THE ARTS IN PORTUGAL.24

The preacher and his wife persuade Lavengro to travel with them as far as the boundary of Wales, where he stops, refusing to set foot on the land of Cadwallader. According to his usual custom, he petrifies them at parting by exhibiting his intimate knowledge of the Welsh language and literature. Just as they are taking leave, Petulengro makes his appearance, emerging from Wales, and Lavengro turns with him. Now, what does the reader think the respectable Jasper had been doing? Neither more nor less than assisting at the interment of Mrs Herne, who had herself anticipated the last tender offices of the executioner! The fraternal pair jog on for a while amicably, Petulengro beguiling the way by a sprightly narrative of blackguardism, until they reach a convenient piece of turf, when he expresses a strong desire to have a turn-up with the rather reluctant Lavengro. As the Rommany code of honour is but little understood, we may as well give Petulengro's reasons for defying his brother to the combat:—

"There is a point at present between us. There can be no doubt that you are the cause of Mrs Herne's death—innocently, you will say; but still the cause. Now, I shouldn't like it to be known that I went up and down the country with a pal who was the cause of my mother-in-law's death—that's to say, unless he gave me satisfaction. Now, if I and my pal have a tussle, he gives me satisfaction; and if he knocks my eyes out—which I know you can't do—it makes no difference at all; he gives me satisfaction: and he who says to the contrary knows nothing of gipsy law, and is a dinelo into the bargain."

So, there being no other mode ofadjustment, a stand-up fight took place, in which it would appear that Lavengro received the largest share of pepper. Petulengro at last declared himself satisfied, and the affiliated couple set forward as if nothing had happened to disturb the harmony of the afternoon. When they separate, Lavengro takes his way in a secluded dingle, five miles distant from the nearest village, and there encamps, makes horse-shoes, and has a fit of the horrors. Just as he is recovering from this attack, who should appear in the dingle but the Flying Tinman, with Grey Moll, and the amazon whom Slingsby had mentioned—"an exceedingly tall woman, or rather girl, for she could scarcely have been above eighteen." The Tinman himself was no beauty.

"I do not remember ever to have seen a more ruffianly-looking fellow. He was about six feet high, with an immensely athletic frame; his face was black and bluff, and sported an immense pair of whiskers, but with here and there a grey hair; for his age could not be much under fifty. He wore a faded blue frock-coat, corduroys, and high-lows; on his black head was a kind of red nightcap, round his bull-neck a Barcelona handkerchief. I did not like the look of the man at all."

Two bulls are as likely to be amicable on one pasture as two tinkers on the same beat. There is some surly chaffing. Lavengro tries to conciliate the big girl by telling her that she is like Ingeborg, Queen of Norway—which must have been an exceedingly intelligible compliment—and then by pouring into her ear the following Orphean strain:—

"As I was jawing to the gav yeck divvers,I met on the drom miro Rommany chi."

The minstrel's reward was a thundering douse on the chops. Then stood forth the Tinman in his ire, and a battle-royal commenced. Belle—for such was the name of the big girl—was, however, an admirer of fair play, and though she had been the first to strike him, volunteered her services as Lavengro's second—Grey Moll doing the needful for her spouse. After several sharp rounds, the Tinman misses a blow, smashes himself against a tree, and goes down like a ninepin, insensible to the call of time. There is honour among the tinkers, as there was law among the cutters. The defeated warrior retires with his mort, leaving Belle, whom he now abandons, to the protection of the victorious Lavengro.

And what follows? No sniggering, young gentleman, if you please. You never were more entirely mistaken in your life. It is true that Belle—or to give her her proper title—Miss Isopel Berners, was a young lady of doubtful origin, who had been educated in the workhouse. Why not? The only three noble names in the county were to be found there. "Mine was one, the other two were Devereux and Bohun." And she was independent as she was strong. Being apprenticed out at fourteen years of age to a small farmer and his wife, she knocked down her mistress for ill-using her, and, at sixteen, knocked down her master for taking improper liberties. Shortly afterwards, having taken service with a lady who travelled the country selling silks and linen, Belle thrashed two sailors who wanted to rob the cart; so that, upon the whole, she was by no means the Neæra with the tangles of whose hair it was safe to play, unless with her entire consent. Therefore the twain tarried in all amity and honour together in the dingle, making themselves, upon the whole, remarkably comfortable. An occasional visit to an alehouse, where politics and polemics were discussed, relieved Lavengro from the vapours; and of an evening in the dingle, he occupied himself by adding to the stock of accomplishments possessed by Miss Isopel Berners. The reader will naturally be anxious to know the nature of the lessons. Did he teach her ciphering, or French, or cross-stitch, or cooking according to the method of Mrs Glass, or philosophy, divinity, or calisthenics? Nothing of the kind. Lavengro gave her "lessons in Armenian!"

Nor were they altogether without visitors. The priest appears upon the stage, or rather comes to the dingle—a red-haired, squinting Jesuit, who, very unnecessarily, expounds his method for converting England to the faith of Rome, over several tumblers of Hollands-and-water, sweetenedwith a lump of sugar. It is a curious fact, that he preferred the water cold. Then, during a thunder-storm, a postilion makes his appearance in consequence of a capsize of his postchaise, and relates the history of his travels to Rome, where it appears that he also had known the red-haired Jesuit. The said postilion, by the way, is an accomplished rhetorician, for he divides his discourse into the three parts of exordium, argument, and peroration. And so the book ends; Lavengro and Miss Berners still remaining in the dingle, the latter having evidently conceived a tender interest for her teacher in Armenian lore.

Such are the contents of the book, which, most assuredly, will add but little to Mr Borrow's reputation. That he has seen a great deal of strange vagabond life, is certain; and it is equally plain that he is gifted with adequate powers for depicting it. But he is no artist as respects arrangement, and his anxiety to represent himself, or Lavengro, as a character altogether without a parallel, has led him into the most gross exaggerations and the most absurd positions. We were willing to accept his former works as valuable contributions to philology, and as containing sketches, vivid, if not true, of gipsy life and manners. But this must have a limit somewhere. We are sick of the Petulengros and their jargon, and Mr Borrow ought now to be aware that he has thoroughly exhausted that quarry. He is mistaken if he supposes that he has caught the secret of Defoe, who, like him, introduced the reader to scenes and characters which were not usually selected for portraiture and illustration. Defoe's excellence lies in his extreme truthfulness, his homely manner, and his total freedom from exaggeration; and until Mr Borrow is master of these qualities, he can never hope to succeed in this line of composition. We strongly suspect that, in the course of the composition of this book, which, unless our memory strangely deceives us, was announced more than two years ago, considerable changes have taken place in its plan and disposition. We cannot read the preface in connection with the latter part of the third volume, without thinking that much has been added and interpolated to suit the occasion of the recent Papal aggression; and that we are indebted to that circumstance for the introduction of the Jesuit, and the rhetorical postilion's story, so strangely dragged in as an episode to conclude the narrative. If we are right in this conjecture, a great deal of the incongruity which is apparent throughout the work is explained. But the faults still remain; and, while it is impossible to deny that Lavengro contains some spirited passages and many indications of talent, we cannot pronounce such a general verdict in its favour as would be at all satisfactory either to the author or his admirers.

