Peon

“ Thus, the peony, which, from its mythical divine origin, was an important flower in the primitive pharmacopoeia, has even in modern times retained its reputation; and to this day Sussex mothers put necklaces of beads turned from the peony root around their children's necks, to prevent convulsions and to assist them in their teething. When worn on the person, it was long considered, too, a most effectual remedy for insanity, and Culpepper speaks of its virtues in the cure of the falling sickness. ”

“ And in sooth some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words, as of a mighty marvel, and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his deep love for her whom he depicted so surpassingly well. But at length, as the labour drew nearer to its conclusion, there were admitted none into the turret; for the painter had grown wild with the ardour of his work, and turned his eyes from the canvas rarely, even to regard the countenance of his wife. And he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sate beside him. ”

“ You will understand me to say, then, that I wish you to wear spectacles;—ah, hush!—you have already consented to wear them, for my sake. You shall accept the little toy which I now hold in my hand, and which, though admirable as an aid to vision, is really of no very immense value as a gem. You perceive that, by a trifling modification thus—or thus—it can be adapted to the eyes in the form of spectacles, or worn in the waistcoat pocket as an eye-glass. ”

“ The portrait, I have already said, was that of a young girl. It was a mere head and shoulders, done in what is technically termed a vignette manner; much in the style of the favorite heads of Sully. The arms, the bosom and even the ends of the radiant hair, melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep shadow which formed the back ground of the whole. The frame was oval, richly gilded and filagreed in Moresque. As a thing of art nothing could be more admirable than the painting itself. ”

“ The pencil can do much, the pen everything; the Painter is imprisoned within a few feet of canvass, the Poet commands the horizon with an eye that circumnavigates the globe; even that glorious pageant, a painted Panorama, is circumscribed by bounds, over which imagination, feeling them all too narrow, is uneasy till she soars; but the Poet's Panorama is commensurate with the soul's desires, and may include the Universe. ”

“ He has given indeed by his pen, and the artist by his pencil, a reflection of the Ruins, but it is from a mirror of polished ebony, simply a fac-simile resemblance,—light and shade only,—a specimen of Daguerreotype! No one can mistake the rapid manner in which the true copy is impressed upon the mind, and that by the most easy and agreeable means—viz., the fascination of his style; but the colouring of life is not there,—the Soul of History is wanting! ”

“ The hue of the orbs was the most brilliant of black, and, far over them, hung jetty lashes of great length. The brows, slightly irregular in outline, had the same tint. The “strangeness,” however, which I found in the eyes, was of a nature distinct from the formation, or the color, or the brilliancy of the features, and must, after all, be referred to the expression. Ah, word of no meaning! behind whose vast latitude of mere sound we intrench our ignorance of so much of the spiritual. The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! ”

“ I replied, "that he confounded the operations of the pencil and the pen; that the serene and silent art, as painting has been called by one of our first living poets, necessarily appealed to the eye, because it had not the organs for addressing the ear; whereas poetry, or that species of composition which approached to it, lay under the necessity of doing absolutely the reverse, and addressed itself to the ear, for the purpose of exciting that interest which it could not attain through the medium of the eye." ”

“ If she wields the duster occasionally, in alternation with the paint-brush and the pen, she has now a new choice of weapons; and as for models,—her friends, her neighbours, even her enemies and rivals, might admire her ingenuity, her thrift, and her positive genius in selecting types to paint! She never did paint anything beautifully but children, though her backgrounds have been praised, also the various young things that were a vital part of every composition. ”

“ And this thicket, so full of a natural art, was in the immediate vicinity, within a few rods, of the dwelling of Madame Deluc, whose boys were in the habit of closely examining the shrubberies about them in search of the bark of the sassafras. Would it be a rash wager—a wager of one thousand to one—that a day never passed over the heads of these boys without finding at least one of them ensconced in the umbrageous hall, and enthroned upon its natural throne? Those who would hesitate at such a wager, have either never been boys themselves, or have forgotten the boyish nature. ”

“ Dost believe then that a man only paints to make a picture, and that the pallet, the pencil and the good purpose are sufficient? O my dear simpleton, there must concur besides strange conjunctures, astral influxes, and the favour of a variety of spirits, in order to bring about a work as it should be! Did it never fall within thy experience, that an artist of fine perceptions and great depth of thought has spread his canvas, and dipped his pencil into the best colours, to lure and entice the most lovely ideal into his net? ”

“ However much I would like to possess the free bold pencil that you possess, I do not attempt to conceal the fact that Nature's colours appear to me different from what I see them in your pictures. Although it is useful, I think, for the sake of acquiring technique, for the pupil to imitate the style of this or that master, yet, so soon as he comes to stand in any sense on his own feet, he ought to aim at representing Nature as he himself sees her. ”

“ He was himself an artist without expression, a poet caged; a musician in desire, he suffered from a mute worship of all art. And he believed that the pen was as sacred an instrument 182as the violin, or the palette. To make money by the pen in business was equal to fiddling on a kerb-stone, or designing picture post cards. These theories are pose-theories, of course, and untenable by the practical man. But some of the gardener’s poses had crystallised into belief. ”

“ The health and spirit that but now breathed from a speaking face, the next moment breathe with almost equal effect from a dull piece of canvas, and thus distract attention: the eye sparkles, the lips are moist there too; and if we can fancy the picture alive, the face in its turn fades into a picture, a mere object of sight. We take rapturous possession with one sense, the eye; but the artist’s pencil acts as a nonconductor to the grosser desires. ”

