representation might only address the mind, while the loveliness of the painter's would enthral the heart.

From its material and character, Sculpture must be defined and decisive; Painting may be indeterminate and vague. In Sculpture (I am using the language of the present Mr. Justice Coleridge in his Oxford Prize Essay,) all meets the eye; in Painting, more. (often) is conveyed than meets the eye; the mind grasps the whole in Sculpture, in Painting it ever thinks there is more to grasp. Sculpture fills and satisfies the imagination it addresses; Painting exerts the imagination to the utmost limit of its own powers. In Sculpture one tone must predominate, one character pervade the whole; but Painting may represent objects in distinct contrast; it may reveal only partially, and arouse rather than satisfy the imagination. For this reason, perhaps, it was that Painting became peculiarly the handmaid of Christianity, as Sculpture had been the expression of Greek mythology; for it seems as if the sublime to the Christian's imagination required what is vague and indeterminate-what might be expressed by Painting, with its partial lights and breadth of shade, its bright glimpses and obscure concealments, just as in Poetry some of the sublimest images of Dante and of Milton have not the distinct outlines which the creations of Homer and Virgil possess. Though Painting, therefore, may better suit our solemn hours, and inspire our religious meditations, the contemplation of the faultless beauty of the masterpieces in ancient Sculpture refines the mind, and their chaste grandeur nourishes loftiness of soul and delicacy of feeling. Though stronger sympathies attach us to Milton, we have room for noble emotions from Virgil; though we may enter a holier circle, we linger with delight on classic ground.

If, now, we compare the powers of Poetry with those of the imitative arts, we shall see that Poetry alone grasps an unlimited sceptre, and may express whatever human genius can create. The poet Coleridge defines the two cardinal points of Poetry to be the power of exciting the reader's sympathy by a faithful adherence to the truth of Nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of the imagination. As Poetry employs verbal signs to suggest to the imagination noble grounds for noble thoughts, the greater muse is winged,

and her flight is unshackled by material fetters. The representations which Poetry addresses to the mind seem to affect it in a different manner from that in which natural objects, or the painted or sculptured representations of natural objects, affect it: in common with Painting and Sculpture, words excite ideas of sublimity and beauty, and address the feelings; but their power transcends the power of imitative art. And what additional cause do we perceive for gratitude to the Giver of all good gifts, when we consider Language, in its progress from the scanty requirements of savage life to the gorgeous plenitude of civilised intercourse; when (to use the language of an eminent author) "we behold it glowing in the song of the poet, and expressing the subtlety of the philosopher;" when we recognise in it the source of our purest pleasures, and the channel of our most useful knowledge; when we see it fixing the most subtle and evanescent flashes of genius, and painting the visions of fancy; giving utterance to the lessons of history and the holiest precepts of inspiration-the flaming chariot (as it has been called) of the oracles of God, dispensing light and life eternal to every inhabitant of the globe. The muse of Painting, it is true, employs a universal language, for—

The Pencil speaks the tongue of every land;

but it is obvious that no imitative art can present all the images that may be raised in the mind by words. Painting may be mute Poetry; but while Painting is imitative, Poetry is suggestive, and may become articulate Painting, for it can cause the most vivid images to flash at once upon the mind: and it is, perhaps, because poetical descriptions afford play to the imagination and to the natural activity of thought, that they have more power to affect the mind than the representations of the painter. Poetry alone can represent a moving current of human life, can lead the mind through a varied action and a succession of objects, and can clothe the subject of its description with the dignity and the attributes derived from antecedents-from its connection with the beings and events of bygone time; whereas the painter has but one page on which to represent his story. Illustrations of this attribute are familiar to all persons. Let me

refer, for example, to Turner's beautiful view of the Tomb of Cecilia Metella as a "tower of strength" upon the high ground above the Appian Way-a view which effectively presents the stern round tower of other days,

Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone,
Such as an army's baffled strength delays,
Standing with half its battlements, alone—

but only the poet's description invests it with its

two thousand years of ivy grown,

The garland of eternity, where wave
The green leaves over all by Time o'erthrown;

or tells us that

a woman's grave

was the treasure locked within this proud memorial of a husband's love. Thus, again, it is possible that the appearance of Milton's fallen angel may be as forcibly depicted on canvas as by the description of the poet; but the most sublime pencil of Italy could not have represented to a spectator those ideas of his former glory and his actual state which are suggested by the poet's description:—

He above the rest,

In shape and gesture proudly eminent,
Stood like a tower: his form had not yet lost
All his original brightness, nor appeared

Less than archangel ruined, and the excess

Of glory darkened: as when the Sun, new risen,

Looks through the horizontal, misty air,

Shorn of his beams; or, from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds

On half the nations.