This portly volume, by the accomplished author ofModern Art in Germany, is not so wise as it looks. Its bulk, like that of Minerva's bird, of much feather and little weight, proves delusive when it comes to be handled. This is not a history of the arts in Portugal, but an accumulation of materials, whereof nine-tenths are either extraneous to the subject or indirectly connected with it. A glance at the contents may give an idea of the incongruity and unmethodical arrangement of the book, in reference to its professed object. It consists of twenty-nine letters. The second and third, occupying seventy-five pages, are extracts from a MS., dated 1549, and chiefly relating to Italian art, by Francisco de Hollanda, an architect and illuminator, a Dutchman by race, but by birth a Portuguese, who resided for some time at Rome. Highly interesting these extracts are; for the writer was intimate with Michael Angelo, and gives a lively though somewhat showy report of conversations with him on painting and sculpture, in the presence of Victoria Colonna. But of the state of art in Portugal, Francisco de Hollanda affords the scantiest information; he complains much, indeed, that art was there disregarded. From his laboured and tedious remonstrance on this neglect, addressed to the young King Sebastian in 1571, Count Raczynski has been over-liberal in citation. Among the reasons urged by the memorialist for royal encouragement of the science of design and colouring, one is that the king might be thereby instructed "how to choose hares, partridges, sporting-dogs, camels, lions, tigers, andother domesticanimals." Both MSS. are in the library of the Academy of Sciences at Lisbon. In the fifth letter, an extract fromThe Lisbon Nosegay, O Ramalhete, introduces us to an old history of the order of Dominic, and to its editor, Frei Luiz de Sousa, a Portuguese classic, who is thus singularly recommended to notice,—"You will perceive that the extracts which I have taken from him do not mention a single fact that can throw light upon the history of the arts in Portugal: not a name, and few interesting particulars."

In default of the information wanted, we find, however, an anecdote of Sousa, which might be no mean subject for the pencil. Manuel de Sousa-Coutinho, a nobleman, proud of his talents and jealous of his dignity, having set fire to his residence at Almada, to get rid of importunate visitors from Lisbon during the plague, withdrew into Spain. On his return he rebuilt his house, and married Magdalen, the widow of Don John de Portugal, who had been reported among the slain with Sebastian in Africa. Don Manuel had a daughter by this union, and his domestic content was untroubled for some years, till a stranger presented himself at Almada, and obtained an interview with the Lady Magdalen. "I am a Portuguese," he said, "just returned from captivity in Palestine. At the moment of my departure, one of my countrymen charged me to seek you out, and to inform you that a person who had not forgotten you was still in existence." The alarmed matron demanded a minute description of that person, and the answer strengthened a terrible suspicion. To remove all doubt, she led the stranger to a room where the likeness of her first husband was suspended among many other family portraits. The messenger at once recognised the portrait of Don John of Portugal as that of the individual on whose errand he had come. Manuel de Sousa was no sooner apprised of the fact, than he resolved to take the cowl. He assumed the name of Luiz, and became a friar in the Dominican convent at Bemfica. The lady also retired intoa religious house, and never saw him more.25The story would have been as satisfactory if the captive husband had been ransomed by those who had so unwittingly wronged him.

In the next letter we find Monsieur Raczynski, catalogue in hand, giving an account of his visit to a triennal exhibition of modern paintings. On those or any other productions of art, even out of their turn, we willingly listen to him; though his opinion only leads us to the conclusion that revolutionary turmoils do not make painters. But we protest against his budget of extravagancies from theLisbon Diary, and flowery tropes fromThe Universal Review, which is or was edited by an ingenious poet, A. F. Castilho, who has the misfortune to be blind, and has been so from his youth, and is nevertheless a critic on art, who resents "the presumption of frivolous and impertinent foreigners!" We might have been spared, too, the dull discourse pronounced before their Majesties, by the late venerable Director of the Academy. As a specimen of Senhor Loureiro's oration, in which the glories of theGermaneasel are the main topic of panegyric, take the following compliment to King Ferdinand Saxe Kohary:—"After Louis XIV., who bowed to all the ladies he met on his ride, and after Frederick II., no king nor prince in Europe returns the salute of by-passers, except our much esteemed king, Don Ferdinand, as you all must have often witnessed." This delicate flattery is insinuatedà proposof a portrait by Frank, in the Berlin Cabinet, of "Frederick the Great passing on horseback, and lifting his hand to his classical hat, garnished with feathers, to salute the inhabitants of Potsdam, who offer him their tribute of homage." Then follow ten letters, full of capital blunders, for which M. Raczynski is no otherwise responsible than that he has printed them; for these letters are principally made up of communications from respectable but most inaccurate correspondents, and of gatherings from more obscure and not less questionable sources. That such a mass of absurdities, especially those on Gran Vasco—the great name among Portuguese artists—should have been retained is the more remarkable, because the Count, by his laudable diligence, timely discovered that he had been misled on many particulars, and finally tells us so himself. As to Gran Vasco, in search of whose disputed identity his blind guides had led him floundering through a weary morass—now after one will-o'-the wisp, now after another—he at last finds himself onterra firmaat Vizeu, whither he had repaired on the sensible advice of Viscount Juromenha, and thus announces his success (Letter 16,)—"Fica revogada toda a legislação em contrario!—that is to say, I retract all that I have said or cited about Gran Vasco, and whatever is contrary to what I am now going to tell you!" From Vizeu we are conducted, by shocking bad roads, to Lamego and Regoa, and hence down the Douro to Oporto. The 20th Letter is a postscript to the 11th, and we are again among objects of art at Lisbon. Here the modesty of the king-consort is put to the blush by one of those awkward compliments which personages of the highest rank are born to suffer, and to which they become callous in time. But the Prince is young, and courtiers should be merciful. We have just heard the president of the Academy proclaiming him as the only mannerly prince in Europe since the days of the Great Frederick of Prussia. M. Raczynski throws the strong light of his admiration on another and a greater excellence in the German husband of Donna Maria da Gloria, though, inferentially, it is no compliment either to Her Faithful Majesty or her subjects,—"The King is, to my knowledge, endowed with more taste than any other person in this country; beyond every other individual, he possesses true feeling for the arts. He is the owner of a pleasing collection of paintings, besides a rich album of drawings and water-colours, pretty pictures in German, French, andEnglish!" The 21st Letter is "the continuation of my letter the 14th," that is, a resumption of the subject of Portuguese architecture. The 22d Letter is a corollary to the 10th, "to serve as a sequel to my 10th letter;" and so, throughout the work the reader is fiddled to and fro, down the middle and up again—now at Coimbra, now at Marseilles, back again to Barcelona and Seville, and other places where he has no business—and at last sits down to cool in a printing-office at Paris. In short, if only what fairly relates to the arts in Portugal had been admitted into this publication, with a due regard to method, five score pages would have served the purpose of above five times that number, and Monsieur Renouard's types would have been more profitably employed—for the reader at least, if not for the printer. Even as it is, however, the book is an improvement on Taborda and Cyrillo, the latter of whom the Portuguese have hitherto been contented to take for their Vasari. There is no reasonable doubt that attempts at the revived art of painting were practised in Portugal as early as in Spain, though so vastly in favour of the latter nation is the balance of pictorial wealth. Rudiments of the art seem faintly discernible in the very infancy of the Portuguese monarchy. There is a tradition of a portrait of Count Henry, who died in 1112. In the Lisbon duplicate of theLivro-preto—the Black-Book of Coimbra cathedral, a collection of ancient documents—there is one dated 1168, setting forth sundry payments to artificers in the church; and in that memorandum, mention is made of an altar-picture, The Annunciation to the Virgin. Among the royal archives at Lisbon is a book of charters, one page of which is wholly occupied by a drawing of our Saviour, coloured in red and blue. This MS. bears date 1277. That Portugal was early rich in illuminated manuscripts, is proved by the existence of many very old bibles, missals, breviaries, books of armorial blazonry, and other gorgeous quaintnesses, on much and long enduring vellum. Garcia de Resende, in his Chronicle of John II., at whose court he was brought up, says that he employed much of his leisure in painting, to the great satisfaction of his royal master, who often suggested subjects for his pencil, and would frequently sit by him watching the progress of his pleasant labours. The Castle of Belem, as it stands at this day, was constructed, in the following reign, from a plan designed by Garcia for John II., in whose time also, as we learn from that chronicler, and from Ruy de Pina—both eye-witnesses—scene-painting was executed on a large scale, for the court pantomimes and spectacles, before a stage for the written drama was known in the kingdom. It was by John II. that the Florentine Andrea Contucci, called Il Sansovino, was invited to Portugal, where he remained nine years—chiefly employed, however, in architecture and wood-sculpture—although his example as a painter is supposed to have had some corrective influence on the rudeness of pictorial notions in this country.

