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ancients the palm of superiority in painting as well as in sculpture. And this opinion is confirmed by what I see of these paintings from Pompeii. Looking at the excellence of the sculpture found there, and the great care and expense lavished on the public apartments in the principal houses, I think we may fairly conclude that these frescoes were not the work of mere house-painters, but of artists of some reputation; and if so, they certainly show the fashionable style of painting to have been cold, tame, and insipid, deficient in all the higher requisites of the art, and at best but a sort of coloured sculpture.

Of modern pictures the museum contains a large collection, by far the greater number of which, however, are wretchedly bad. The gallery of Capo d'Opere, as it is called, contains some good pictures, but none with the slightest pretensions to the much-abused title of a masterpiece. That title must be reserved for works like the divine Madonna, which are the bright manifestations of a high order of creative genius, the conceptions of a poet embodied and made visible by the skill of the painter. I have seen nothing equal to this Madonna of Raffaelle. When I first discovered it, in a small out-of-the-way room, for the directors of the museum do not, it would seem, think it worthy of a place in their gallery of pretended masterpieces, a thrill of admiration and delight tingled like an electric shock through every nerve. High as my expectations of Raffaelle had been raised, this heavenly picture far, very far, surpassed any thing I had hoped to see. In one instant, at one single glance, I felt his immeasurable superiority over all other painters. There are two other pictures of Raffaelle here, a Holy Family, and a portrait of Leo X. and two cardinals: the first a fine picture, but very inferior to the high poetry of the Madonna; the latter the finest specimen of portrait painting I ever saw. The bluff, corpulent, undignified old pope, and the assistant cardinals, especially one, a mean, hypocritical, sinister-looking scoundrel as ever breathed, are painted with a truth and force which are absolutely startling. I was not prepared to find Raffaelle such an excellent colourist, and so careful and exquisitely perfect in finish and detail. The scarlet cloth on the table, the velvet cape, and fur on the collar, and all the petty details of dress and ornament, are painted with a care and finish, which the most minute and pains-taking Dutchman never surpassed. Like a true artist, Raffaelle aimed at perfection, and thought no pains or labour misplaced, which were necessary to attain his end. How different are our modern artists, who seem to think carelessness almost synonymous with genius, and attention to detail unworthy of a man of talent. There are a few tolerable pictures besides these Raffaelles: a sweet pretty little Correggio, a good Annibal Caracci, a Magdelene of Guercinos, finely expressive of mild chastened sorrow and resignation, and one of Titian's, admirably painted, but coarse and vulgar, -a great, fat, blubbering, country wench.

I spent my pleasantest hours at Naples in this museum; and in taking leave of it, as I shall do to-morrow, probably never to return, the Aristides and the Madonna are the only friends I shall leave behind me, the only objects in this populous city from which I shall part with regret.

A CHAT WITH ANACREON ON BEAUTY AND HAPPINESS. We love Anacreon! The Greeks-every one of them, from the proud, rigid, bigoted, laconic Spartan, to the luxurious many-gifted Athenianinterest us beyond every other nation. We revel in their sculpture, and bow down to their dramatists; we partake of the "perpetual feasts" of Homer: but Anacreon we love; and having recently read him through, from beginning to end, with the most uninterrupted delight, we intend dotting down some of our impressions, and offering to our readers a sweet anthology-a banquet of flowers, breathing mingled perfumes, and glittering in the freshness of that morning dew which poetry sheds upon things, and which no noonday sun, no thousands of suns, can ever dry up: a bunch of flowers "beautiful exceedingly"- beautiful as the first-born to the eyes of a young mother, and as constantly to be gazed on.

"But the subject is worn out-'tis too old-every schoolboy knows Anacreon," -so exclaims some "scientific editor," politely declining our article; or some listless reader hungering for novelty, who thinks he knows "all about it." Dear editor! - courteous reader! it's all a humbug! Old! -why so is love, and sunshine, and flowers,—so is " Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet,”— so is "Edipus and Antigone," so is Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, or the C Minor, so is the "Nozze di Figaro" and "Don Giovanni,” so is the

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"Sound of a hidden brook

In the leafy month of June,

Which to the quiet woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune."

Old! old! old! So are we writers of articles, so is Aunt Betty (who is to leave us her money), so is our dressing-gown, our dog,- and so is Mont Blanc! And yet for all these things we have an

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66 evergreen respect," and can talk about them all day long-ay, and listen to others talking about them too, which is infinitely more. Not another word then, we beg, about the subject being "old;" we won't listen to it. It is the thing of the day, the ephemera without strength, vitality, and grace, which is old — beauty and life are as new to-day as they were at their birth.