And another fine comparison will occur to all readers of Milton's

poetry in the description of Satan's

ponderous shield,

Ethereal-tempered, massy, large, and round,
Behind him cast: the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb,
Through optic glass, the Tuscan artist views
At evening from the top of Fesole,

Or in Vald'arno.

We have in Moir's little poem of The Old Seaport another example of the power of Poetry to raise in the imagination a picture which could not receive its full poetical force from the art of the painter. That poem has been very truly said to combine the literal-graphic and the graphic-imaginative, for it brings before us the dim old seaport with its sombre sea and sky-just such a bit of daguerreotype, with its desolate, grey, and dusky features, as Painting could most effectively represent; but also leads the mind, by simple, natural links of association, to glance over far seas and into foreign lands, and to contrast their stormy perils with the peace to which it returns in the old seaport. And I might mention many scenes which have been illustrated by the historical painter that nevertheless receive only from the description of the poet or historian their full solemnity. Thus, Reynolds's picture of the Death of Cardinal Beaufort-masterpiece as it is—fails to impress the mind with the state of the conscience-stricken cardinal as portrayed by Shakespeare. Again, Poussin's great picture of the Death of Germanicus depicts the affliction of the friends who surround the dying prince, but only the historian can invest the scene with its affecting interest.

But it is needless to multiply examples that Poetry can present objects and combinations which are not within the province of imitative art. The words of Homer-of "the great Hellenic triumvirate of Athenian tragedy "-of Dante-of Shakespearecannot be embodied in sculptured or painted forms: they may and do inspire the sculptor or the painter who selects a character or an event—the action of a moment of time-for illustration by his art; but not the power of Michael Angelo or the grace of Raffaelle, the solemnity of Rembrandt or the radiance of Rubens, can realise all the pictures of the imagination, or keep the animated pageants of the Past moving brightly across our path in the Present with kindling power. I need but call to remembrance the ideal creations the sublimity of which is derived from what is suggested rather than what is portrayed: the images of which the charm depends on their succession and transition, and their relation to other events-on circumstances that can be realised to the imagination only by what Dugald

7

Stewart calls the ubiquity of the poet's eye. Innumerable scenes of natural grandeur and picturesque beauty are realised by the mind when described in Poetry, which are unfit for the art of the painter by reason of their impressiveness being due to qualities or attributes of magnitude, motion, or sound which words only can describe. Thus, how can the ripple and glitter, the music and motion of the bright and restless waters, be adequately portrayed on canvas? How can any pictorial representation of Niagara impress the beholder with the slow and solemn majesty of its descent? The associative or suggestive imagination may indeed supply, or transfer to the representation, those attributes which invest the scene with its full impressiveness and grandeur, and which poetical descriptions may convey; just as the graphic word-painting of Shakespeare raises a complete picture in the mind, not only of supernatural objects but of a peaceful landscape or an agitated sea.

A poetical representation which is associated with indistinct forms, and terrors suggested rather than defined, and therefore incapable of being expressed by Painting or Sculpture, can collect before the mind an instantaneous picture, full of ideal sublimity and grandeur. I might give many examples: there is Virgil's description of Jupiter, shrouding his power in tempests and clouds of darkness, his presence revealed by lightning: there is Milton's description of the passage of the fallen angels, where it is from the

rocks, caves, dens, and shades

being those of Death, that the image derives its gloomy force: there is the mythological attribute of the eagle as armour-bearer of Jove, which so greatly augments the image of strength conveyed by the flight of the noble bird: and there are the obscured images and undefined terrors by which Milton surrounds

the other shape—

If shape it might be called that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,-
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,
For each seemed either,―black it stood as Night,

Fierce as ten furies, terrible as Hell,

And shook a dreadful dart. What seemed his head

The likeness of a kingly crown had on.