In the reigns of Emanuel and John III., 1495 to 1557, artists both native and foreign were numerous in the land; and hagiologies were ransacked for appropriate subjects of decoration for the churches and monasteries, and other important edifices. Most of those painters are forgotten. Few of their names have been preserved in connection with their works; so that these, of which many are still extant, and might bear honourable testimony to their skill, have incurred the singular fate of being, almost universally attributed to one artist, who was five years old at the decease of John III., and who ought to have lived to more than twice the age of man, and have been a Proteus in varieties of style, to make it possible that he should have completed one-half the number of the works imputed to him. Every Gothic picture of any pretension found in Portugal is called a Gran Vasco. Even that fine painting, The Fountain of Mercy, in the sacristy of the Misericordia at Oporto, has been pronounced a Gran Vasco. It was indeed painted thirty years only before he was born; it has some historical features that pretty nearly fix the date. King Emanuel gave that picture to the brotherhood of the Misericordia at Oporto. It contains portraits of himself, his third wife,several of his children by his second wife, and other personages of his family and court. He died in 1521. Vasco Fernandez, the true Gran Vasco, was baptised at Vizeu in 1552. Senhor J. Berardo has the honour of this discovery. After many a weary research among piles of records in the Vizeu Cathedral, he there detected a document which destroys delusions that had become national, leaves scores of old pictures fatherless, and yet detracts but little, if at all, from the reputation of the great master. In the very church where he was christened, several of the best compositions of Fernandez remain as vouchers for the integrity of his genius. The antiquary of Vizeu, Ribeiro Pereira, whose MS. is dated 1630, and who might have personally known him, and must have well known the principal works executed by him for their native town, specifies the large picture of Calvary, in the Jesus Chapel of the cathedral, as by Gran Vasco. The pictures in the sacristy are by the same hand; and, though the cathedral is of very ancient foundation, this sacristy, in its present form, was not finished till 1574, as we learn from the inscription "Georgius Ataide Episcopus vicensus faciendum curavitMDLXXIIII;" and by the position of the pictures, in regard to the light from the windows, it is evident that they were prepared for the places they occupy. M. Raczynski has not only seen and scrutinised those paintings, but he has examined the baptismal entry above spoken of, and he has likewise inspected a copy of the MS. of the Vizeu antiquary. Of the register of baptism he says,—"M. Berardo has shown me the voucher, which is almost in tatters. Nothing can be more authentic, more incontestable. You have no idea of the vividness of tradition, among all the inhabitants at Vizeu, respecting Gran Vasco. One would say that all the world here has been personally acquainted with him, that every man in the place has had some heritable share in him. For me, the question is decided." On the extract, first communicated to him by the Visconde de Juromenha, from the MS. of the Vizeu antiquary, Vasco's contemporary and fellow-townsman, he observes, after comparing it with the original in the Oporto Library,—"The extract is perfectly accurate. M. Gandra, Librarian of Oporto, has given me a sight of the MS., which is as genuine as the register of Vizeu. In the MS., the painter is once styled 'The Great Vasco Fernandez;' and the second time, 'Vasco Fernandez.'" It is curious that the celebrity of a quiet artist should have been of such speedy growth as to obtain for his name the popular prefix of "Great" during his lifetime. The Count's judgment on the Vizeu paintings is as follows:—"The picture of 'Calvary' is of high merit, but in bad condition. I should have supposed it older; but, in fine, documents are a stronger authority than my impressions. Moreover, the draperies and the architecture in the paintings of Gran Vasco are of a style that well accords with the epoch to which we are now certain they belong. Not only is the large, picture of 'Calvary' of great merit, but as much must be said of those that form thepredella," (that is, those on each side of the steps to the altar,) "representing the sufferings of our Lord. The pictures in the sacristy are—The Baptism of Christ, The Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, St Peter, The Martyrdom of St Sebastian, and thirteen smaller pieces, half-length portraits of various saints. Nothing can be more magnificent than the St Peter. Attitude, drapery, composition, drawing, touch, colouring, architecture, accessories, landscape, the small figures in the distance—all are fine, all faultless. I cannot express to you what joy I felt when, on entering the sacristy, I at once beheld, fronting the door, this superb painting of St Peter. The effect on me was decisive; all doubt was over. Every work by Gran Vasco has a solemn and elevated character, which I do not recognise to the same extent in any of the Gothic pictures that I have seen in Portugal. The style of Gran Vasco is not ascribable, as I had imagined it to be, to Italian influence, but, very peremptorily, to that of Albert Durer; and it is plain that this influence had continued to inspire Portuguese artists, though working side by side with the imitatorsof Gaspar Diaz and Campello," (two of the several Portuguese painters who were sent by King Emanuel to study at Rome,) "who had imported into their country the Italian style and tendencies of the classic era. I will even affirm, that the influence of Flanders and Germany produced better results than that of the classic painting of Italy." This notion of the superior efficacy of Flemish and German over Italian influence on Portuguese art, in the first half of the sixteenth century, is a favourite one with our author; and not unreasonably so, for the palmy days of Emanuel and his successor were also the days of Charles V., the kinsman of those princes. Many Flemish and German subjects of the great emperor found ready access to the court of Portugal, and a favourable reception there; and their manner must have been pretty generally adopted, and very closely imitated too, for in multiplied instances it perplexed connoisseurs to distinguish the native from the northern workmanship of that period.

Between Vasco Fernandez of Vizeu and any legitimate successor to his supremacy as a Portuguese artist, the interregnum is far longer than thedurationof the Spanish tyranny. After the death of Sebastian, no Portuguese painter of any recognised eminence appears for nearly a century and a half. During all that time, producers of pictures were numerous; there was plenty of artists, but little or no art. At last, about 1715, John V., the mighty builder, willing to hope that his projected temples and palaces were destined to be worthily adorned by native talent, if stimulated by the best models, sent several youths to the schools of art in Italy; herein repeating the experiment of the old kings of the race of Avis, but without much success. The only very distinguished painter of this reign and the next, "O Insigne Pintor," Vieira Lusitano, owed his opportunities Of professional instruction at Rome to the patronage of a nobleman rather than to that of the King himself, though he was afterwards much employed both by John V. and his successor Joseph.

