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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



261 



ANSWER TO THE REVIEW OF MR. HAYDOX'S LECTURE 

 OX FRESCO. 



Sir — It is impossible not to be gratified by the tone, temper, and 

 kindness evident in your review of my lecture on fresco. Tliere are 

 one or two mistakes as to facts, wliicli are easily corrected, and one 

 or two as to mv ttieories of art, wliicli it is but just you grant me an 

 opportunity of refuting. With these exceptions, the article is so 

 gentlemanly in its feeling, so totally opposite to the scurrility of the 

 greater portion of the daily and Sunday press whenever my name 

 comes under their consideration, that I was pleased and startled. 



At one time the whole of the press aided and supported me, and I 

 can only attribute the change to this — that for the last 25 years the 

 students have been brought up to consider me a monster and a rebel; 

 that all students in art form literary connexions in their youth ; that 

 the vounw literary men branch off into reporters, critics, or editors ; 

 that thev have carried their early impressions with them, and that 

 thev consider it a moral duty to drive Haydoa out of the art, or off 

 the' face of our common mother earth, just or unjust. Be assured, 

 therefore, to meet with jus/ice is something so novel, that before 

 beginning my reply, your readers must pardon my allusion to it. 



The assertion that my quarrel with the Academy was a school-boy 

 quarrel, and that it originated in some one saying " Hnydon'i pictures 

 to the coal-hole!" is an entire delusion; and the President before the 

 committee of 1830, pale and exasperated, found it anything but a 

 " school-bov affair." But now is not the time to recur to so painful a 

 subject: it'will be time enough to return to it when the present noble 

 views of Prince Albert, the Commission, and the Government are 

 baffled, they cannot tell why ; when a series of portraits are recom- 

 mended, as most suitable to British taste, in the Houses of Parliament, 

 instead of historical designs ; when fresco is given up, and cartoon 

 drawings become a joke; — iill thn, let the Academy question rest, 

 let the Royal Commission get experience, and let the public patiently 

 w ait the unravelling this Gordian knot ! 



The reviewer says, " I hold high art to consist in tlie selection of the 

 lift parts, of the best models, and in their union." So far from it, 

 that in mv lectures I have always held up to rilicule Pliny's assertion 

 that such was the practice of Zeuxis at Crotona, when he painted a 

 Helen for the Crotoniates. The selection of the best model, and 

 rejiderirg the parts defective in harmony with the parts not so, is not 

 selecting different parts from different models, which never can har- 

 monize at all. I have ever held high art to consist in restoring man, 

 woman, child, and animal, to the essential physical perfection of their 

 species, cleared from all consequences of accident and disease, as 

 God first created them, more or less, according to the style, for art is 

 <livided into epic, dramatic, and historic, aud in the illustration of 

 the epic by the species — man — the instrument of illustration, must be 

 as abstract as the style. Man is here supposed to be above the 

 degradation of human emotion, or historic fact. The perfection of 

 his body is an emblem of the supposed perfection of his soul ; the 

 one must be as much above human frailty as the other; but in the 

 dramatic, the instrument used will bear some deterioration of form 

 from the high standard of the epic, to suit the individuality of any 

 character which is affected by human passion ; whilst in the historic, 

 the agents may and must be disfigured by the localities of individuals 

 known to have possessed such characteristics, however inconsistent 

 they may be with a human form in the abstract. The one arm of 

 Xeiton— the little figure of Xapoleon — and the hump of Richard, are 

 as essential to the historic, as they would be offensive to tlie epic. This 

 is Haydonism, if you please, and not the mistakes of my reviewer. 



My kind reviewer wonders at my rejecting David and the lower 

 Greek, and adopting Theseus and the elder Greek ! and I wonder he 

 classes the two together, in the same thought, the same breath.' 

 What ? class the principles of vitality, action, repose, flexion, exten- 

 sion, compression, gravitation, flesli, bone, and tendon, the character- 

 istics of the elder natural Greek, as visible in the Ilyssus and 

 Theseus, with the systematized deformities and pedantry of the lower 

 A/(n<;^;rai Greek? The principles of Phidias (the elder Greek) are 

 the principles of the Creator, and Phidias may be considered without 

 profanation as the representative of the principles of the Creator on 

 eartli, as far as conveying the efiect of vitality by inert marble, in his 

 imitations of the form and actions of man, can entitle him to the im- 

 mortality ; and, therefore, the perfection of sculpture, as visible in the 

 Elgin marbles, is not inconsistent with the perfection of painting 

 wh°n form is considered, and it may be laid down as an axiom in 

 painting, that when the nature, simplicity, and principles of the Elgin 

 marbles are considered inapplicable to British art, British art will be 

 in a condition of inextricable mannerism of either vulgarity or con- 



ceit. The Elgin marbles are not Greek, they are human. The 

 reviewer says the nai'Ka\ui'or the navTapisroc are not sound principles 

 of art. Certainly not, exclusively : they are the seasoning of the 

 navafauKawf (the all-essential). Convey the all-essential by the all- 

 beautiful, but not at the expence of the all-essential. 



