lOi MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 



publishing any thing anonymously, alone prevented us from believing that 

 they must be the production of Thomas Moore ; and assuredly, had they 

 been published with his name, it must have been other than internal evi- 

 dence that could have afforded detection of the fraud. Two of the poems 

 (those on the Sleeping Children) by Mrs. Hemans and Mr. Bowles, are 

 not at all distinguishable from the editor's by any superior merit: the 

 latter, in our judgment, decidedly the reverse. The introductory essay, 

 containing a history of the art, with much ingenious and beautiful criti- 

 cism, and excellent advice, is an admirable production, and peculiarly cal- 

 culated to attain its object. The author, perhaps a little undervalues the 

 ancient sculpture, or rather the antiquarian estimation for its remains, 

 (( over which," he wittily observes, " time has thrown a consecration, but 

 from which it has undoubtedly taken a grace to all eyes but those of an 

 antiquary," He is, however, undoubtedly right in considering that we 

 ought not to rest in indolent admiration, still less, regret, of the past, but 

 use it as a means of supplying from ourselves what we have lost of anti- 

 quity, and creating new forms of beauty from our own conceptions and 

 suited to our own age. He concludes with an eloquent and*forcible address 

 to the patrons of art to employ their patronage on its proper objects ; and 

 instead of directing their attention exclusively to ancient and foreign art, 

 to turn it to present and native ; and call forth fresh and living, but as yet 

 sleeping, because unawakened talent, by that which can alone give it 

 exertion liberal and well-directed patronage. 



The highest praise of the author must not be passed over : one that will 

 commend him to all whose praise is most worth having, however ignorant 

 of the merits or value of art, and be its own reward should he meet with 

 no other : that in an art which has been generally looked upon in all ages, 

 ancient and modern, as nothing higher than an intellectual luxury, often 

 perverted to low and licentious objects, and that has generally most flou- 

 rished in the most depraved times, he has never once lost sight of its nobler 

 and proper object, and throughout the whole work in the choice of the 

 subjects themselves, in the introductory essay, in the prose descriptions, 

 and above all, in the beautiful illustrative poetry, has ever made it his 

 principle object to excite the moral and religious emotions which the high- 

 est class of art, when properly viewed, is always calculated to suggest, 

 which both immeasurably heighten the beauty and interest of the subjects 

 they adorn, and give the artist the satisfaction that while embellishing and 

 delighting the world, he is not idly amusing it ; but, along with that, which, 

 in its proper sphere, is a very fair object in itself, is also employing his 

 talents to that nobler purpose which when neglected or thrown into the 

 back-ground, leaves art itself at the best but a trifling and even melan- 

 choly mode of spending life, and too often in danger of misleading the ima- 

 gination, and turning that into an evil which, like every thing in nature, 

 when properly used, is calculated to be at once an ornament and a sub- 

 stantial good. 



LONDON : BAYLIS AND LEIGHTON, JOHNSON S-COURT, FLEET-STREET. 