The story of Francisco Vieira, popularly called the Lusitanian, and self-styled "The Admirable," is one of the most curious on record. It is an autobiography in verse, a lyrical poem in quatrains without rhyme. His self-esteem is immense, as may be inferred from his title-page,Viera the Lusitanian, the famous Painter and faithful Husband. In the preface he loads himself with honour; through the fourteen cantos, six hundred pages, of his poem (which is but a portion of what he intended to give to the world, though it was published three years before his death, and he died at the age of eighty-four,) he puffs his own praises with all the simple untiring energy of a boy blowing bubbles; yet it is as clear that he was no fool as that he was a prodigious coxcomb. Measureless vanity does sometimes co-exist with vigorous ability. There is no doubt whatever of the genuineness of the production, for it was published in his lifetime, and he signed his name to the dedication. Being the hero of his own story, he speaks of himself all through in the third person; and it was perhaps his intention, when he composed the work, to publish it anonymously, and let the public suppose that it was written by some friend. But he no doubt thought himself thepræclarus vatesas well as thepictor insignis, and could not finally make up his mind to lose the honours, poetical and chivalrous, of his work, though it is in truth as wretched a poem as it is a rare and most captivating biography. Robert Southey, a name not to be mentioned without respect, yet a critic by no means to be implicitly followed on questions of Portuguese literature, says that this is the best book of Portugal. If he simply meant that it is the most attractive biographical production, he was probably right, (if we set aside old Mendez Pinto, the marvellous and the delightful,) for we doubt whether a more striking personal narrative of genuine love-adventure is extant in any language. But if Southey intended to say that it was the best Portuguese poem, the eulogy is utterly absurd. There is but little unborrowed poetry in it, and his countrymen, who should be the best judges—justly proud as they are of him as an artist—do not admit him to any rank even among their numerous minor poets. There is, it is true, in one of the volumes ofSouthey's Life, recently published, a favourable specimen of this poem—a translation by Southey of a few lines, which are pleasing enough; but the version is an improvement on the original. Vieira gave indications of his talent for drawing by chalking figures on the floor before he could walk alone; and he proved his genius for intrigue by winning the heart of a damsel, not less juvenile than himself, but of far higher rank, and by completely hood-winking her parents and his own, before he was eight years old. But the constancy of this infant passion on both sides is the marvel of his life. At ten years of age he gained a patron in the Marquis of Abrantes, who, being appointed ambassador from John V. to Pope Clement XI., took him to Rome, where he resided seven years, always devoted to his art and to the Fidalgo's daughter. He was at first a pupil of Lutti, and afterwards of Trevisani. He mentions the latter with respect and affection. He obtained considerable distinction as a student of painting, and was befriended by Cardinal Barberini. On his return to Lisbon, whither his reputation had preceded him, he was welcomed by none of his friends more cordially than by the parents of Dona Agnes Helen De Lima e Mello, who was now a blooming and beautiful young woman, for whom several offers of suitable marriage had been already made, all of which she had evaded by the plea that it was her intention to take the veil. On his first visit he was followed by a porter with a box full of relics that he had brought from Rome—beads blest by the Pope, bones of saints, a chip of the true cross, and many other inestimable things of the kind,all warranted—tudo com seus diplomas authenticos!These he presented to the father and mother, who were more than delighted with such gifts, and could not but attribute a hopeful measure of sanctity to the young virtuoso who had collected them. He was thenceforward a frequent guest at the Quinta da Luz, the residence of the De Limas, and continued to be encouraged by the elders of the family, till they found out—not by their own wit—that the humble youth whom they had so graciously countenanced fully intended to do them the favour of becoming their son-in-law. The presumption was inconceivable, the humiliation of having been outwitted by two children was intolerable. Vieira had secretly consulted the Judge of Marriages (O Juiz dos Casamentos,) an official as formidable to hard-hearted parents in Portugal as a Gretna Green parson to guardians of heiresses in England. By his advice, the young gentleman had secured his lady-love's signature to a formal declaration of her engagement to him; and, on the strength of this document, the same obliging functionary had easily obtained the Patriarch of Lisbon's certificate of approval, which was necessary to perfect the legality of the contract. A page, in attendance on the Patriarch when the matter was discussed, happened to be acquainted with the family of De Lima, and hastened to reveal to the astonished parents the transaction that he had witnessed. In strict law, they had now no remedy—the parties were betrothed. But the lady's father possessed a power greater than the law in the friendship of the Minister, the formidable Pombal; and before any further communication could pass between her and her lover, she was shut up in a nunnery, the convent of St Anne. As she had avoided marriage by asserting her intention to become a nun, it was now resolved that she should keep her word. She resisted to the uttermost; and even after she was immured in the convent, it was only by main force that the novice's dress was put on her, though her aunt and two other grim duennas assisted in the operation. Vieira appealed to the King; but it was too delicate an affair to be interfered with, even by an absolute monarch. He retired from the royal presence in anything but a loyal mood, and tasked his wits from day to day, but all in vain, to devise some means of communication with the prisoner. That convent, he says, baffled all his approaches, as if it were an enchanted castle. He determined, however, that if she could not see him she should hear him; so he seized his guitar, repaired to the convent walls at midnight, and serenaded her with passionate songs—walking round andround the gloomy den like Blondel round the Fortress Tenebreuse, the cage of Lion Richard; or, as the painter himself expressed it in one of his pictures, like Orpheus at the gates of hell demanding his Eurydice. He was for the third or fourth time turning a corner of the convent chapel when he was pounced upon by the police, and forthwith lodged in prison, and would inevitably have been transported, in a ship ready to depart for one of the Indian settlements, had not one of his patrons, the Conde del Assumar, afterwards Marquis de Alorna, interfered, and procured his release. The noviciate of Agnes expired, and she was compelled to take the veil. Her relations now thought that they had her safely settled for life, and the lady abbess thought so too. Agnes, making a virtue of necessity, pretended to be reconciled to her fate; and thenceforward the restraints on the seemingly submissive nun were far less stringent than those that had been imposed on the rebellious novice. A correspondence between the married nun and her husband was now effected through a third party, who had access to the convent. It was written in a cipher invented by Vieira, as a sure precaution against mischance or impertinent curiosity.

"Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid,Some banished lover, or some captive maid."

But this sort of communication only inflamed their impatience for freer intercourse. By the death of one of the sisterhood, a cell became vacant which might be very convenient for a vestal whose heart was unconsecrated. It was in a retired part of the building, and the window was in an outer wall, separated from some of the city gardens by an unfrequented thoroughfare. It was the custom to set a price upon the new tenancy of any void cell, so that the nun who wished to possess it must pay for the privilege. The price set upon this apartment was three hundred milreas, about £70. Vieira procured the money, and passed it to Agnes, who was thus enabled to become mistress of the room; and the superior seems to have had no suspicion that the gold was not supplied by some one of the young lady's wealthy relatives. The window was high, but the spaces between the iron grates were not so narrow as to forbid the passage of a faithful Mercury, in the shape of a basket secured by a string. When it could be prudently let down, a palm branch put out between the bars was a signal. Vieira, taught by his former misadventure, no more approached the walls as an unarmed minstrel, but silently, and furnished with munitions of war—mas munido com seus marciaes petrechos—a good sword at his side, a pair of loaded pistols in his belt, and a cloak of black taffeta over all. After a hundred plans for her rescue had been mutually discussed and abandoned, she thus addressed him,—"My beloved, I am withering here. You must deliver me from this horrid prison, from these dismal rules which I am forced to obey—though I protest that I am no nun, never was, and never will be.Freira nao sou, nem fui, nem ser quero.I am assured that nothing short of a decree by the Pope will avail us. I know that certain immunities may be bought and obtained by deputy from the Holy See; but I would trust no agent in such an affair as ours. I confide in the proverb—'He who wants a thing goes for it; he who would miss it sends for it.'—(Quem quer vai, quem nao quer manda.)" He received the young lady's orders without winking,sem pestenejar; and, leaving two large pictures, commissions from the king, unfinished, he set off on the forlorn hope to the Vatican, with a good chance of ending his career in the Castle of St Angelo. He got to Rome, he says, as if by magic. Cardinal Barberini was dead: this news was a shock to him, for on his protection he had mainly relied. The resolute lover, however, by dint of importunity, obtained from the Pope an order addressed to the Patriarch of Lisbon, requiring him to cause the lady to be interrogated, and to report the result. Months passed away, but no answer came.

