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The dashing waters when the air is still,
From many a torrent rill

That winds unseen beneath the shaggy fell,
Track'd by the blue mist well :

Such sounds as make deep silence in the heart,
For Thought to do her part.

KEBLE: Christian Year.

410. HIGH LIFE AND LOW LIFE.

Sir E. Landseer, R.A. (1802-1873). See under 1226, p. 505. These panels, first exhibited in 1831 (measuring 18 in. by 13 in. each), are amongst the smallest of celebrated pictures in the world. The gentle, gentlemanly stag-hound, who represents High Life, is probably a portrait of Sir Walter Scott's Maida, whom Landseer drew also for his "Scene at Abbotsford,” when he stayed there in 1824. Low Life is shown in "a broad and brawny bull-dog, the aide of a butcher, by whose block, and guarding whose hat, pipe, boots, and pot, he sits. Our dog here is in a state of satisfaction with the recent past and the soon to come; he has had a capital meat breakfast-note the beef bone in front of the step; the sun is bright and warm, so that it makes him lazily blink one eye, while the other, being shaded, is watching. Fat, he lounges against the jamb of the door; the savour, nay the very flavour of the bone and its adjuncts, lingers about his muzzle, which he licks gently and unctuously. His prospects are almost as agreeable as his experiences; for is he not about to have a ride in the cart-note the whip hanging on the door-latch, and the boots-to market, where there will be company and canine sports?" (Stephens, p. 63). Mr. Ruskin notices this bull-dog's expression as a typical representation of one essential feature of vulgarity. "Cunning," he says, "signifies especially a habit or gift of over-reaching, accompanied with enjoyment and a sense of superiority. It is associated with small and dull conceit, and with an absolute want of sympathy or affection. Its essential connection with vulgarity may be at once exemplified by the expression of the butcher's dog in Landseer's 'Low Life'" (Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. 7 § 11).

423.

MALVOLIO AND THE COUNTESS.

Daniel Maclise, R.A. (1806–1870). "Maclise," says Mr. Hodgson, "was the 'great artist' of his age, and covered acres of canvas. He executed frescoes on public buildings,

huge historical compositions, cartoons, easel pictures, great and small, portraits, water-colour drawings, and illustrations" (Fifty Years of British Art, p. 16). His studio was the resort of persons of distinction and influence, and it was at the special request of the Prince Consort that in 1859 he devoted himself exclusively to the work of executing a series of frescoes in the Royal Gallery at Westminster. During eight years Maclise worked away unceasingly in that " "gloomy hall," but owing to a subsequent alteration of the plans only two of his designs were executed. Maclise was on intimate terms, too, with many of the literary men of his time, especially Forster and Dickens, the latter of whom, speaking at the Academy Dinner a few days after Maclise's death, pronounced this eulogy upon his talents and character: "Of his prodigious fertility of mind and wonderful wealth of intellect, I may confidently assert that they would have made him, if he had been so minded, at least as great a writer as he was a painter. The gentlest and most modest of men; the freest as to his generous appreciation of young aspirants; and the frankest and largest hearted as to his peers." Of Maclise's influence upon young artists of his time, Mr. Frith tells us in his Autobiography (vol. i. ch. xi.) "My admiration for Maclise," he says, "scarcely stopped short of worship;' whilst he recalls another young artist-friend's saying: "Maclise is out and away the greatest artist that ever lived. There isn't an old master fit to hold a candle to him; and if I could only get some of his worse qualities into my pictures I should be satisfied." What these bad qualities were Mr. Frith goes on to explain: "Under happier circumstances I have always believed, and still believe, that Maclise would have been one of the greatest artists that ever lived, if his birth had been put back two or three centuries, and he had been coerced, as the great masters were, and subjected to a seven years' apprenticeship to one of the old Venetians. Instead of such medieval training, after a perfunctory education at the Royal Academy, the bright young fellow was left to his own unaided efforts. His great natural powers betrayed him; he painted huge compositions of figures without using models. His sense of colour, never very strong, was destroyed by his constant indulgence in the baleful practice of painting without nature before him. His eyes, as he told me himself, saw the minutest details at distances impossible to ordinary vision. He was evidently proud of his eyes, and he indulged them to the utter destruction of breadth'

1 I have heard it said," wrote Mr. Ruskin (Academy Notes, 1857, p. 11), that Mr. Maclise is singularly far-sighted, and draws more decisively than other painters, in the belief that he sees more clearly. But though his sight had the range of the eagle's, and clearness of the lynx's; though it were as manifold as a dragon-fly's and as manageable as a chameleon's, there is a limit to his sight, as to all our sights. . . . And, as far as in his pictures I am able to compare his power of sight with that of other people, he appears to see, not more, but a great deal less, than the world in general. . . . All natural objects are confused to us, however near, however distant, because all are infinite."

in his pictures. As to colour, he gave it up altogether; and when any reference was made to the old masters or the National Gallery, Maclise expressed his contempt in much the same words as those of another mistaken clever R.A., who would like to burn them all from Moscow to Madrid."" The absence of truth and nature in Maclise's colouring of flesh will be obvious to any spectator as soon as it is pointed out. Another defect on which Mr. Ruskin lays stress is Maclise's painting of hair (a defect conspicuous both in the Countess here and in Ophelia in XXI. 422, p. 564): "If Mr. Maclise looks fairly, and without any previous prejudice, at a girl's hair, however close to him, and however carefully curled, he will find that it verily does not look like a piece of wood carved into scrolls, and French-polished afterwards. . . . It is not often that I plead for any imitation of the work of bygone days, but, very seriously, I think no pupil should be allowed to pass the examination ordeal of our school of painting until he had copied, in a satisfactory manner, a lock of hair by Correggio. Once let him do that with any tolerable success, and he would know to the end of his life both what the word 'painting' meant; and with what flowing light and golden honour the Maker of the human form has crowned its power, and veiled its tenderness" (Academy Notes, 1857, pp. 12, 13). To Maclise's absence of truth must be added a certain lack of distinction and a stageyness which make his Shakespearean pictures unpleasant to those familiar with the poet. There is much truth in some advice which Sir George Beaumont once gave to Haydon. "For my part," he said, "I have always doubted the prudence of painting from poets. This is particularly applicable to painting from Shakespeare, when you not only have the powerful productions of his mind's pencil to contend with, but also the perverted representations of the theatres." The "perverted representations" in this case are hardly those of the stage; it is the impression left on the mind by such actresses as Miss Ellen Terry that makes Maclise's wooden figures additionally unsatisfying.

