MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE AND ART. 103 



views with himself. Any one who will be allured by the title, will be 

 pretty certain to find in it all he wants. How far a real taste for Sculpture 

 exists in this country, is perhaps doubtful, but to those who have such a 

 taste we can recommend this work beyond any we have ever seen. The 

 object of the editor is still more laudable than the work itself: it has been 

 not so much to produce a work which should attract the purchaser, as one 

 which should awaken a taste for the art, and call forth that patronage 

 from the public without which genius cannot flourish. It is calculated 

 beyond any other, in every respect, to exhibit the genius of Sculpture in 

 the most striking and interesting view : the selection of subjects, the style 

 of engraving, the descriptive prose, and not least, the illustrative poetry, 

 are all perfect in their kind, and converge to one effect to convey the 

 highest possible idea of the beautiful, graceful, arid expressive in art. 



The whole work contains four different departments, all possessing a 

 distinct merit of their own, yet conjoined in the closest relation and har- 

 mony with each other the engravings, the prose description, the poetical 

 illustrations, and the introductory essay. The engravings are for the most 

 part the most exquisitely felicitous imitations of marble on paper that we 

 ever beheld ; many of them to that degree of perfection that it seems im- 

 possible to conceive, still less expect, any thing beyond. The editors can- 

 didly admit that they are not all in an equally finished style, and very 

 fairly request to be judged by the best. We are not disposed, however, to 

 look on this as any defect or detraction from the value of the work. The 

 less highly-finished are of that massive style that perhaps gains quite as 

 much as it loses by a somewhat coarser execution ; while the effect of the 

 variety is decidedly pleasing, and sets off the more minutely finished with 

 a more exquisite grace. The Sleeping Children (as they are designedly 

 entitled) by Chantrey, the most celebrated piece in the whole collection, is 

 almost too painfully affecting to be pleasing ; but it deserved insertion 

 were it only for the superlatively rich and feeling description and criticism 

 by which it is accompanied. It serves also as a most beautiful contrast to 

 the Sleeping Nymph, on whom we gaze with a delighted feeling that 

 consciousness and action are only suspended, not extinct, and about to re- 

 vive soon again in the freshness of life and beauty and to whose features 

 the absence of death, so lately and painfully impressed, gives a positive 

 beauty that would else perhaps have been but slightly noticed. 



The prose descriptions bear evident internal marks of being for the most 

 part by the same hand as the poetry, even were it not expressly men- 

 tioned, or, at least intimated in the preface. The idea of illustrating en- 

 gravings by prose and poetry united, is not new, but the manner of doing 

 it here is entirely so, each having its separate and appropriate office, 

 and both contributing to give the highest possible effect to their common 

 subject. The very order of arrangement is expressive and appropriate. 

 The descriptions come first, then the plates, and lastly the poetry. The 

 criticisms in the descriptive department are most admirable, and the evi- 

 dent production of one who has studied and fathomed the beauties of his 

 subject to the utmost. They have all the glow of poetical enthusiasm 

 which prose criticism ought to have, and yet are such as not in any degree 

 to render the poetical illustrations superfluous. These last are immea- 

 surably above any thing in the way of illustrative poetry that we have ever 

 yet seen a species of verse-writing in general quite unworthy of ranking as 

 poetry at all, and generally left to none but inferior artists : but here taken in 

 hand by a true poet, and serving very considerably to enhance and " illus- 

 trate" their subjects. In fact, even without the plates, they would form a 

 volume of beautiful poetry; though they derive a very considerable 

 heightening from their juxta-position and relation to them. The name of 

 the author in the preface, and the impossibility of the first poet of the age 



