Part 16

But as printing was unknown, to the ancients (though stamping an impression was daily practised, and, in fact, they possessed the art of printing without being aware of it), how were these portraits of Varro so easily propagated? If copied with a pen, their correctness was in some danger, and their diffusion must have been very confined and slow; perhaps they were outlines. This passage of Pliny excites curiosity difficult to satisfy; I have in vain inquired of several scholars, particularly of the late Grecian, Dr. Burney.

A collection of the portraits of illustrious characters affords not only a source of entertainment and curiosity, but displays the different modes or habits of the time; and in settling our floating ideas upon the true features of famous persons, they also fix the chronological particulars of their birth, age, death, sometimes with short characters of them, besides the names of painter and engraver. It is thus a single print, by the hand of a skilful artist, may become a varied banquet. To this Granger adds, that in a collection of engraved portraits, the contents of many galleries are reduced into the narrow compass of a few volumes; and the portraits of eminent persons, who distinguished themselves through a long succession of ages, may be turned over in a few hours.

"Another advantage," Granger continues, "attending such an assemblage is, that the methodical arrangement has a surprising effect upon the memory. We see the celebrated contemporaries of every age almost at one view; and the mind is insensibly led to the history of that period. I may add to these, an important circumstance, which is, the power that such a collection will have in awakening genius. A skilful preceptor will presently perceive the true bent of the temper of his pupil, by his being struck with a Blake or a Boyle, a Hyde or a Milton."

A circumstance in the life of Cicero confirms this observation. Atticus had a gallery adorned with the images or portraits of the great men of Rome, under each of which he had severally described their principal acts and honours, in a few concise verses of his own composition. It was by the contemplation of two of these portraits (the ancient Brutus and a venerable relative in one picture) that Cicero seems to have incited Brutus, by the example of these his great ancestors, to dissolve the tyranny of Cæsar. General Fairfax made a collection of engraved portraits of warriors. A story much in favour of portrait-collectors is that of the Athenian courtesan, who, in the midst of a riotous banquet with her lovers, accidentally casting her eyes on the portrait of a philosopher that hung opposite to her seat, the happy character of temperance and virtue struck her with so lively an image of her own unworthiness, that she suddenly retreated for ever from the scene of debauchery. The Orientalists have felt the same charm in their pictured memorials; for "the imperial Akber," says Mr. Forbes, in his Oriental Memoirs, "employed artists to make portraits of all the principal omrahs and officers in his court;" they were bound together in a thick volume, wherein, as the Ayeen Akbery, or the Institutes of Akber, expresses it, "The PAST are kept in lively remembrance; and the PRESENT are insured immortality."

Leonard Aretin, when young and in prison, found a portrait of Petrarch, on which his eyes were perpetually fixed; and this sort of contemplation inflamed the desire of imitating this great man. Buffon hung the portrait of Newton before his writing-table.

On this subject, Tacitus sublimely expresses himself at the close of his admired biography of Agricola: "I do not mean to censure the custom of preserving in brass or marble the shape and stature of eminent men; but busts and statues, like their originals, are frail and perishable. The soul is formed of finer elements, its inward form is not to be expressed by the hand of an artist with unconscious matter; our manners and our morals may in some degree trace the resemblance. All of Agricola that gained our love and raised our admiration still subsists, and ever will subsist, preserved in the minds of men, the register of ages and the records of fame."

What is more agreeable to the curiosity of the mind and the eye than the portraits of great characters? An old philosopher, whom Marville invited to see a collection of landscapes by a celebrated artist, replied, "Landscapes I prefer seeing in the country itself, but I am fond of contemplating the pictures of illustrious men." This opinion has some truth; Lord Orford preferred an interesting portrait to either landscape or historical painting. "A landscape, however excellent in its distributions of wood, and water, and buildings, leaves not one trace in the memory; historical painting is perpetually false in a variety of ways, in the costume, the grouping, the portraits, and is nothing more than fabulous painting; but a real portrait is truth itself, and calls up so many collateral ideas as to fill an intelligent mind more than any other species."