“ You see the pupil is small, and that gives more expansion and force to the irides; but sometimes in an evening, when I'm too gay, and a true damask settles in the cheek, the pupil grows larger and crowds out the light, and under these thick, brown lashes, these yellow-hazel eyes of yours, they are dusky and purple and deep with flashes, like pansies lit by fire-flies, and then common folks call them black. ”

“ You exactly, therefore, hit our tastes, and answer our expectations, when you give us, in your peculiar manner, sentiments on what we may call the soul of things, and such characters as you draw with a pencil borrowed from the hand of nature, intermingled with those fine lights and shades of reflections and observations, that make your pictures glow, and instruct as well as delight. ”

“ I am more and more persuaded that I have quite as much to do with the pen for the arts as the pencil, and if I can in my day so enlighten the public mind as to make the way easier for those that come after me, I don't know that I shall not have served the cause of the fine arts as effectively as by painting pictures which might be appreciated one hundred years after I am gone. ”

“ Napoleon said:{6}
“Inspiration is the instantaneous solution of a long meditated problem”; what more perfect description could one have of a composition sketch, for the artist does, as a rule, meditate a problem for a long time but the moment he finds the solution he sets down his idea with the greatest zest seizing the first thing to hand—generally a pen or a pencil. Moreover, in the first rapid sketch that records his inspiration his mental vision is clear; the interruptions—inevitable in the slow process of painting a picture—having not yet occurred. ”

“ To those who have acquired the happy art of expressing their ideas with pencil and brush, the painting of an original panorama need not be explained; but the great majority of boys are unable to make pictures, either with pencil or with brush, and for them there remains still another method, which for beginners is equally, if not more effective. ”

“ For two hours my companion, who was a musical fanatico, gave his undivided attention to the stage; and, in the meantime, I amused myself by observing the audience, which consisted, in chief part, of the very elite of the city. Having satisfied myself upon this point, I was about turning my eyes to the prima donna, when they were arrested and riveted by a figure in one of the private boxes which had escaped my observation.
If I live a thousand years, I can never forget the intense emotion with which I regarded this figure. It was that of a female, the most exquisite I had ever beheld. ”

“ It would require a painter’s pencil, with a palette plentifully charged with ivory black, to do justice to the boy of eight who waited upon the table, or the younger apprentice of six, whose important business it was to wield a long whisk, and make war on every fly that dared to alight in that vicinity. ”

“ What is now wanting in muscular expression, is in a great measure supplied by his eye, which glows with animation, and intelligence, and at times speaks the language of a soul really impassioned. Upon a close view, when apart from the factitious aids and incumbrances of stage-lights, costume, and paint, he must be a shallow-sighted physiognomist who would not at the first glance be struck by Master Payne’s countenance. A more extraordinary mixture of softness and intelligence never were associated in a human face. ”

“ His theory of verse is simple, in fact too simple to account for all of the facts. The aim of poetry, according to Poe, is not truth but pleasure—the rhythmical creation of beauty. Poetry should be brief, indefinite, and musical. Its chief instrument is sound. 192 A certain quaintness or grotesqueness of tone is a means for satisfying the thirst for supernal beauty. Hence the musical lyric is to Poe the only true type of poetry; a long poem does not exist. Readers who respond more readily to auditory than to visual or motor stimulus are therefore Poe's chosen audience. ”

“ Sculptors, painters, dramatists, are, from the very nature of their material,—their spiritual material—imitators—conservatists—prone to repose in old Feeling and in antique Taste. For this reason—and for this reason only—the arts of Sculpture, Painting, and the Drama have not advanced—or have advanced feebly, and inversely in the ratio of their imitativeness. ”

“ There are two room interiors that always recur to me as I try to make clear in my own mind the difference between Poe, the artist, and Poe, the man. It must be remembered that Poe's philosophy of art impelled him to beauty plus strangeness. ”

“ And I think, that the first thing to be taught to any pupil, is neither how to manage the pencil, nor how to attain character of outline, but rather to see where things are light and where they are dark, and to draw them as he sees them, never caring whether his lines be dexterous or slovenly. ”

“ It lives its own surprise—it ceases to beat—and the void is inscrutable! In one grand and general view, who can display such a portrait? Fairly, however faintly, to delineate some of its features, is the sole and discriminate province of the pen which would trace nature, yet blot out personality. ”

“ The art of the pen (we write on darkness) is to rouse the inward vision, instead of labouring with a Drop-scene brush, as if it were to the eye; because our flying minds cannot contain a protracted description. That is why the poets, who spring imagination with a word or a phrase, paint lasting pictures. ”

“ To this year belongs The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe, illustrated with some striking designs by John Tenniel, and others by F. R. Pickersgill, R.A.,108 Birket Foster, Percival Skelton; and besides these, Felix Darley, P. Duggan, Jasper Cropsey, and A. W. Madot—draughtsmen whose names are certainly not household words to-day. In the lists of 'artists' the portrait of the author is attributed to 'daguerreotype'! one of the earliest instances I have encountered of the formal appearance of the ubiquitous camera as an artist. ”

“ We were about leaving this fissure, into which very little light was admitted, when Peters called my attention to a range of singular-looking indentures in the surface of the marl forming the termination of the cul-de-sac. With a very slight exertion of the imagination, the left, or most northerly of these indentures might have been taken for the intentional, although rude, representation of a human figure standing erect, with outstretched arm. ”

“ My eyes are large and gray; and although, in fact they are weak a very inconvenient degree, still no defect in this regard would be suspected from their appearance. The weakness itself, however, has always much annoyed me, and I have resorted to every remedy—short of wearing glasses. Being youthful and good-looking, I naturally dislike these, and have resolutely refused to employ them. I know nothing, indeed, which so disfigures the countenance of a young person, or so impresses every feature with an air of demureness, if not altogether of sanctimoniousness and of age. ”