112 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[JULY, 



it would require an (Edipus to detect the prin- 

 ciple of selection for the greater of them. 

 What criterion, again, determined the *' prin- 

 cipal towns," is equally puzzling. The an- 

 cientness seems to have been the ground of se- 

 lection in some cases, yet we have no account 

 of Chester or Durham : sometimes manu- 

 factures appear to have been the cause, yet 

 nothing is said of Leeds, or Nottingham, or 

 Leicester, or Coventry ; sometimes commer- 

 cial importance, yet no notice is taken of New- 

 castle or Hull ; sometimes the mere fashion- 

 ableness of a place has prompted a notice, 

 yet not a word have we of Brighton or 

 Cheltenham. In Scotland the author finds 

 only four, and all in the south, and five in 

 Ireland. In the Netherlands, sixteen are 

 described ; in France eleven, but no notice 

 of Toulon, Bayonne, Brest, Dieppe, Nantes, 

 Pau, Metz ; and in Spain thirteen, but not 

 a word of Xerez, Valencia, Valladolid, Tar- 

 ragona, &c. 



The wood-cuts, of which there are a great 

 number, are many of them clever and com- 

 petent sketches; but others are miserable 

 even in design, and generally in point of 

 execution below, if not the promise, yet cer- 

 tainly the style of neatness with which the 

 book is in other respects got up. The view 

 of London is pitiful ; and Canterbury Ca- 

 thedral, that magnificent structure, is dwindled 

 to a parish church ; and the crows that cluster 

 round Bell-Harry Steeple only make the 

 matter more contemptible. King's College, 

 Cambridge, looks like a card-rack, or a toy, 

 cut in papier machie ; and Warwick Castle 

 is shorn of all its strength : the view should 

 have been taken from the bridge, or some 

 part of the river. Some few are very taste- 

 fully drawn, such as Bath. The Nether- 

 lands are generally fair ; but the best things 

 are among the Spanish buildings. 



The textual descriptions are respectable : 

 the whole is mere outline, but more could 

 not be accomplished within the limits, and 

 more, perhaps, is not desired. 



Family Library, Vol. XIII. ; Cunning- 

 ham's Lives of Artists, Vol. III. Mr. 

 Cunningham's are by far the most welcome 

 volumes which the Family Library has hither- 

 to produced. More, we hope, will follow, 

 though three was the limit announced. We 

 have as yet had no architects, and may, there- 

 fore, look for a fourth. The nine sculptors, 

 whose biography fills the present volume, 

 have been selected mainly as presenting a 

 kind of historical sketch of the art in this 

 country; but they are also the most di- 

 stinguished among those of whom it can 

 scarcely be said any have reached a very 

 lofty eminence. Many artists make excellent 

 single figures, while their groupings are al- 

 most always inferior and often execrable. Alle- 

 gories and personifications, though intolerable 

 in statuary, still disgrace our monumental 

 sculpture. St. Paul's is full of the most 

 revolting absurdities. Sculptors are con- 

 tinually forcing their art upon services which 



it cannot execute. They do not know where 

 to stop, and seem absurdly to think what 

 painting can do, sculpture can do. It has a 

 much narrower range. 



Grinling Gibbons comes first. Whether 

 Dutch or English, he was early known 

 in England, but rather as a carver than 

 a statuary. Nothing has ever equalled 

 his fruits, and game, and flowers, and 

 feathers, masses of which in wood still sur- 

 vive in some profusion at Chatsworth and 

 Petworth. The prevalence of Grecian archi- 

 tecture checked the career of carving ? Mr. 

 Cunningham wishes she would cover her 

 nakedness with an ornamental leaf or two. 

 At Whitehall there is a statue of James 1 1. 

 from Gibbons's chisel or his modelling, and 

 a bust in bronze of James I., and a very 

 noble one; that is, unlike, as Mr.C. remarks, 

 the portraits of the British " Solomon ;" but 

 feeble as was Javues in character, he was no 

 fool. Of Gibbons personally little is known : 

 his flowing wig and extravagant cravat in- 

 dicate vanity enough. 



Of Cibber, notwithstanding the volubility 

 of his clever son Colley, not much more is 

 known than of Gibbons. He was a Dane 

 by birth, and came to this country, according 

 to his son, some time before the restoration 

 of Charles II. Mr. Cunningham says re- 

 volution; but that must be a slip of the pen 

 or the printer. And by the way there are 

 many such. Archbishop Tennison is printed 

 Jamison,andMr.Hope'sAnastasius is turned 

 into Athanasius. After labouring at a stone- 

 cutter's, he at length set up for himself; and 

 at a time when the fashion prevailed of 

 filling groves and lawns with satyrs and fawns, 

 and gods and goddesses, as naked as they 

 were born, he became a distinguished manu- 

 facturer of figures in free-stone, finally, at 

 351. a piece, a price with which the artist 

 was well pleased, and proposed to maintain. 

 These are gone with the change of tastes ; 

 but some of his statues made for public 

 buildings still remain the kings to Charles 1. 

 and Sir Thomas Gresham in the Koyal Ex- 

 change. The Phoenix over the south door of 

 St. Paul's has considerable merit, and his 

 Madness and Melancholy ; are of a still higher 

 character. Of these well-known statues, the 

 younger Bacon has, it seems, restored the 

 surface. Mr. Cunningham discovered poetry 

 in them, he tells us, at the first glance. When 

 he was yet a stranger to sculpture, he felt 

 the pathetic truth of the delineation : they 

 gave him his first feeling for art, and led him 

 to expect better sculpture than lie afterwards 

 found. Every body remembers Pope's lines 

 upon these brainless' statues, and Flaxmau 

 depreciates them ; but public opinion bears 

 down, says the author, all solitary autho- 

 rities, however eminent, and in this case it 

 has been pretty strongly expressed for 130 

 years. One of the figures is said to have 

 been taken from Cromwell's giant porter. 



Roubilliac was a Frenchman, and came 

 into England about 1720. He proved some- 

 thing of a reformer in our monumental sculp- 