Marville justly reprehends the fastidious feelings of those ingenious men who have resisted the solicitations of the artist, to sit for their portraits. In them it is sometimes as much pride as it is vanity in those who are less difficult in this respect. Of Gray, Fielding, and Akenside, we have no heads for which they sat; a circumstance regretted by their admirers, and by physiognomists.

To an arranged collection of PORTRAITS, we owe several interesting works. Granger's justly esteemed volumes originated in such a collection. Perrault's Eloges of "the illustrious men of the seventeenth century" were drawn up to accompany the engraved portraits of the most celebrated characters of the age, which a fervent love of the fine arts and literature had had engraved as an elegant tribute to the fame of those great men. They are confined to his nation, as Granger's to ours. The parent of this race of books may perhaps be the Eulogiums of Paulus Jovius, which originated in a beautiful CABINET, whose situation he has described with all its amenity.

Paulus Jovius had a country house, in an insular situation, of a most romantic aspect. Built on the ruins of the villa of Pliny, in his time the foundations were still to be traced. When the surrounding lake was calm, in its lucid bosom were still viewed sculptured marbles, the trunks of columns, and the fragments of those pyramids which had once adorned the residence of the friend of Trajan. Jovius was an enthusiast of literary leisure: an historian, with the imagination of a poet; a Christian prelate nourished on the sweet fictions of pagan mythology. His pen colours like a pencil. He paints rapturously his gardens bathed by the waters of the lake, the shade and freshness of his woods, his green hills, his sparkling fountains, the deep silence, and the calm of solitude. He describes a statue raised in his gardens to NATURE; in his hall an Apollo presided with his lyre, and the Muses with their attributes; his library was guarded by Mercury, and an apartment devoted to the three Graces was embellished by Doric columns, and paintings of the most pleasing kind. Such was the interior! Without, the pure and transparent lake spread its broad mirror, or rolled its voluminous windings, by banks richly covered with olives and laurels; and in the distance, towns, promontories, hills rising in an amphitheatre blushing with vines, and the elevations of the Alps covered with woods and pasturage, and sprinkled with herds and flocks.

In the centre of this enchanting habitation stood the CABINET, where Paulus Jovius had collected, at great cost, the PORTRAITS of celebrated men of the fourteenth and two succeeding centuries. The daily view of them animated his mind to compose their eulogiums. These are still curious, both for the facts they preserve, and the happy conciseness with which Jovius delineates a character. He had collected these portraits as others form a collection of natural history; and he pursued in their characters what others do in their experiments.

One caution in collecting portraits must not be forgotten; it respects their authenticity. We have too many supposititious heads, and ideal personages. Conrad ab Uffenbach, who seems to have been the first collector who projected a methodical arrangement, condemned those spurious portraits which were fit only for the amusement of children. The painter does not always give a correct likeness, or the engraver misses it in his copy. Goldsmith was a short thick man, with wan features and a vulgar appearance, but looks tall and fashionable in a bag-wig. Bayle's portrait does not resemble him, as one of his friends writes. Rousseau, in his Montero cap, is in the same predicament. Winkelmann's portrait does not preserve the striking physiognomy of the man, and in the last edition a new one is substituted. The faithful Vertue refused to engrave for Houbraken's set, because they did not authenticate their originals; and some of these are spurious, as that of Ben Jonson, Sir Edward Coke, and others. Busts are not so liable to these accidents. It is to be regretted that men of genius have not been careful to transmit their own portraits to their admirers: it forms a part of their character; a false delicacy has interfered. Erasmus did not like to have his own diminutive person sent down to posterity, but Holbein was always affectionately painting his friend. Montesquieu once sat to Dassier the medallist, after repeated denials, won over by the ingenious argument of the artist; "Do you not think," said Dassier, "that there is as much pride in refusing my offer as in accepting it?"

FOOTNOTES:

DESTRUCTION OF BOOKS.

The literary treasures of antiquity have suffered from the malice of Men as well as that of Time. It is remarkable that conquerors, in the moment of victory, or in the unsparing devastation of their rage, have not been satisfied with destroying men, but have even carried their vengeance to books.