Our blood (critical and otherwise) leaps at the very name of Anacreon,the joyous old bon-vivant and poet whose life was enjoyment, who gives enjoyment, and who impressively teaches enjoyment. His animal spirits, and large happy heart overflowing with the beauties and graces of "God's wondrous universe," gush forth into song, giving us the best philosophy of life; for

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Song, which is the eloquence of truth,"

has been, is, and ever will be the great teacher, the real indicator of the ripe luscious fruit, growing on the tree of existence. Men may talk learnedly, reason daringly, and shoot upwards with eagle-wing into the dim empyrean of speculation; but their shadowy visions fade beside the real philosophy taught us by the bard of Teios - this "old man eloquent,"

"As Etna's fires fade before the light of day."

We may listen to Socrates and his "shoeless faction," and hear him curbing the saltant wildness of that "large discourse of reason looking before and after" of the Sophists, and, by his pertinent questions, learn to restrain our

arrogance, and inculcate tolerance for the errors of others when looking pityingly on our own; we may ratiocinate with the "old Stagyrite," and 3

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"Oft outwatch the Bear,

With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold

What worlds, or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshy nook ;”

we may sneer with the Cynics (unless we have learnt the wholesome truth from Jean Paul, that "many a man becomes a free-spoken Diogenes, not because he dwells in the cask, but because the cask dwells in him) ;—we may run the round of speculation, but after all we get the crowning result in Anacreon. For what is the end of all these struggles and inquiries, these torturings of the spirit, but to get at happiness? "Qui de summo bono dissentit de totâ philosophic ratione disputat." In Anacreon we learn practically (not sneeringly as in the Cynics) the contempt for gold, ambition, or disputation, and the appreciation of the good and the beautiful. As man is placed in this world, surrounded as he is with Heaven or with Hell, according to his own views of things, determining to be happy is the premier pas which accomplishes the whole journey. Let each resolve on finding sermons in stones, music in running brooks, and good in every thing" let each cultivate his sense of the beautiful and enjoyment, curbing his temper, sympathising with others, viewing his pleasures in the sparkle of their eyes and the net result of philosophy is accomplished. Now this Anacreon teaches; and hence called by Plato "The Wise." "E vivo senza colore," says Gravina; "vago senza artifizio, saporoso senza condimento, e saggio, qual da Platone fu reputato, ma senza apparenza di dottrina. In quei suoi giuochi e scherzi, e favoluzze capricciose e poetiche, stempra maggior dottrina che altri facendo il filosofo non direbbe. Chi meglio di questo poeta fa conoscere la vanità delle grandezze e delle ricchezze e degli onori e di tutte le magnificenze umane? Se avesse ne' suoi versi al pari dell' ambizione disprezzato il piacere, avrebbe a se maggior gloria ed agli altri maggior frutto recato." * Maximus Tyrius says that Anacreon's influence over his sovereign was so great as to soften his mind to a benevolence towards all his subjects: why should he not teach us benevolence to each other? Yet see how differently men regard matters (the Methodistical looking upon enjoyment as sinful, and converting this beautiful universe into a long dark gallery, where naughty schoolboys are placed to moan and sob for the faults of their sires, and the heinous tendency to the deglutition of apples on the part of a young lady): the last translator of this poet indignantly exclaims, "Who that reads this ode (the eleventh, in which the bard says, that although he is getting too old to please the fair, yet he will enjoy himself to the last) can help feeling indignation at the old worn-out devotee of pleasure? Though his locks, scattered with the silvery snow of age, impressed strongly upon his mind that death was fast coming upon him; though his long-since faded youth told him how fleeting were all earthly enjoyments (!!)-still, with one foot in the grave, pleasure is his theme!"

This is called religion! We are not to enjoy ourselves because all "earthly enjoyments are fleeting;" but shall a man, Faust-like, refuse to arrest the passing moment, and say "Stay, thou art fair!" because the moment must pass after being admired? Shall we refuse youth because we must grow old? Fleeting! ay, and perpetually renewing. These men

* Ragion, Poet. XXII.

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forget all the while that God gave us this life; that God gave us these vanities; that God gave us these passions-the sunbeam-the streams the hills and grassy plots - and living hearts and smiling faces, and to refuse to accept them is worse than ingratitude: they forget this, and preach, with emphatic nasal eloquence, that this world is "verily a vale of blood and tears a pit of wretchedness and misery." Well, "there's neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so," as the deepest and healthiest of all men has said.