He obtained another order, an exact duplicate, also signed by the Pope, and forwarded it with an explanatory letter to the Conde deAssumar. The Count willingly carried the paper to the Patriarch, who was much offended, and refused to receive it, saying, that such matters were not to be disposed of in a hurry. He had received the Supreme Pontiff's first letter, and had, in consequence, personally visited the convent, and questioned Donna Agnes. Further investigations were on foot, and the case could not yet be decided.

A friendly Portuguese Jesuit gave Vieira warning that he was in danger, and that, if he persisted in his appeals to the Pope, he would be quickly and summarily silenced. Baffled at all points, and ashamed to go home, he continued in Italy for six years, during all which time he maintained a correspondence with Agnes, by the aid of a friend at Lisbon, a well-known brother artist, André Gonsalves. He also laboured assiduously in his profession, and became famous as a painter in the land of painters. His works were purchased as fast as he could produce them, and many of them were engraved. Finally, he, was elected member of the Academy of St Luke, and was honoured with a diploma or certificate of especial merit. He now thought he might return to Lisbon, and look after his impounded treasure—histesouro imprisonado. On the arrival of the ship in the Tagus, he remained on board till he could be smuggled ashore at night. His enemies imagined him to be still at Rome when he was once more plotting under the convent walls, and thus announcing himself to the faithful object of so much constant love—"Here I am again! All the doors of justice are closed against us, and we have nothing but our own wits to help us; yet I am more resolved on your deliverance than ever." He proposed to supply her with files andaqua fortisto cut through the bars of her cell, and a rope-ladder to let her down. But she rejected that expedient. "Through the gate by which I entered, and through that only, will I go out," she said.Pois só pela portaria, por onde entrei, sahir quero.Repairs were going on in the house; many masons were employed there daily. "Get me," said she, "a hodman's dress and a half-mask, and I will walk out of the convent. Do not look so mistrustful; I am not without courage; I know myself well. I rely, too, on higher strength than my own for aid. God does not require violent sacrifices: I am here against my will; my stay in these cloisters is not self-devotion, but sacrilege." Seeing that she had made up her mind to the adventure at all hazards, Vieira lost no time in furnishing her with the required disguise. He prides himself particularly on his skill in the fabrication of the half-mask, which he describes as a miracle of art. It fitted her exactly, and the false nose was provided with hooks to be inserted in the nostrils of the true nose, to prevent it from betraying itself by any eccentric movement,

"Porém no nariz fingidoLhe armou de arame hum remedioPara poder segurar-seNas ventas do verdadeiro."

The hour was come for the perilous attempt. It was a summer evening, light as noon, when the chapel bell rang for the Ave Maria. Donna Agnes left her cell and gained a covered courtyard, where she passed some of the sisters, who bade the supposed workman good evening. She was a little too soon, for the labourers were not yet assembled to retire. But, being so far committed, she could not retreat; she must proceed alone to the porter's gate. It chanced that several ladies of the city were standing by the lodge, in conversation with the superior. It was therefore requisite, according to custom, that the person going out should ask leave to pass with all respect,licença para passar, com respeito. She did so, and the lady abbess herself answered, "Pass," making way for her. Donna Agnes, in her agitation, stumbled against an angle of the wall, and heard one of the party she had just left behind her, perhaps the abbess, exclaim—"Ah, can't you see, you clumsy fellow?" She moved on into the street, where Vieira, also in disguise, was anxiously waiting. He would not have known her had he not recognised his own handiwork, the mask. He seemed not to notice, her till she had turned down a lane at some distance: he then followed her, and in a few minutes they were out of immediate danger. The commotionin the nunnery, when her flight was known, may be imagined. The king, when informed of an escape which was speedily the talk of the town, applauded the act for its spirit and cleverness, though he had declined to enforce the law on behalf of the aggrieved pair. They proceeded with all despatch to verify the contract made between them before her incarceration. After this formal attestation of the illegality of her enforced vows, they were formally married, and their triumph was complete. Here, according to rule, where connubial bliss begins, the story should end, for it is very like a novel; but it is nevertheless a true tale,huma historia verdadeira, and something darker remains behind. They took a house in theHortas da Cera, and were happy for some months. But the rage of her family was unappeasable. While the painter was pursuing his professional avocations with honour and profit, they were secretly busy with machinations against his life. On the morning of Whitsunday he had set out from home, to hear mass in the nearest church. His wife, attended by a servant, followed him some minutes later. At the top of an obscure alley, communicating with the street just where it made a bend, stood a man whose face was muffled up in his cloak. Vieira had passed but a little way beyond him, when he was fired at and severely wounded by this person. The pistol had been loaded with slugs, one of which pierced the artist's right cheek, and another was lodged in his shoulder. Turning round, he caught a glimpse of the face of the assassin, in whom he recognised his own brother-in-law, the brother of Donna Agnes. Vieira, supposing himself mortally hurt, called out for a confessor, staggered back to meet his wife, and fell bleeding at her feet. Both were carried half dead into their house. His wounds, though so serious that the last sacraments were administered to him, were skilfully and prosperously treated by Felucci, an Italian leech, and by the king's German surgeon, who was ordered to attend to him. His wife was nearer death from terror and anxiety, than he from his wounds; but no sooner was he declared out of danger than she recovered, and was his best nurse. As soon as he could be safely moved, he proceeded in a chair to the palace, and craved audience of the king, before whom, after he had knelt and kissed hands, he was permitted to produce the clothes in which he had been shot. They were stained with blood that told its own story. The king and the gentlemen present seemed much affected; and an order was given, somewhat late it would seem, for the apprehension and punishment of the assassin. Family interest, nevertheless, smothered up the inquiry, and the criminal was not even imprisoned; but the mark of Cain was on him, and the general odium that he had incurred soon compelled him to leave the kingdom. It is a sort of satisfaction to know that he fell into poverty, and was even at last reduced to the ignominious condition of a pensioner on the bounty of the man whose life he had attempted. The fact is not recorded in the poem, as it ought in poetical justice to have been; but Cyrillo asserts that he had it from Vieira's own mouth, in these words,—"He came at last to beg his bread from me, whom he had outraged so cruelly."

Vieira, soon after his complaint to the king, being apprehensive of further molestation from the family of his wife, placed her with some of his own relations, and took sanctuary, for a while, in the convent of the Paulistas; and there, in 1730 and 1731, he painted his famous Hermits, as appropriate ornaments for the church of their patron, St Paul the Eremite. In 1733, willing to live tranquil, says Cyrillo, he resolved on a third visit to Rome, with the view of ending his days there. Guarienti, the curator of the Dresden Gallery, who came to Lisbon in 1733, and remained there till 1736, was personally acquainted with Vieira, and asserts that his motive for expatriating himself was disgust at an insult that had been put on him through the malice of his rivals, by the removal of one of his works from the recently completed pile of Mafra, and the substitution of a picture by an inferior artist. He got no farther, however, than Madrid or Seville, (Cyrillo names the lattercity,) when he was recalled by his sovereign, who well knew his value, and appeased him with honours and a fixed salary as Royal Painter, exclusive of payment for works supplied by command.

Vieira Lusitano lived admired and honoured, to a venerable age, eighty-four; and his constant heroine, the Lady Agnes, also reached a good old age, and shared prosperity which could hardly have been real, or of any value, without her. She died at Mafra in 1775, and from the day of her death he never again touched a pencil. To the last, says Cyrillo, he idolised her memory; and, no doubt, the strength of his affection for her was the governing motive of his publication of their strange history, five years after her decease, and but three before his own. Both his own portrait and hers were often introduced into his paintings. Many of his works perished in the earthquake, with the temples and mansions they adorned. He particularises, as thus destroyed, "his grand picture of the Martyrs—the inestimable portrait of the first Patriarch of Lisbon, Don Thomas Almeida," (who figures as an important influence, for and against him, in the narration of his love adventure;) "the portraits of the Royal Children, and that sublime idea," (the words are his own,) "the Meeting of the Blessed Mother with her Son, after her assumption—the Death of Moses—Pluto and the Court of Hell listening to the suit of Orpheus." He says he designed the last-named performance as an allegorical plea for the restoration of his wife, to whom the convent was a hell. In another composition, which he calls "a stupendous work," and which was also demolished—Perseus exhibiting the Gorgon's head to Phineus—he represented his own effigy as that of the Greek hero, and the image of his cloistered wife, as a winged Victory, hovering over him, and about to drop a laurel wreath on his helm, &c.