" Another of Mr. Haydon's theories," says he, " is the sovereignty 

 of Greek painters; that not a fragment of their works exists rs ko 

 argument against enthusiasm." This is a sort of insinuation I have 

 all my life suffered from, viz., that my convictions proceed from en- 

 thusiasm, and, therefore, have no ground ; whereas mv enthusiasm 

 has always been the consequence and never the cause of mv conviction. 



If the descriptions of Pliny of the mode of Apelles to produce tone 

 by glazing apply to the Venetian school, (which produced tone by 

 glazing,) where is the want of reason in saying Apelles coloured like 

 the Venetians, and must have done so ? If Quinctilian says Zeuxis 

 discovered the principles of light and shade, light and shade they 

 must have had ; if a bull was painted the head coming out and the 

 tail going back, tiiey must have had foreshortening: so of their 

 expression, composition, and perspective. Of their drawing we are 

 certain, and of their execution by touch there can be no doubt. 



The reviewer concludes by ridiculing mv principle of adorning the 

 Houses of Parliament, and calls the subjects allegorical 1 I advise 

 the illustration of " the best Government to regulate without cramping 

 the liberty of man," by a series of historical subjects from the history 

 of the world. Surely the allegory is only in the abstract principle; 

 but the illustration of the horrors of anarchy, democracy, despotism, 

 and revolution, and the blessings of law, justice, and monarchy, by 

 positive historical facts, with statues between each fresco of the great 

 men who have caused the principles to be established, is anything but 

 an insipid allegory without meaning or sense. " Nature we want, and 

 nature we will have," says my friend (for I am sure he is so) : then 

 comes the question, what is nature? Queen Elizabeth eating beef- 

 steaks and drinking ale for breakfast, the pathetic murder of the 

 princes in the Tower, and St. Augustine preaching Romanism to the 

 Britons, are all equally nature, but nature under different views. To 

 conclude ; the " care cunein" is not as to Haydonisms, but as to what 

 will be much more dangerous to fresco and sound design, viz., " The 

 ale and beef-steaks of art," under the pretence of nature. 



With every apology, 



London, July 3, 1842. B. R. HIydon. 



REMARKS OX THE "DESCRIPTION OF THE PERMAXENT 

 WAY OF THE SOUTH-EASTERN RAILWAYS" 



I.v this age of discoveries, in this truly patent century, the minds 

 of so many men, both theoretical and practical, are engrossed by an 

 ambitious zeal of improving the inventions of their predecessors, and 

 by the wonders of their brains of obtaining the reputation of a 

 Smeaton, a Watt, or a Stephenson, that we must not be astonished to 

 find amidst such a host of competitors some advocating schemes 

 stamped with absurdity. It would really be a useful lesson to some 

 of these ardent aspirants for fame to read the list of patents taken 

 out during the last forty or fifty years : it would serve to cool their 

 temperament to find how few have derived any profit from their 

 inventions. Tliat men imagining themselves possessed of the I ump 

 of invention (I am not sure whether [ihrenolugists admit of such an 

 organ,) — having neither the advantage of a good theoretical education 

 nor the experience acquired by years of practice — should commit the 

 grossest mistakes, both in principle and mechanical combination, is not 

 astonishing, neither should we wonder that purely ])ractical men should 

 fail in theorv, or pure theorists in practice ; but wlien we find men 

 possessed of the greatest talents, of great experience and of good 

 theoretical knowledge, at times advocating principles false alike in the 

 eyes of the practical and theoretical man, it only shows with how 

 much caution we ought to proceed in the path of discovery, and hovr 

 necessary to the establishment of sound principles it is to have a 

 journal like yours, open to the discussion of subjects connected with 

 engineering." These remarks have suggested themselves to me in 

 reading the " description of the permanent way of the South-eastern 

 Railway," which appeared in your journal for this month. I had 

 previously often heard that Mr. Cubitt, who, as an engineer of great 

 abilities and extensive practice, must ever he regarded as a high 

 authority on engineering subjects, maintained the superiority of the 

 triangular to the rectang'iilar sleeper, but on what principles, previous 

 to reading Mr. Pope's description and the report of the conversation 

 wdiich ensued amongst the members of the C. E. Institution, I could 

 never ascertain. It is clear that their superiority in point of nltimalft 



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