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"It is interesting," remarks Professor Anstice, "to observe the melancholy picture of human life which is drawn by the Greek tragedians; it is painted fleeting as a dream, empty as a shadow, as full of sorrow, and strife, and bitterness, and vanity. Childhood is helpless; youth the season of folly; manhood compelled to restless exertion, yet depressed by constant disappointment; and age the master of a cheerless mansion, whose inmates are accumulated woes: so that best were it for each had he not been born; and the next best speedily to die." How different is the philosophy of Anacreon! But it would be a mistake to suppose that the bearing of his lesson is simply to sit drinking wine under a myrtle, and admiring a lovely girl. It is true that he tells us of little more than the merest sensual enjoyments; but we must not literalise, and suppose that these are the final results. To live the life of an indolent Sybarite is not the fittest occupation for man; nor, indeed, except in the rarest instances, is it possible, his mission, his struggles often for his daily bread, prevent this; nor is it desirable. But he who habitually cultivates a sense of the graceful will naturally avoid deformities, moral and physical; - he who is habitually cheerful and happy will have the more inclination and time to render those around him equally so, were it solely on Rochefocauld's doctrines of egotism; for the pain and misery of others would necessarily be pain and misery to him, and he would be inevitably impelled to relieve it. The cheerful mind flashes the sunlight of its smiles on all around, and would have them equally bright: it is grief, and illtemper, and morose peevishness, which, offended at the cheerfulness of others, "casts blackness as it walks." Nor will the counterargument, deeply considered, militate against the conclusion; for he who would become a mere sensualist from Anacreon or any other man's teaching, would become so equally without, from the mere indulgence of his disposition; we have nothing to fear, therefore, on this side. A man takes up a certain doctrine, or part of one, and welds it into his own natural ore, letting it join its influence there, but not overrunning the whole. But let us open Anacreon.

The old bard was a visitor at the courts of princes, yet kept aloof from the troubles of his time; lived to the age of eighty-five; and is allegorically said to have died from being choked by a grape-stone,-a story not the most trustworthy.* We know barely any thing of his life beyond his birth at Teios, where, in the "midst of a country of oil, wine, and sunshine,” he imbibed his love of enjoyment, which, as he lived to a good old age, must have been tempered with fitting moderation. "For we are not," says Leigh Hunt," with the gross literality of dull or vicious understandings, to take for granted every thing a poet says on all occasions, especially when he is old. It is a mere gratuitous and suspicious assumption in critics, who tell us such men as Anacreon passed whole lives in the indulgence of every excess and debauchery. They must have had, in the first place, prodigious constitutions to have lived to near ninety, if they did; secondly, it does not

* Fabricius doubts it. "Uvæ pressæ acino tandem suffocatus, si credimus Suidæ in OworOTNIJS ; alii enim hoc modo periisse tradunt Sophoclem.". Biblio. Græc. 1. ii. c. xv.

follow because a poet speaks like a poet, it has therefore taken such a vast deal to give him the taste greater than other men's for what he enjoys. Redi, the author of the most famous Bacchanalian poems in Italy, drank little but water. Anacreon loves wine, beauty, flowers, pictures, sculptures, birds, books, kind and open natures every thing that can be enjoyed." Barnes gives an anecdote by the scholiast upon Pindar, which lays open a trait in the poet very characteristic. Being asked why he addressed his hymn to women instead of deities, he replied "Women are my deities :” — and so they were; and right proper deities too!

Admirably was it said, that to be "unaffectedly charmed with the loveliness of a cheek, and the beauty of a flower, are the first steps to the knowledge of Anacreon. Imagine a good-humoured old man, with silver locks, but a healthy and cheerful face, sitting in the delightful climate of Smyrna, under his vine or his olive, with a lute by his side, a cup of his native wine before him, and a pretty peasant girl standing near him, who has perhaps brought him a basket of figs, or a bottle of milk corked with vine leaves, and to whom he is giving a rose, or pretending to make love."* Would we were by him! So we are in imagination; but we want the luscious bottle of milk corked with vine leaves, the graceful Greek girl, and the old bard and his lute to be realized. Never mind, we read his poems.

But first a word on translators. We shall not again "slay the slain;”— therefore be it sufficient to say that, except in the fragments of Cowley, which are right in spirit, though not literal translations, the English reader can get no adequate idea of Anacreon; and, indeed, a real version would be a difficult task, in spite of the easiness of the Greek. But what we would particularly notice is the carelessness of translators, in passing over those minute points which serve as historical illustrations of the times. To give an instance in his "Ode to the Artist on his Mistress's Picture," he concludes thus:

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Απεχει βλεπω γαρ αυτην.
Ταχα, κηρε, και λαλήσεις,

Line for line with the original, thus —

"Desist! for I see herself.

Soon, O wax! even thou wilt speak."

Rendered by Moore thus

"Enough! 'tis she! 'tis all I seek.

It glows, it lives, it soon will speak!"

Now the wordiness of this translation is its least fault. The word xnpos (wax) has, however, been passed over in silence, as indeed by all translators and commentators to our knowledge. But he should have asked himself, "what can wax mean here?"-and the reply must have been, the ground of the picture; and this would have led to the fact that painting on wax was, as well as on ivory, commonly practised in his day; confirmed by Pliny, "Encausto pingendi duo fuisse antiquitus genera constat, cerâ et in ebore, cestro, id est, verriculo."+ (There were formerly two species of encaustic painting-with wax and on ivory, by means of a cestrum or graver.) Another instance (the opening to the eighth ode) is then given by Moore.

""T was night, and many a circling bowl
Had deeply warmed my swimming soul,
As lulled in slumber I was laid," &c.

• Leigh Hunt's London Journal.

+ Lib. x.

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