But in spite of the earthquake in his own day, and the laterrazziasof the French in their Pyrennean Algiers,—in spite, too, of civil convulsions, spoliation of convents and convent churches, and all the various causes of dispersion or wanton destruction of works of art in this fair but unhappy land—there is a sufficient number left of those by Vieira Lusitano to show, on better authority than his poetical self-celebration, that he was in truth a fine artist, though not quite a Gran Vasco. The dignity of his St Augustine, and the elegance of his Madonna of the Rosary, both in the Academy of Art at Lisbon, might be evidence enough to prove that the Italians made no great mistake when they conferred a first-class medal on him in his boyhood, nor when they elected him member of the Academy of St Luke after his return, an unprotected emigrant, to Rome. St Augustine is trampling on heresy, while an angel in the foreground burns a pile of heretical writings. This is generally admired as the most powerful of those works by F. Vieira that are in possession of his countrymen. Count Raczynski prefers the other—a Virgin and Child,—in which the infant Jesus stands on a pedestal, surrounded with figures excellently grouped. It must be a fastidious taste that can look coldly upon either. A St Antony in the Church of St Francisco de Paula bears Vieira's signature, and the date 1763. It shows that his hand had lost nothing of its cunning at the age of sixty-four. The Church of St Roque and that of the Paulistas, and some other Lisbon churches, contain important specimens of his skill. They are all more or less remarkable, not only for correctness of drawing, and for breadth of well-harmonised colouring, but for a peculiar grace of touch—a feeling of the versifier and the lover—that seems never to have forsaken him to the last. Even in the countenances of his hermits, the sanctity of expression is heightened, not enfeebled, by a sentiment of human tenderness and regret, as if the day-dreams of their youth in the world were not utterly forgotten. M. Raczynski, though usually chary of commendation in these latitudes—for his predilections are manifestly, and perhaps naturally enough, far north,—has always a good word for this artist, and now and then even grants him a down-feather from the nest of the Black Eagle itself. "As to Vieira Lusitano," says the Count, "he is truly a distinguished artist; and at the time in which he lived wewere very poor in Prussia: we were very far from possessing a painter of his value. Wherever I meet with his works, I feel myself attracted by the nature that he infuses into art."

The alphabetical table (which, by-the-by, sadly wants the revision of an index-maker,) gives references to Vieira Lusitano, and Francisco Vieira, as if the two designations did not belong to one and the same person.

Thereisa second Francisco Vieira, also a historical painter; but, to distinguish him from his predecessor, he is called Vieira Portuense—Vieira of Oporto, the place where he was born, 1765. In 1789 he went to Rome. After about two years' study there, he repaired to Parma, where he was elected one of the directors of the Academy, and gave lessons in drawing to a daughter of the Duke. In 1794 he returned to Rome, where he staid three years more, and then proceeded to Dresden. Few of his works are found in his native city. Mr Allen possesses two or three. There is one at the house of the British Association—Eleanor of Castille extracting the poison from the arm of our Edward the First. The outline of the two figures is not ungraceful, but the effect is tame. The queen looks more asleep than the king; her lips do not touch the wound, yet are so close to it as to seem to express that action. In this, as in most of this artist's productions, the colouring is fluent but weak. Yet some of his church-pictures at Lisbon, and one also of the few at Oporto—St Margaret on her deathbed confessing to a Monk—are stamped with a holy fervour of intention, a deep and unaffected sentiment of piety, that is strength in itself, and not always to be found in religious paintings of higher name. Of his lighter performances, a Cupid and Venus in a landscape, very elegant, and not unworthy of Albani, was engraved at Lisbon by his friend Bartolozzi. His life, it is said, was embittered by the malice of Sequeira his rival. They went to Rome about the same time. Taborda, Fusquini, and Cyrillo, their contemporaries, also studied at Rome. We agree with M. Raczynski in his estimate of Sequeira, whose St Bruno and other ambitious displays are so highly extolled by his countrymen. He is a clever and disagreeable performer on canvass, except in some few of his minor pictures, such as the Translation of St Francis. In his large and finished works he strains at intenseness of effect, and vulgarises his art. But his numerous sketches have quite a contrary character. They appear to have cost him no trouble; and the best of them, if always true to proportion, would be almost as valuable as those of the elder Vieira, the Lusitanian, of which many, in red crayon, are preserved in the library at Evora. As to Taborda, Fusquini, and Cyrillo, and some other recent artists, we would say, to the inquirer, "Go to the palace of Ajuda, and by their works you shall know them! They are as precious there as flies in amber."

M. Raczynski's desultory notices touch on architecture, sculpture, terra-cotta figures, glazed tiles, and many other things besides painting—that portion of his inquiries to which we have of necessity confined our remarks. Of the actual condition of this art in the city of Ulysses, the Academy, instituted in 1780, presents, we fear, no very hopeful indications, though it has many young students as well as many old members. "Numerous are the persons," Count Raczynski observes, "who are enthusiastic in their praise of the Arts in Portugal. But with the honourable exceptions of the Duke of Palmella and the Count de Farrobo, not one will expend a sous, not one will take any trouble for their advancement. It is true, however, that in the actual position of affairs, it would be no easy matter to know how to set about such a service to the nation.The country is in a state of revolution.These few words explain all; and we have only to accuse modern constitution-mongers, and the confusion of ideas and the disorderly spirit that are the consequence of their machinations, here and in Spain, for more than twenty years."

The worthy diplomatist from Prussia, when he wrote the last quoted sentence, seems to have had no notion of the force of pestilent doctrines that were at work on the other side of the Pyrenees, nor how soon the revolutionary mania was to shake the Transmontane thrones, and all but annihilate even his own master's.

So good, so estimable, so eminent a man as Southey—one whose moral character was perhaps as near to perfection as it is given to humanity to attain, and whose literary works, if not of the very highest order of genius, fall short only when compared with those few which are of the very highest—such a man as Southey, it was not likely we should allow to pass from amongst the living without some tribute bestowed upon his memory, or some attempt made, to appreciate the value of his long and illustrious labours. We have been somewhat tardy, it maybe thought, in fulfilling this duty. But we do not regret the delay. Our topic is not one of an ephemeral nature, and the delay may perhaps have instructed us in those points of view in which it is most needful that our subject should be placed.

There is nothing, for instance, so well known of Southey—if we may be allowed to anticipate a little, and to plunge, like the epic poets,in medias res—nothing so notorious as the change which his political and social opinions underwent; the sentiments of his youth upon government, and the organisation of society, being almost diametrically opposed to those of his maturer years. The contrast is great between the young republican, the ardent communist, the bold experimenter inPantisocracy, the author of theBook of the Church, and the celebrated champion of Conservative principles in theQuarterly Review. But often as the contrast has been held up to notice, the time has only just arrived when it can be surveyed in the right spirit.The whole lifeof the man is now before us; and, contradictory as the parts may have appeared as the long picture was slowly unrolled to the eyes of contemporaries, it now becomes possible for us to see the real coherence that existed between the several parts, and to trace throughout their very inconsistencies a unity, and an honourable unity, of character. The enthusiasm of the youth enables us to understand whatever was peculiar in the maturer man. The earlier mind of Southey throws light, we think, upon the later. It was the same mind, it was the same man, young and old.

