1825.) 
silated fairness of the flesh in the figure of 
Christ, is, we think, particularly judicious ; 
it distinguishes and separates him from the 
species of the gross cyclopean group around 
him, without divesting him of his assumed 
humanity. It may be questioned, however, 
whether the frailty of mere humanity is not 
carried rather too far, in the attitude and 
physiognomy of Christ :—whether there is 
not rather too much of listless, subdued 
dejection—of a frame and mind sinking 
under the agonies inflicted and impending. 
We are perfectly aware of the extreme 
difficulty in this part of the subject; and 
how few the instances are in which that 
~ difficulty has been even partially surmount- 
ed. The difficulty consists in the very 
essence of the subject itself. The hero’s 
triumphant scorn, or the philosopher’s 
stoical indifference of pain and death, would 
be equally out of character; as would be 
also the martyr’s triumphant enthusiasm. 
Christ was to pay the penalty for man’s re- 
demption ; and, as man, accordingly, he 
was to feel the penalty: but surely there 
should be no symptom of his feeling it 
weakly, Resignation and anguish are not 
all that we expect to read in his features, 
We want to see, even through the veil of 
suffering flesh, the emanating deity. 
We grant, that in all this there is a com- 
plication almost as inexplicable as in the 
mysteries of the theogony to which it refers. 
We are aware, also, of the extreme difficulty 
of uniting the pathetic with the sublime; 
and if Mr. Hilton has not, in the present 
instance, done all that might be wished, he 
has done more perhaps than was to be ex- 
pected: as much as, with a few exceptions, 
we have witnessed even in the works of the 
great aridaecknowledged masters of the pencil. 
Another still larger picture, in the same 
room, furnishes us, we confess, with another 
source of triumph in the progress of the art. 
We allude to (153) the Comus of the late 
celebrated R.A. FusELI. We are aware 
of the high reputation of this artist among 
his brother academicians; we admit his 
originality, and the vigour (though to this 
praise we must be permitted to add, the 
eecentricity and the extravagance) of: his 
genius; nor do we mean to call in ques- 
tion his profound science and deep erudition: 
inhisart: he shall be, if you please, the most 
erudite of painters :. and to this we most 
readily add, that he produced some noble 
pictures. But we avow, at thesame timey- 
that ‘we do not pretend. to be scholastically 
Mon uty Mac. No. 411. 
Fine Arts: — The Exhibition, Royal Academy. 
529 
or technically critical in these matters. Tt 
is not the process of art, by which the effect 
is produced, but the effect itself, with which 
the public, we conceive, are concerned ; 
and we suspect that with those who 
trust independently to their own taste, 
rather than to the cant of pretended con- 
noisseurship, the effect is then most gratify- 
ing where the pedantry of the process is 
kept most completely out of sight. In 
short, we uphold it as one of the primary 
canons of the code of true criticism, that 
the painter who pleases only artists, the 
poet who pleases none but poets, and the 
musician who pleases only musicians, is 
neither musician, poet, nor artist ; although 
we readily admit that, for the perfection of 
his praise, he should please not only those 
who have taste without technical erudition; 
but those who have an erudite taste, also. 
But what sort of a taste must they have, 
who can be pleased with the caricature 
monstrosities of the Comus now before us, 
where the generality of the figures are 
balanced, in point of attitude, upon the ex- 
tremest verge of possibility—as for proba- 
bility, it is quite out of the question ;— 
where the proportions (in quest of ideal 
grace we suppose) are carried, in pointed 
length, almost constantly beyond the line 
of human entity; where the limbs and 
muscles (those of the elder brother in par- 
ticular), though coloured with the hue of 
drapery, resemble rather those of the flayed 
anatomical figure, stripped of its skin, and 
saturated with a preparation of wax to brihg 
every fibre naked to the view;—where a 
fugitive nymph, thrown indeed, with some 
respect to decency; into shadow, exposes all 
that nature furnished her rearward with- 
all, in as complete and linear proportion 
through her garment, as though that gar- 
ment were of the finest cobweb that ever 
entangled a fly, or were woven by “the 
spinsters ajd knitters in the sun,” out of 
the sightle texture of the air, whichinvests 
without ¢, sealing ; and where, finally, the 
principal sgure, the charmed lady herself, 
sits like a statue, hewn out of a conical 
pyramid, with a most especial care not to 
destroy, in the act of sculpture; the traces of 
the original lines andangles: asif she were 
meant for a frontispiece to Mr. Canning’s 
Anti-Darwinian Poem—the Loves of the 
Triangles} Tell us not of the science— 
the artist-like erudition, that directed the 
process of such a picture! - What is the 
process to us, if the effect be to revolt and 
i disgust ? 
