IX. Away, then, in the daylight, Unless I give her leave! X. The baron hath the landward park ; The fisher hath the sea; But the rocky haunts of the sea-fowl Belong alone to me! POETRY AND PAINTING. BY SIR MARTIN ARCHER SHEE, P. R. A. INVENTION seems to have been regarded, in all enlightened periods, as the highest and most admirable quality of the human mind as the quality which makes the nearest approach to the agency of creation—and as affording the most generally acknowledged evidence of that intellectual power which we denominate by the vague term Genius. The invention of the poet and the painter should here be distinguished from that of the philosopher and the man of science. The former is an operation of the mind, in which the imagination and the fancy are the prime agents; judgment regulating for their purposes the materials which the stores of memory supply, independent of any direct external co-operation. The inventions of the philosopher and the man of science should rather be termed discoveries; as they are the results of reasoning from the effects of experiment on external objects, and of observation on the various phenomena of nature. Thus the mariner's compass, the steamengine, and the safety-lamp of Sir Humphry Davy were produced by the observation and detection of new properties in matter, which the happy combination of scientific sagacity and mechanical ingenuity applied to the performance of functions in which they had never been previously em ployed, and of which they were not before known to be capable. This distinction is not introduced here with any intention to undervalue the enlightened agency by which the miracles of science are every day wrought around us, but merely to connect a more definite meaning with the term Invention, as applied to poetry and the fine arts. The invention of the poet and the painter is a purely intellectual operation. It consists in the conception of the story or subject upon which their peculiar powers are to be employed, the framing of such events and incidents as are calculated to effect its developement in all its parts, and the introduction of such characters as may appear to be the appropriate actors in each scene. In the exercise of their invention, thus far, the poet and the painter perform the same task. The painter is thus far a poet, though the poet is not a painter. It is when he comes to his canvass, when he sets about to body forth, and give visible form and existence to his conceptions, that the peculiar invention of the painter commences. The poet, however, does not always invent his story, nor the painter his subject. They generally have recourse to the stores of history or tradition, for such striking events, adventures, and situations, as they consider to be the best adapted to their purpose. Thus, Homer (or the bards whose collective labours we admire under that name) founded his work on the Trojan war and the mythology of his time; Milton derived his sublime subject from the inspired pages of the Sacred Volume; and Shakspeare, there is reason to believe, rarely, if ever, taxed his imagination for the construction of those fables and plots, upon which he has founded the immortal dramas that have rivalled the noblest productions of all former ages in that department of lite rature. The records of history, sacred and profane, have furnished the painter with his noblest subjects. The graceful fictions of heathen mythology, and the fanciful regions of poetry in general, have opened to him an exhaustless mine of materials for the exercise of his pencil. The ancients represented their gods and heroes under circumstances of incident and action suggested by the religious rites and popular legends of their day. The old masters, as the great artists of the Medicean era are denominated, resorted also occasionally for subjects to the picturesque attributes of pagan idolatry; but they most frequently directed their attention to the rich stores of the Old and New Testaments, as affording themes the most acceptable to the taste and piety of their best patron, the Church. But though the poet and the painter have been generally content to select some celebrated occurrence or striking incident of ancient or modern times, upon which to employ their commemorative powers, yet there are many examples in which they appear to have exercised their invention to its fullest extent, and imagined the events and circumstances which form the subject of their works, as well as the peculiar modes by which those subjects have been illustrated. Of this more comprehensive operation of invention, Spenser, in his "Faery Queen," and Fénélon, in what may be justly called his poem of " Telemachus," have supplied us with examples. Amongst artists, instances of this kind are more rare but Michel Angelo, in the conception and illustration of his plan for the decoration of the Chapel of Sixtus in the Vatican; Raffaelle, in the " Dispute of the Sacrament," the "School of Athens," and others of his works; of our own School, Hogarth, in the "Marriage à-la-mode," and the "Rake's Progress ;" and Barry, in his noble attempt to illus trate the " Progress of Human Society;" have invented the subjects of their works, as well as the works themselves. But the peculiar invention of the painter consists not so much in imagining a subject for his pencil, as in his mode of treating the subject he has chosen. It is seen in the manner of conceiving and telling his story, as represented on his canvas, in the introduction of such incidents, persons, and things, as are suited to its effective developement, and in the employment of such actions, characters, and expressions as appear to be appropriate, impressive, and picturesque. These are the tests of an artist's inventive powers: they include those attainments of his art in which the largest proportion of the intellectual is combined with the mechanical in his operations; and, as such, they afford evidence of qualities which have ever been allowed to hold the highest rank in the estimation of true taste. Invention, therefore, must be considered the first and noblest characteristic of genius in the painter, as well as in the poet. But it is obvious, that a subject or story may be well conceived, the developing incidents may be judiciously imagined, and the actions and characters appropriately selected; and yet these prime qualities of a work of art may be rendered wholly ineffectual, by an awkward and unskilful arrangement of the various groups and objects through whose agency they are to be displayed. Composition, then, or the art of disposing the component parts of a picture in such a manner as that each shall occupy its proper place, and co-operate to the proposed effect and picturesque impression of the whole, -composition is that power of the painter which claims to rank next to invention, for intellectual dignity and pictorial importance. |