We learn from the biography before us, that the imagination of Southey had been early and too exclusively developed; and whether from this circumstance, or from natural temperament, a close, systematic, scientific mode of reasoning was the mental quality or mental exercise in which, throughout life, he least distinguished himself. His affections were ardent and generous, his moral sentiments invariably pure and noble, his piety unalterable; his judgment, wherever abstract and general principles were to be dealt with, was, to the last, often hasty, incomplete, vague, uncertain. But if his reasoning was never that "dry light" of which Bacon speaks, it never, in his case, was mingled with other passions or feelings than those which did honour to his nature. Above all, there was throughout his career the utmost sincerity in the expression of his opinion; no taint of hypocrisy, no reserve, no timidity—a want sometimes of caution, never that prudence which is the disguise of cowardice,—you had at all times the genuine unaffected utterance of the man. He was not even the least apprehensive of ridicule. He would have borne martyrdom before a host of jesters, which some have thought to be not the lightest species of martyrdom. If astrology had found favour in his sight, he would have expressed his belief in it before the whole conclave of the Royal Society. Whatever seemed truth to him, had its clear, manly, unhesitating avowal. Of an ardent disposition, impatient of slow thinking or of long and intricate reasoning, eager, confident, somewhat too self-relying, his was not the mind peculiarly fitted for expounding abstract principles;—we note no extraordinarydeficiency in this respect, but we can easily conceive of minds better trained and disciplined for the discovery of great elementary truths;—but few men in our age and generation have manifested a warmer or more generous attachment to whatever assumed to them the shape of truth. For this he was ready to do battle to the utmost. No crusader could be more valiant, or go forth with fuller faith, or be more resolved at all hazards to drive out the infidel, and take possession of the Holy City. His geography was once at fault, or the territory and scene curiously shifted, and his Jerusalem was at one time due west, and at another due east; but it was the same devoted uncompromising knight that was seen marching towards it.

Those only who have never thought at all, or who have quite forgotten their past efforts at thinking, will throw blame upon another because the opinions of his his youth were different from those of his manhood. Such difference is almost the necessary attendant upon progress and mental development. The ardour and the candour of Southey's nature made the difference in his case singularly conspicuous. He lived, too, at that epoch when the French Revolution made and unmade so many enthusiasts. This may be thought a sufficient vindication of his memory. But there remains to add one very honourable distinction. Many of those whom the French Revolution had made enthusiasts in the cause of human progress, became cold and dead and utterly indifferent to that cause—selfishly callous, or quite sceptical as to thepossibleimprovements which might be effected in society. Now, Southey changed his opinion on many subjects, but he never deserted the cause of human improvement. He would have promoted very different measures at different periods, but he had the same cause always at heart. He never sank into a cold and selfish indifference; nor was it a mere passive conservatism that he ever advocated. His son has here very justly pointed out that, as a writer in theQuarterly Review, in which character he was thought to have consummated his apostasy, it wasthe renegade Southeywho drew attention to the state of the poor, who called on the Government for a scheme of national education, who pointed out the folly of neglecting our great colonial possessions, and the necessity of adopting some large and judicious plan of emigration. Of the topics which occupy reflective and philanthropic men at this moment, pauperism, national education, and emigration are three of the most conspicuous; and in each of these Southey may claim to have led the way, in drawing towards them that public attention which they so eminently deserve. He is always alive to whatever seems to him a feasible scheme for the improvement of society. If he goes abroad, and visits theBeguinagesin Belgium, he thinks whether a like institution might not be introduced into Protestant England, for the benefit of a class of women, whether single or widowed, who with difficulty find any active employment—who are not paupers, but whose poverty condemns them to a cheerless, solitary existence. If Robert Owen of Lanark comes across his path, no fear of having his own early dream of Pantisocracy revived before him, of being reproached for an old abandoned faith, (the constant terror of men who feel themselves apostates,) prevents him from expressing the natural interest which such a man, and the projects hethenhad in view, naturally excited within him. HisColloquiesmay not earn him a reputation amongst political economists; but no one will deny the philanthropic spirit which they breathe. In hisLife of Wesley, and all his religious or theological publications, however devoted he may show himself to the Church of England, he never fails to inquire how this great institution may be made still more serviceable to the nation at large, and this, too, by embracing within its pale those very sectaries towards whom he was accused of having so bigoted and unfriendly a feeling.

Those of his opponents who, in the later part of his career, were accustomed to represent Southey as the unscrupulous, drilled, formal advocate of a party in Church and State, ready for his pension and his pay, for courthonours and the praise of bishops, to espouse its cause to the utmost, never made a greater mistake in their lives. Innumerable proofs are here before us in his letters, if we did not find them in his works, that he retained to the last a certain bold, erratic, independent manner of thinking, quite his own.

Always was he Robert Southey, and no representative of a party. At one time of his life he contemplated the profession of the law, and studied for the bar. What sort of lawyer he might have made, if he had been able to give up his mind to the study, or what the practice of Westminster Hall might have made of him, there is no saying; but there was never any literary men, earning subsistence by his pen, who had less of the spirit of the retained advocate. A self-willed, untamed, quite individual manner of looking at things, is always breaking out. If he had taken that seat in Parliament which, without any consultation of his wishes, was so strangely bestowed upon him, he would, we are persuaded, have greatly disappointed any party that might have relied upon his steady and unswerving co-operation. He would often have deserted them for the cross benches, and as often perplexed them by his uncompromising zeal. No whipper-in would have been quite sure of him, or kept him steady in the ranks. In that position where he was most subject to restraint—as a writer in theQuarterly—it is amusing to see how restive he is, how he rears and plunges at first starting, how he chafes at that harness which each one in such a team must be content to wear, though every steed were a veritable Pegasus, and Apollo himself in the editorial car. He thinks "a sprinkling of my free and fearless way of thinking would win friends" for theReview. "It is my nature and my principle," he says, "to speak and write as earnestly, as plainly, and as straight to the mark as I think and feel. If the editor understands his own interest, he will not restrict me." We must confess, judging by the ebullitions he sometimes gives vent to in these letters, that the most indulgent editor must have been occasionally called upon to "restrict" a certain impetuosity of manner, which, it may be observed, would have embarrassed Mr Gifford almost as much as it would have done Mr Jeffrey.

But from this somewhat rash incursion into the very centre of our subject, it would be wise—since we are not, in fact, epic poets—to effect a timely retreat; let us recommence, after the more legitimate manner of prosaic reviewers, with some account of the work immediately before us.

The Life and Correspondence of Dr Southey, which is here presented to the public, answers fairly to the description which the author, or editor, himself gives of it in his preface. A number of letters are arranged according to their dates, and are connected together with just such intimations of a biographical nature as enable them to tell their own story. The life of Southey, meaning thereby a skilful narrative and analysis of incident and character, remains, of course, to be written; and a very interesting work it will prove, if it falls into fortunate hands. Meanwhile, this collection of letters, many of them delightful compositions, and perfect models of epistolary style, gives us such an insight into, and appreciation of the man Southey, as was previously impossible to any one who did not know him personally and intimately. The editor has performed his part in a very creditable and judicious manner. It would have been very difficult for the son to conduct a rigid and impartial scrutiny into the literary merits of the father, and he has not attempted it; but it would have been the easiest thing in the world for that son, or for any other editor, to have spoilt such a work as this by intrusive panegyric, by constant controversy with old and hostile criticisms, by perpetual contest for place and pre-eminence for his biographical idol. The mere vanity of authorship, or an officious spirit, might have given a repulsive air to what is now a most agreeable book. There are cases, and this is one of them, where, considering the temptations that beset an editor, the absence of cause for censure becomes no slight ground of commendation.

