32 ON THE GENIUS OF JOHN MARTIN. 



word, 1 ' embodying, in one conception, all that is great and glorious 

 in art. Circumstances, to which we shall presently more par- 

 ticularly allude, have again brought the name of this distinguished 

 artist, in a distinguished manner, before the public; and we 

 need, therefore, we trust, offer no further apology to our readers, 

 if we proceed, at the present time to discuss in a few brief sen- 

 tences his merits as an artist, and to give our just meed of praise 

 to those magnificent conceptions of art, with which all (and we 

 are proud to say all) are in a great measure familiar. 



In judging of the standard merit of any composition, be it 

 artistical, literary or scientific, we are naturally led to the com- 

 parison of it with other works of a like nature, which have, as 

 near as may be, a similar degree of excellence appertaining to 

 them. But, if we proceed further in this argument, we shall 

 find that the special reasoning // priori will fail in the instance 

 before us, and that it would be worse than false to attempt to set 

 up a standard of artistical comparison between John Martin and 

 any other artist of the present day, or between his works and 

 the works of any other artist. In this respect, John Martin 

 resembles Sir Joshua Reynolds; he can be judged of only by 

 himself, and not by comparison with another. It would be, in 

 our opinion, doing him the greatest wrong and injustice were we 

 to compare him (as has been done) with the late lamented 

 President of the Royal Academy, Sir Thomas Lawrence : for 

 the only argument, which in our opinion could be used in common 

 justice to both, is, that the one excelled precisely in those very 

 great points of personal beauty and attraction, in which the other 

 almost universally faiK, and p*e*4Wrfa .-the critic, therefore, 

 \vlio could set up a standard of comparison between these two 

 great artists, must have been, we think, especially blinded to the 

 great merits of each. 



What is John Martin's style? Is it a resuscitation of one 

 whose first possessor has been for ages past gathered to the tomb 

 of his fathers; but whose soul, replete with all the emblems of 

 glory and beauty, has, in obedience to the eternal metempsycho- 

 sis of existence, passed through myriads of human generations 

 until it has reached its present abode, and has vivified the spirit 

 it now inhabits into those magnificent conceptions of greatness 

 and grandeur embodied in the Feast of Btlshazzar and the Full 

 <lf Ninevah ? Or, is it from the innate and powerful impulse, 

 and the upstirring of natural genius, that our artist has drawn all 

 his rich and abundant stores of spirit -wealth to adorn and enrich 



