On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
mented spirit with the inflictions to which he submits , is the real incompatibility of the purifying and peace-giving power of reli gion } with the useless and enfeebling agonies to which the soul has been so often subjected by priestcraft . The artist could not give so much of purity as he meant , without giving more of power than was consistent with the action of the infernal tormentors . The truth of art cannot be sustained when the design is at variance with the
truth of nature and morality . * Love and the Maiden , ' No . 4 , and c Love reposing , ' No . 6 , are , especially the former , graceful compositions , but both of inferior , though unequal interest . We hope we have no prejudice against No . 2 , ' The Enigma of Human Life , ' though Mrs . Jameson did give us , in her preface ,
an unpleasant association with it , by one of those bad colloquialisms , to which we have already alluded as her chief failing . She calls it , something quite Miltonic / just as the minor canon of a cathedral will say that the crimson damask curtains of his cloistered windows make his apartment * something quite prebendal . *
Instead of being Miltonic , it is not even Spenserian . It is full of conceits , and in the worst style of allegory . There are thorns and thistles to represent trials and troubles . A rose is losing its leaves , to show that pleasures are taking their leaves . There is a serpent for sin , that has killed a dove for death . Two chrysalids
represent a cotiple of corpses , while a brace of butterflies are flying upwards , for their immortal souls . The thistles are tall , because mortal grievances are great . Their down is up to the back of the sphinx ; whose head is in clouds and mist to show that mortality is a cloudy mystery . The spirit of humanity is a big genius , though a little boy ; and sits on the back of the sphinx ,
as though he were going to ride a-cockhorse . It is a wonder that Luna was not put behind him on a pillion , to show that genius loves the moon , and that life is moonshine . Now this is not a poem , but a puzzle . It is not an enigma , it is only a conundrum . My first is a genius , my second is a sphinx , and my whole is a dogma . The whole getting up is very like that which Mrs . Jameson has condemned in the preface . ' With
reason are we sick of all those " hieroglyphical cattle , " as Horace Walpole terms them ; Hope leaning sentimentally on her anchor ; Death shaking his hour glass ; Valour brandishing his sword ; Victory flourishing her palm ; and Fame puffiing at her trumpet . ' These are worse than tlie genius of humanity sitting on the sphinx to represent an enigma ; but they are of the same genus . Were the sphinx to eat ail who could not guess the riddle , she
would soon grow a « fat and flourishing as would a donkey browsing on those cloud-capt thistles , whose growth has never been rivalled since the days of Jack and the bean-stalk . Graphic allegory , instead of being the characteristic , and the charm of these composition * , as Mrs . Jameson seems to suppose in her
Untitled Article
682 RHzsch ' s Fancie . it .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1834, page 682, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2638/page/6/
-