Mr. Frith attributes Maclise's defects, we have seen, to his too scanty training and too quick success. He was, indeed, no more than nineteen when he made a happy hit with a drawing of Sir Walter Scott, then on a visit to Cork, which attracted the poet's attention and induced Maclise to open a studio. He was the son of a respectable tradesman at Cork, and had a respectable education in that town, being particularly distinguished for proficiency in English literature and history. He was then sent to a bank, but found time to learn some anatomy at a surgeon's. By 1827 he had saved enough money to go Nothing, perhaps, can more completely demonstrate the total ignorance of the public of all that is great or valuable in Shakespeare than their universal admiration of Maclise's Hamlet " (Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. i. sec. i. ch. i. § 2 n.)

1 "

2 Or, according to his own account, fourteen. Maclise used to say he was born in 1811; but the register of the old Presbyterian Church at Cork fixes 1806 as the date.

over to London and join the Academy Schools. Next year he made another hit with a sketch of Charles Kean (the younger), taken at a Drury Lane "first night." At the Academy Schools he carried everything before him, and in 1829 the first picture he exhibited-a "Malvolio" (of which this is a replica)-brought him at once into fashion. From that year onwards he was a regular exhibitor at the Academy, often sending six or seven pictures in one year. He was elected A. R. A. in 1834, and R. A. in 1840. His labours in Westminster Hall had a bad effect on his health, and the death of his sister, who kept his house, in 1865, further shattered him. He declined the Presidency of the Academy in that year, and five years later died of acute pneumonia at his house in Cheyne Walk.

From Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Act iii. Sc. Olivia-whose "red and white" the painter has hardly followed "Nature's cunning hand" in "laying on”—is seated in her garden, thinking sadly of her unrequited love for Viola. Her maid Maria stands behind her, chuckling over the trick she has played upon Malvolio, Olivia's steward, by bidding him, in a letter pretending to be from her mistress, come with a smiling face, and "remember who commended thy yellow stockings and wished to see thee cross-gartered." "Yond gull Malvolio does obey every point of the letter that Maria dropped to betray him he does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies".

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Olivia. Why, how dost thou, man? what is the matter with thee?

Malvolio.
Olivia.

Not black in my mind, though yellow in my legs. God comfort thee! Why dost thou smile so and kiss thy hand so oft?

427. A DAME'S SCHOOL.

T. Webster, R.A. (1800-1886). See under 426, p. 513.
In every village marked with little spire,
Embowered in trees and hardly known to fame,
There dwells in lowly shed and mean attire
A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name,
Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame :
They, grieven sore, in piteous durance pent,
Awed by the power of this relentless dame,
And ofttimes on vagaries idly bent,

For unkempt hair, or task unconned, are sorely shent.

SHENSTONE.

450. A VILLAGE HOLIDAY OF THE OLDEN TIME.

F. Goodall, R.A. (born 1822: still living).
See under 451, p. 501.

When the merry bells ring round,

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W. P. Frith, R.A. (born 1819: still living).

Mr. William Powell Frith, the most widely popular painter of his day, was born at Aldfield in Yorkshire, his father being a servant at Studley Royal, and afterwards landlord of the Dragon Inn at Harrogate. His family were from the first anxious to make an artist of him, his own inclination, however, being to the trade of auctioneer. He was educated at a private school near Dover, and in 1835 entered Mr. Sass's drawing school at 6 Charlotte Street, Bloomsbury—a school which has the honour of turning out many of our best painters, Sir John Millais amongst the number. Here Mr. Frith for two years drew from the antique, afterwards passing into the Academy Schools. He obtained some little occupation as a portrait painter in country houses, and his first picture subjects were from Scott and Shakespeare one of these, a Malvolio," was hung at the Academy in 1840, the same year in which Maclise's "Malvolio" (423, p. 520) was exhibited. It was Maclise whom Mr. Frith set himself at this period to imitate, his great difficulty, as he tells us, being to think of subjects. A picture of "Dolly Varden" secured him the friendship of Dickens, and in 1844 he was elected A. R.A. In 1852 he was elected R. A. in succession to Turner. It was in this year that he first attempted a subject in modern life, to which he had always felt impelled, but from which the difficulty of dealing with modern costume had long deterred him. His first great success in this line was with "Ramsgate Sands" in 1854. This was followed by "The Derby Day," "The Railway Station," "The Marriage of the Prince of Wales," "The Road to Ruin," "The Race for Wealth," "For Better or for Worse," and "The Private View." Of late years Mr. Frith has returned to literary and historical subjects, but it is on his pictorial mirrors of modern life that he justly bases his claim to fame. The limits of that fame were thus defined by Mr. Ruskin in criticising the present picture, which is admittedly the painter's masterpiece: “I am not sure how much power is involved in the production of such a picture as this; great ability there is assuredly-long and careful study-considerable humour-untiring industry-all of them qualities entitled to high praise, which I doubt not they will receive from the delighted

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