The Persians, from hatred of the religion of the Phoenicians and the Egyptians, destroyed their books, of which Eusebius notices a great number. A Grecian library at Gnidus was burnt by the sect of Hippocrates, because the Gnidians refused to follow the doctrines of their master. If the followers of Hippocrates formed the majority, was it not very unorthodox in the Gnidians to prefer taking physic their own way? But Faction has often annihilated books.

The Romans burnt the books of the Jews, of the Christians, and the Philosophers; the Jews burnt the books of the Christians and the Pagans; and the Christians burnt the books of the Pagans and the Jews. The greater part of the books of Origen and other heretics were continually burnt by the orthodox party. Gibbon pathetically describes the empty library of Alexandria, after the Christians had destroyed it. "The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near twenty years afterwards the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator, whose mind was not totally darkened by religious prejudice. The compositions of ancient genius, so many of which have irretrievably perished, might surely have been excepted from the wreck of idolatry, for the amusement and instruction of succeeding ages; and either the zeal or avarice of the archbishop might have been satiated with the richest spoils which were the rewards of his victory."

The pathetic narrative of Nicetas Choniates, of the ravages committed by the Christians of the thirteenth century in Constantinople, was fraudulently suppressed in the printed editions. It has been preserved by Dr. Clarke; who observes, that the Turks have committed fewer injuries to the works of art than the barbarous Christians of that age.

The reading of the Jewish Talmud has been forbidden by various edicts, of the Emperor Justinian, of many of the French and Spanish kings, and numbers of Popes. All the copies were ordered to be burnt: the intrepid perseverance of the Jews themselves preserved that work from annihilation. In 1569 twelve thousand copies were thrown into the flames at Cremona. John Reuchlin interfered to stop this universal destruction of Talmuds; for which he became hated by the monks, and condemned by the Elector of Mentz, but appealing to Rome, the prosecution was stopped; and the traditions of the Jews were considered as not necessary to be destroyed.

Conquerors at first destroy with the rashest zeal the national records of the conquered people; hence it is that the Irish people deplore the irreparable losses of their most ancient national memorials, which their invaders have been too successful in annihilating. The same event occurred in the conquest of Mexico; and the interesting history of the New World must ever remain imperfect, in consequence of the unfortunate success of the first missionaries. Clavigero, the most authentic historian of Mexico, continually laments this affecting loss. Everything in that country had been painted, and painters abounded there as scribes in Europe. The first missionaries, suspicious that superstition was mixed with all their paintings, attacked the chief school of these artists, and collecting, in the market-place, a little mountain of these precious records, they set fire to it, and buried in the ashes the memory of many interesting events. Afterwards, sensible of their error, they tried to collect information from the mouths of the Indians; but the Indians were indignantly silent: when they attempted to collect the remains of these painted histories, the patriotic Mexican usually buried in concealment the fragmentary records of his country.

The story of the Caliph Omar proclaiming throughout the kingdom, at the taking of Alexandria, that the Koran contained everything which was useful to believe and to know, and therefore he commanded that all the books in the Alexandrian library should be distributed to the masters of the baths, amounting to 4000, to be used in heating their stoves during a period of six months, modern paradox would attempt to deny. But the tale would not be singular even were it true: it perfectly suits the character of a bigot, a barbarian, and a blockhead. A similar event happened in Persia. When Abdoolah, who in the third century of the Mohammedan æra governed Khorassan, was presented at Nishapoor with a MS. which was shown as a literary curiosity, he asked the title of it--it was the tale of Wamick and Oozra, composed by the great poet Noshirwan. On this Abdoolah observed, that those of his country and faith had nothing to do with any other book than the Koran; and all Persian MSS. found within the circle of his government, as the works of idolaters, were to be burnt. Much of the most ancient poetry of the Persians perished by this fanatical edict.

When Buda was taken by the Turks, a Cardinal offered a vast sum to redeem the great library founded by Matthew Corvini, a literary monarch of Hungary: it was rich in Greek and Hebrew lore, and the classics of antiquity. Thirty amanuenses had been employed in copying MSS. and illuminating them by the finest art. The barbarians destroyed most of the books in tearing away their splendid covers and their silver bosses; an Hungarian soldier picked up a book as a prize: it proved to be the Ethiopics of Heliodorus, from which the first edition was printed in 1534.

