Colburn's New Monthly Magazine (Volume 7) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MODERN PILGRIMAGES. NO. V11I. The Studio of Canora. ' ' Lassh non eran mossi i pi nostri anco Quand' ii1 connbbi quella ripa intorno, Che dritte di salita avea manco, Esser di 111:11-1110 candido, ed adorno D' intagli s, che non pur l'olicreto, Mala natura gli averebbe scorno." Dante, Purgatorio, Canto lOth. Nc sutor ultra crepidam?" No man beyond his last," said I to myself, as, visiting the galleries and palaces of Rome, I felt an itching to put my Gothicisms on paper. What has a fellow like me to do writing about the arts, who sat in the tribune of the Florentine gallery without experiencing any extraordinary delight? There were the boasts of sculpture, the Medicean Venus, the Boxers, the Faun, the Apellino? all very natural, in features and attitude as expressive as marble can be; but they gave me no pleasure. They excited not one noble feeling, recalled no glory of the past, and foretold none of the future;?the massy blocks of Tarquin's cloaca and Rorriulus's brazen wolf were more eloquent to me. Certainly a higher idea is afterwards conceived by comparing these chef-fuemrts of art with all others, and finding them so superior: this speaks difficulty vanquished?speaks talent. But why admire a thing that pleases only because it shows talent? Here the argument comes home: we of the pen can admire, and sometimes do admire most voluminously, poems and prose that are " sccca- ture" to the multitude, merely because we espy genius therein; and the unfortunate wight is scouted, who declares in most rational paradox, that he can see no beauty in such things. The fact is, we must give and take; and while we are as yet but learners in the school of connotsseurship, we must adopt either much taciturnity or much pretension. The former would be most advisable, but to...