Arthur Thomas Malkin

“ Restored to health, at the Grand Duke’s invitation, he went to Florence, where both prince and people received him with every mark of admiration. Those who saw him, as he passed along the streets, would exclaim, “See! there is Tasso! That is the wonderful and unfortunate poet!”
It is useless minutely to trace his wanderings from Florence to Rome, from Rome to Mantua, and back again to Rome and Naples. At the latter place he dwelt in the palace of the Prince of Conca, where he composed great part of the Gerusalemme Conquistata. ”

“ Canova always spoke with gratitude of Gavin Hamilton, and acknowledged that he owed to him every sound principle of art. The vast knowledge of the antique which the Scotch artist possessed, gave more than common weight and value to his advice respecting its imitation. Canova’s first work in Rome, was an Apollo crowning himself. The sculptor himself was not satisfied with it, and felt all the difficulty of uniting a purer and broader style with a sufficient attention to the details of nature. ”

“ JOHN HUNTER. A life and character like that of John Hunter has many claims upon the honourable remembrance of society; the more, because, for meritorious members of his profession, there is no other public reward than the general approbation of good men. We look upon him with that interest which genius successfully directed to good ends invariably excites; as one whose active labours in the service of mankind have been attended with useful consequences of great extent ”

“ BARROW. The name of Isaac Barrow stands eminent among the divines and philosophers of the seventeenth century. Of the many good and great men whom it is the glory of Trinity College, Cambridge, to number as her foster-sons, there is none more good, none perhaps, after Bacon and Newton, more distinguished than he: and he has an especial claim to the gratitude of all members of that splendid foundation as the projector of its unequalled library, as well as a liberal benefactor in other respects. ”

“ Our painter’s vanity and plain dealing had raised up a host of enemies against him among painters, picture-dealers, and connoisseurs; and all whose self-love he had wounded, or whose tricks he had denounced, eagerly seized this opportunity to vent their anger in retaliation. The picture is well known, both by engravings and by Walpole’s severe criticism. We abstain from quoting it: we have passed lightly over a great artist’s excellences, and it would be unfair to expatiate on his defects and errors. ”

“ These reflections are the only antidotes to those anathemas of superhuman eloquence which have lately shaken these walls that surround us; but which it unaccountably falls to my province, whether I will or no, a little to stem the torrent of, by reminding you that you have a mighty sway in Asia which cannot be maintained by the finer sympathies of life, or the practice of its charities and affections. What will they do for you when surrounded by two hundred thousand men with artillery, cavalry, and elephants, calling upon you for their dominions which you have robbed them of? ”

“ Justice may, no doubt, in such a case forbid the levying of a fine to pay a revolting soldiery; a treaty may stand in the way of increasing a tribute to keep up the very existence of the government; and delicacy for women may forbid all entrance into a zenana for money, whatever may be the necessity for taking it. All these things must ever be occurring. But under the pressure of such constant difficulties, so dangerous to national honour, it might be better perhaps to think of effectually securing it altogether, by recalling our troops and merchants, and abandoning our Oriental empire. ”

“ The works which I have to finish are principally two books on the ‘System or Structure of the Universe,’ an immense work, full of philosophy, astronomy, and geometry; three books on ‘Local Motion,’ a science entirely new, no one, either ancient or modern, having discovered any of the very many admirable accidents which I demonstrate in natural and violent motions, so that I may, with very great reason, call it a new science, and invented by me from its very first principles; three books of mechanics, two on the demonstration of principles, and one of problems ”

“ SOBIESKI. So rapid and complete has been the decay of the Ottoman empire as an aggressive power, that any person now living, unacquainted with history anterior to the date of his own birth, would treat the notion of danger to Christian Europe from the ambition of Turkey, as the idle fear of an over-anxious mind. Yet there was a time, and that within a century and a half, when Popes summoned the princes of Europe to support the Cross, and the Eastern frontier of Christendom was the scene of almost constant warfare between Christian and Moslem. ”