Cardinal Ximenes seems to have retaliated a little on the Saracens; for at the taking of Granada, he condemned to the flames five thousand Korans.

The following anecdote respecting a Spanish missal, called St. Isidore's, is not incurious; hard fighting saved it from destruction. In the Moorish wars, all these missals had been destroyed, excepting those in the city of Toledo. There, in six churches, the Christians were allowed the free exercise of their religion. When the Moors were expelled several centuries afterwards from Toledo, Alphonsus the Sixth ordered the Roman missal to be used in those churches; but the people of Toledo insisted on having their own, as revised by St. Isidore. It seemed to them that Alphonsus was more tyrannical than the Turks. The contest between the Roman and the Toletan missals came to that height, that at length it was determined to decide their fate by single combat; the champion of the Toletan missal felled by one blow the knight of the Roman missal. Alphonsus still considered this battle as merely the effect of the heavy arm of the doughty Toletan, and ordered a fast to be proclaimed, and a great fire to be prepared, into which, after his majesty and the people had joined in prayer for heavenly assistance in this ordeal, both the rivals (not the men, but the missals) were thrown into the flames--again St. Isidore's missal triumphed, and this iron book was then allowed to be orthodox by Alphonsus, and the good people of Toledo were allowed to say their prayers as they had long been used to do. However, the copies of this missal at length became very scarce; for now, when no one opposed the reading of St. Isidore's missal, none cared to use it. Cardinal Ximenes found it so difficult to obtain a copy, that he printed a large impression, and built a chapel, consecrated to St. Isidore, that this service might be daily chaunted as it had been by the ancient Christians.

The works of the ancients were frequently destroyed at the instigation of the monks. They appear sometimes to have mutilated them, for passages have not come down to us, which once evidently existed; and occasionally their interpolations and other forgeries formed a destruction in a new shape, by additions to the originals. They were indefatigable in erasing the best works of the most eminent Greek and Latin authors, in order to transcribe their ridiculous lives of saints on the obliterated vellum. One of the books of Livy is in the Vatican most painfully defaced by some pious father for the purpose of writing on it some missal or psalter, and there have been recently others discovered in the same state. Inflamed with the blindest zeal against everything pagan, Pope Gregory VII. ordered that the library of the Palatine Apollo, a treasury of literature formed by successive emperors, should be committed to the flames! He issued this order under the notion of confining the attention of the clergy to the holy scriptures! From that time all ancient learning which was not sanctioned by the authority of the church, has been emphatically distinguished as profane in opposition to sacred. This pope is said to have burnt the works of Varro, the learned Roman, that Saint Austin should escape from the charge of plagiarism, being deeply indebted to Varro for much of his great work "the City of God."

The Jesuits, sent by the emperor Ferdinand to proscribe Lutheranism from Bohemia, converted that flourishing kingdom comparatively into a desert. Convinced that an enlightened people could never be long subservient to a tyrant, they struck one fatal blow at the national literature: every book they condemned was destroyed, even those of antiquity; the annals of the nation were forbidden to be read, and writers were not permitted even to compose on subjects of Bohemian literature. The mother-tongue was held out as a mark of vulgar obscurity, and domiciliary visits were made for the purpose of inspecting the libraries of the Bohemians. With their books and their language they lost their national character and their independence.

The destruction of libraries in the reign of Henry VIII. at the dissolution of the monasteries, is wept over by John Bale. Those who purchased the religious houses took the libraries as part of the booty, with which they scoured their furniture, or sold the books as waste paper, or sent them abroad in ship-loads to foreign bookbinders.

The fear of destruction induced many to hide manuscripts under ground, and in old walls. At the Reformation popular rage exhausted itself on illuminated books, or MSS. that had red letters in the title page: any work that was decorated was sure to be thrown into the flames as a superstitious one. Red letters and embellished figures were sure marks of being papistical and diabolical. We still find such volumes mutilated of their gilt letters and elegant initials. Many have been found underground, having been forgotten; what escaped the flames were obliterated by the damp: such is the deplorable fate of books during a persecution!