrobius, Saturnal. lib. 2, cap. 9, "Hortensius, vir alioquin ex professo mollis, et in præcinctu ponens omnem decorem: fuit etiam vestitu ad munditiem curioso, et, ut bene amnatus iret, faciem in speculo ponebat; ubi se intuens, togam corpori sic applicabat, ut rugas non forte, sed industriâ locatas artifex nodus constringeret, et sinus ex composito defluens nodum lateris ambiret. Is quondam cum incederet, elaboratus ad speciem, collegæ de injuriis diem dixit-quod sibi in angustiis obvius offensu fortuito structuram toga destruxerat, et capitale putavit quod in humero suo locum rugæ mutasset." Sept.VOL. XVII. NO. LXIX. |