“ The style of art which astonished his contemporaries by its novelty and power, and will ever continue to influence the practice of later artists, was founded on and formed out of the brilliant contrasts exhibited by a beam of light admitted through a narrow aperture, and rapidly subsiding into darkness: a spectacle which, familiar to his childhood, seems to have left an indelible impression on his imagination. ”

“ Few subjects have been discussed more largely, with greater minuteness of examination, or with greater licence of conjecture, than the history of the love of Petrarch. Some have chosen to treat with ridicule the idea of a passion, subsisting through a long and eventful life, without gratification, and nearly without hope; others have thought the difficulty obviated by supposing, in defiance of all apparent evidence, that Laura was not so insensible as the laws of morality required. ”

“ In his Essay on Dramatic Poetry, he tells his patron, Dorset, that the writing of that treatise served as an amusement to him in the country, when he was driven from London by the plague; that he diverted himself with thinking on the theatres, as lovers do by ruminating on their absent mistresses. But whatever opinion he might entertain of his own tragic style, he was himself sensible that his talents did not lie in the line of comedy. “Those who decry my comedies do me no injury, except it be in point of profit: reputation in them is the last thing to which I shall pretend.” ”

“ Dryden communicated to his own learning, which, though not deep nor accurate, was various and extensive, the magic of his style and the popular attraction of his mother tongue: the Spectator followed his lead, in essays less diffusive, and therefore more within the reach of the million: in our day, such is the accumulation of material, and so cheap and copious the power of circulating knowledge, that the poorest man who can read may inform his mind on subjects of general literature, to the enlargement of his understanding, and the improvement of his morals. ”

“ But his admirers have started a philosophic doubt, whether less of passion and prejudice would have been compatible with the peculiar station he was destined to occupy. In an age of revolution, it might be plausibly maintained, his genius was the counteracting force: alone he stood against the impulses communicated to European society by the philosophers of France; their enthusiasm could only be met by enthusiasm; their influence on the imaginations and hearts of men was capable of overbearing either a blind prejudice or a dispassionate logic. ”

“ If an intense desire of being useful is everywhere worthy of honour; if its value is immeasurably increased when united to genius of the highest order; if we feel for one, who, notwithstanding such titles to regard, is harassed by cruel persecution, then none deserve our sympathy, our admiration, and our gratitude, more than Galileo.”
[Monument to Galileo in the Church of Santa Croce at Florence.] ”

“ His remarkable success in life and in the discharge of his public functions is not to be ascribed to genius, unless the term be extended to that perfection of common sense and intimate knowledge of mankind which almost entitled his sagacity to the name of prescience, and made ‘Franklin’s forebodings’ proverbially ominous among those who knew him. ”

“ Nature works by contrast, and loves to unite the abrupt and angular with the flowing and graceful, in one harmonious whole. The work, however, unquestionably contains much that was original and valuable. But when it was found that Hogarth, a man unpolished in conversation, not regularly trained either to the use of the pen or the pencil, and, above all, a profound despiser of academics, of portrait painters, and of almost all things conventionally admired, had written a book professing to teach the principles of art, the storm of criticism which fell upon him was hot and furious. ”

“ For in all things, while he deeply reverenced principles, he chose to deal with the concrete more than with abstractions: he studied men rather than man. In private life the character of Burke was unsullied even by reproach. A good father, a good husband, a good friend, he was sincerely attached to the Protestant religion of the English church, “not from indifference,” as he said himself of the nation at large, “but from zeal; not because he thought there was less religion in it, but because he knew there was more.” ”

“ Until this be done, neither religion nor philosophy can be pressed very far into the aid of reformation and punishment. If England, from a lust of ambition and dominion, will insist on maintaining despotic rule over distant and hostile nations, beyond all comparison more numerous and extended than herself, and gives commission to her Viceroys to govern them, with no other instructions than to preserve them, and to secure permanently their revenues; with what colour of consistency or reason can she place herself in the moral chair, and affect to be shocked at the execution of her own orders ”