The letters of Southey are preceded by the fragment of an autobiography. Would it were more than a fragment! The author, we are told, had lookedforward to this task as one of a very agreeable nature; and, so far as he proceeded with it, appears to have found it such; for he revels in the reminiscences of childhood and his school-days, and describes the old house in Bristol in which he lived when a boy, with a loving minuteness that is in danger of outrunning the interest which any one but himself could feel in such a locality. But even before his school-days are quite over, he drops the pen. To one who had so much necessary employment for that pen, a supererogatory labour of this description ought to be very attractive, and apparently he found in his task, as he advanced, increasing difficulties and decreasing pleasure.

The reminiscences of childhood, of boyhood, and even of the first entrance into youth, have to almost all men an indescribable charm. Up to this time, we look back upon ourselves with a curious feeling, as if it were not altogether ourselves we were contemplating, but rather someother beingwho preceded us, and whose thoughts and feelings are the sole remembrance of them we have inherited. We look back upon the frailties of that other self with an unlimited indulgence; we smile at his errors, at his passions, at his griefs; we even sport with his absurdities, and can afford to throw a playful ridicule over all the follies he committed. This child that we are playing with is ourself, but still it is only a child; and we have the fuller right to play with it because it is ourself. No sense of responsibility intervenes to disturb this singular amusement, where the adult is seen toying with and holding in his arms the image of his own infancy. But when this early pre-existent state has passed in review, and the real man is summoned forth upon the scene, we begin to feel that this is indeed ourselves; and we become too implicated and too much involved in the part he performs, to enjoy any longer the position of an imaginary spectator. We are sensitive to the errors, and responsible for the faults, of this other self; we cannot treat him with cavalier indifference; we must be his advocate or his censor. The retrospect assumes a quite different character. Formerly we called up a departed self from some half-fabulous region of the past, and questioned it as to its ways of thinking and acting; we now stand ourselves in the witness-box, and give our testimony; and the best of us must occasionally assume the sullen aspect of an unwilling witness. Formerly we sported with the past absurdity, ridiculed and laughed at it; but now the remembered folly, the sentimental effusion of the youth, the absurd oratorical display, the ridiculous exhibition, of whatever kind it may have been, affords us no amusement. It matters not what the distance of time, the cheek tingles with the reminiscence. What is still more to the purpose, the griefs and afflictions which we have now to summon up are the same in character as those we continue to feel, and their recollection is but a renewal of suffering. The affliction of the child rarely revives an affliction in the man—very often calls up a smile at the idea that so much distress had been felt at so trivial a cause. This is one reason why childhood appears, in our review of human life, so much happier than any other portion of it. We find a mirth in its remembered tears which assuredly we never discovered when they were flowing. But the remembrance of the sorrows of a later period is but sorrow itself, and we only taste again the bitterness of grief.

To Southey, whose disposition rendered him peculiarly susceptible to those domestic losses which death occasions, this last appears to have been one chief reason for the distaste he felt for his task as he proceeded in it. Certainly it soon lost its zest. During the early and playful portions of the biography, he holds on his way with alacrity and delight; he ransacks his memory, and brings out with great glee whatever odd and strange things he finds there; but the Westminster boy has not run his career before the theme has changed its aspect. At all events, it has no longer sufficient interestto makea time and leisure for itself amongst the crowded occupations of the author.

In the record of his childhood which Southey has given us, we have no reason, as we have intimated, to complain of the want of detail. Indeed, some circumstances are related which at first we thought might as well have been passed over in silence. It appeared to us that everything which a person can possibly recollect of his own childhood, cannot be interesting to others, although every such effort of recollection may be extremely amusing to the reminiscent himself; and we were prepared to read a lecture to all future autobiographers, and to remind them that they must distinguish between the pleasure of memory, of rescuing the half-forgotten incident from threatened oblivion—a pleasure which must be exclusively their own—and the value which the rescued fact itself may possess in the estimation of the world at large. But while we were preparing this lecture, a little incident occurred which gave us a lesson ourselves, and induced us to withhold this part of our criticism. Such details as we have alluded to, not only give pleasure to the reminiscent, but occasion exactly the same pleasure to those in whom they call up similar recollections; and we had overlooked the extreme difficulty the critic, or any one reader, must have in determining which of such details is absolutely without this species of interest for other readers. What seems to him as really "too absurd" to be worth mentioning, may awaken vivid emotions in another in whom it calls up a similar remembrance from the all-but-forgotten past:heshares in the very pleasure of the original reminiscent. Whilst we were perusing this autobiography, and our pencil was straying down the margin of a passage we intended to quote as an example of a quite superfluous effort of recollection, a friend called in upon us. We read to him this identical passage. To our astonishment, it had thrown him into a perfect ecstasy of delight. It had recalled an image of his schoolboy days which had never once been revived since he left school, and which he was certain would never again have occurred to him but for the paragraph we had read. Here is the passage:—

"One very odd amusement, which I never saw or heard of elsewhere, was greatly in vogue at this school. It was performed with snail shells, by placing them against each other, point to point, and pressing till the one was broken in, or sometimes both. This was called conquering; and the shell that remained unhurt, acquired esteem and value in proportion to the number over which it had triumphed, an accurate account being kept. A great conqueror was prodigiously prized and coveted—so much so indeed, that two of this description would seldom have been brought to contest the palm, if both possessors had not been goaded to it by reproaches and taunts. The victor had the number of its opponent's triumphs added to its own; thus, when one conqueror of fifty conquered another which had been as often victorious, it became conqueror of an hundred and one. Yet, even in this, reputation was sometimes obtained upon false pretences. I found a boy one day who had fallen in with a great number of young snails, so recently hatched that the shells were still transparent, and he was besmearing his fingers by crushing these poor creatures one after another against his conqueror, counting away with the greatest satisfaction at his work. He was a good-natured boy, so that I, who had been bred up to have a sense of humanity, ventured to express some compassion for the snails, and to suggest that he might as well count them and lay them aside unhurt. He hesitated, and seemed inclined to assent, till it struck him as a point of honour, or of conscience, and then he resolutely said, No! that would not do, for he could not then fairly say he had conquered them. There is a surprising difference of strength in these shells, and that not depending on the size or species; I mean whether yellow, brown, or striped. It might partly be estimated by the appearance of the point or top, (I do not know what better term to use;) the strong ones were usually clear and glossy there, and white if the shell were of the large, coarse, mottled brown kind. The top was then said to be petrified; and a good conqueror of this description would triumph for weeks or months. I remember that one of the greatest heroes bore evident marks of having once been conquered. It had been thrown away on some lucky situation, where the poor tenant had leisure to repair his habitation, or rather where the restorative power of nature repaired it for him, and the wall was thus made stronger than it had been before the breach, by an arch of new masonry below. But in general I should think the resisting power of the shelldepended upon the geometrical nicety of form."—(Vol. i. p. 55.)

This odd amusement, it seems, was not monopolised by young Southey's school. "Oh, I remember it well!" cried my enraptured auditor. "Yes, conqueror was the word. But Southey is wrong! It was theemptyshell only that we used. How distinctly I remember it!—and it must be thirty years ago—and never once till this moment have I thought of it since. How strange a thing is memory! You hold the shell, you see, between your forefinger and thumb, the forefinger being bent to receive it. Your adversary did the like with his shell. Then you applied the boss of your little shield to the boss of his—quite fairly, you understand, boss to boss, otherwise the strongest part of one shell would come in contact with the weaker part of the other. Silently, but with all your might, you pressed them together. The one which broke through its antagonist's was, of course, the conqueror. But Southey is wrong! It was only the empty shell we used. Consider, if the animal was there—what a horrible mess!"

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