“ Immediately after his decease, the members of that profession of which he had been at once the ornament and the favourite, caused a statue of him to be executed. When the marble was denied admittance within those walls which had so often been shaken by the thunder of his eloquence, they placed it in the hall of Lincoln’s Inn, where he had presided as chancellor; a lasting monument to those who study the law, that subserviency is not necessary to advancement, and that they will be held in grateful remembrance by their professional brethren, who boldly uphold the liberties of their country. ”

“ The gratitude of the Pope to the British government on this occasion led to Canova’s visit to London. The honours he received in England from George IV., then Prince Regent, from the nobility, and the professors of the arts, perhaps even exceeded the homage which had been paid him on the continent; and it ought not to be forgotten, that the great Flaxman, who was among the warmest in welcoming him, wrote a letter to Canova on his return to Rome, which did honour to both, and in which he says, “You will be always a great example in the arts, not only in Italy, but in Europe.” ”

“ But Burke was an orator in all his thoughts, and a sage in all his eloquence; he held the principles of Conservation with the zeal of a Leveller, and tempered lofty ideas of Improvement with the scrupulousness of official routine. As a debater in the House of Commons he was inferior to some otherwise inferior men. Pitt and Fox will be neglected while the speeches of Burke shall still be read. It has been said of Fox by a philosophical panegyrist that he was the most Demosthenean speaker since Demosthenes. ”

“ Unlike the passionate and natural creations of Shakspeare, which will never grow obsolete, the sentiments of Chaucer are not congenial with our own: his love is fantastic gallantry; he is the painter and panegyrist of exploded knight-errantry. Hence the preference of the Canterbury Tales above all his other works; because the manners of the time are dramatized, in other ranks of life than that of chivalry ”

“ Much as we possess of Edmund Burke, very much is lost to us of that which formed the admiration of his contemporaries. “The mind of that man,” said Dr. Johnson, “is a perennial stream: no one grudges Burke the first place.” He was acquainted with most subjects of literature, and possessed some knowledge of science. The philosophy of mind owes him one contribution of no inconsiderable value: but the indirect results of his metaphysical studies as seen in the tenor of his practical philosophy are much more extensive. ”

“ Such was the death and such the life of Francesco Petrarca, than whom few men have exerted more influence over their own times; have contributed more to form and polish the language of their native land; or have given a more decided tone to the literature of succeeding generations. This is not the place to enter into a minute analysis of his merits as a poet. ”

“ But the germs of a better taste, and a more rational imitation, were already expanding. If the mania for collecting antique statues had the temporary effect of paralysing invention in the artist, and diverting the means of patronage, a gradual appreciation of the principles of ancient art was, nevertheless, the result; while the illustration and description of museums, and the works of Winkelmann, all tended to awaken the attention of the connoisseur to the amazing difference between the ill-advised caprices of the Bernini school and the sagacious simplicity of the ancients. ”

“ Never, probably, was religion at a lower ebb in the British dominions, than when that profligate Prince Charles II., who sat unawed on a throne formed as it were out of his father’s scaffold, found the people so wearied of puritanical hypocrisy, presbyterian mortifications, and a thousand forms of unintelligible mysticism, that they were ready to plunge into the opposite vices of scepticism or infidelity, and to regard with complacency the dissolute morals of himself and his vile associates. ”

“ Those who are cool enough to understand that the credit and truth of their respective creeds are in no way interested in the matter, will probably allow, that the course of reform which Cranmer directed was justified to himself by his private convictions; and that his motive was a desire to establish what he really believed to be the truth. Beyond this they will acknowledge that there is room for difference of opinion. Some will see, in the errors of his life, only human frailty, not irreconcileable with a general singleness of purpose ”