former a very natural colourist, the latter a just, though dry painter, and a lecturer of much sound sense.

The Abbe Winckelmann, who saw in our humid climate no. thing but barrenness of taste, might have condescended to inform himself that such climates are essentially favourable to two branches of art, Landscape-painting and Architecture. The former it supplies with scenes of perpetual verdure; the latter it advises to be well-built and of a lasting solidity. In England, the drawing of landscape has long been an ordinary accomplishment, and our Water-colour Exhibitions are daily crowded with ladies who go there to study and to criticise, as our students do to the others. The drawing masters in this line have consequently had their activity roused, and the productions of Girtin, Havell, Varley, Christall, &c., have gone considerably beyond those of the late Mr. Sandby, Mr. Farington, and others of the old school, and begin to contest the palm with their elder sister oil. The latter branch, however, is decidedly capable of more richness and grandeur, and has the powerful advantage of durability. Of this art, we have professors of every description,-painters of flat and mountainous scenery, of barren and of picturesque, of Italian and of Egyptian, of the banks of the Ganges and of the solitary mud banks of Chelsea, Freebairr, an elegant but flimsy painter, gave us the classical scenery of Italy, as Daniel does that of the East; and both have been valuable to men of literature. Mr. Callcott is correct, tasteful, and has a fine feeling for aerial effect: he has introduced a classical story into his last landscape, a practice that should be encouraged like historical portraiture, inasmuch as it tends to bind the different branches of painting together and to give each a proper respect for the other. The Messrs. Barkers are bold in scenery and perspective, with much freedom of pencilling. Mr. Arnald's productions are chaste, tasteful, and natural: the Reinagles, particularly the junior, are artists of considerable power and variety; and Miss Goldsmith possesses a vigour of touch, and an eye to common nature, not often seen in a female professor. Chalon is a man of talent, but he should rely more upon his own powers. Loutherbourg, a foreigner, wants the English cast of judgment; he is highly picturesque, and occasionally sublime, particularly in his Alpine scenery; but his luxuriance is apt to become mere flutter and tawdriness, and he works his colour up to such a glow that his landscapes some times appear lit up with a conflagration. This gentleman also paints history in a style that generally speaking has the flutter of his landscape without it's grandeur. He is in the habit of designing battles and military landings for the engraver, but his sailors have a kind of sturdy caricature about them that is not English; and of such landings and battles-array it may generally

be said, that they are only a pitch above the monotony of sea, fights. Our first landscape-painter is Mr. Turner, who has the same fault in his drawing as Sir Joshua, that of indistinctness of outline; but this fault, which is so obnoxious in human subjects, and baffles Mr. Turner's ragged attempts at history, becomes very different in the mists and distances of landscape; and he knows how to convert it into a shadowy sublimity. Mr. Turner's, invention generally displays itself through this medium, whether disturbed or placid. His Whirlwind in the Desart astounded the connoisseurs, who after contemplating at proper distance an em. bodied violence of atmosphere that seemed to take away one's senses, found themselves, when they came near, utterly at a loss what to make of it, and as it were smothered in the attempt, Of his calmer style, there are two exquisite specimens in Sir John Leicester's Collection, one, representing a Seat belonging to the Baronet in Cheshire, the other the Demolition of Pope's House at Twickenham. The former is a towery mansion, seen on a fine April morning from beyond a large sheet of water, and looks as if it were dipped in moist air-the latter is a picture of rich decay, a poet's house in a state of demolition, contemplated upon an autumnal evening, with other attendant circumstances that have all the meaning without the affectation of allegory.

In architecture we are at present, I believe, without competition; but what has been said above on this subject, is perhaps still more applicable than formerly to the works of our artists. Our later edifices are upon the Greek models and where this is not the case we have more eccentricity than originality. The proportions of architecture, we are told, are fixed; it's orders are perfected; and by what we can discover, it's harmonious combinations are exhausted-what then remains for invention? Somerset House

is light and elegant, but it is said to be ill built, and in a word, what beauty has it that is new? Mr. Soane, a theoretical master of his art, wished to be original when he repaired the Bank; and how did he effect his purpose? Merely by giving his edifice the look of a different object-merely by giving us a title-page contradictory to the contents of the book; the Bank has the air of a mausoleum, as if its builder intended to be ironical on our departed gold

To shew by one satiric touch,

No nation wanted it so much.

SWIFT on Endowing his Irish Bedlam.

Mr. Wyatt builds excellent houses, replete with snugness; but where is his invention in architecture? Mr. Dance is said to be a clever artist; but where is his invention ? The New Theatre built by Mr. Smirke, jun. is undoubtedly an ornament to the me

tropolis;

tropolis; but does it exhibit any thing beyond tasteful copying? What it possesses of beauty has been seen a thousand times in arcades and porticos; and where he has diverged from the dr dinary agreements, he is said to have been wrong,-as in the bareness of the sides, their want of uniformity, and the unseemly arches on the roof. The architect with the greatest appearance of genius, is Mr, Gandy, but he has not exhibited this genius in any new modes of building, though it is possible he might do so, had he a proper opportunity. What gave the public a high idea of his taste and imagination, was the drawing of Pandemonium exhibited a few years since, a most poetical production certainly,, and glowing with the preternatural fire of the original; but did the building in itself display invention, abstracted from its poetical circumstances, the extent, the burning ground, and the ghastly illumination? It is certainly not for the REFLECTOR to decide; but either the architects have for centuries past had no acquaint. ance with invention, or invention has been entirely shut out of architecture.

With the exception of this art, the objections to which apply of course to the rest of Europe, the English school of design has manifested a decided character of originality; and it has been it's good fortune to be followed and animated in it's endeavours by an excellent succession of engravers :-but of Engraving more hereafter. It is strikingly worthy of remark, that this originality is individual as well as general, and that our artists imitate each other much less than the other existing schools. The general dotage of the Italian school has already been mentioned. The French painters, making a superficial use of the plundered stores of Italy, and servilely imitating David, who now leads the taste by his imperial office as well as his genius, have turned the old love of flutter into a sculptural stiffness and affected classicality, that promise little rivalry in invention. It would seem therefore that the same spirit of thinking which has given freedom and va, riety to the English character, and enabled us to exhibit our hu mours as men, has entered into our composition as artists. Our principal painters above mentioned have each their striking peculiarities; and the two most promising of our young students, Messrs. Haydon and Hilton, have their's also, the former a fine eye for correctness and colour, with an ambitious vehemence of style that promises grandeur of character but not refinement;— the latter, a gentler taste, susceptible of pathos and various elegance, but inclined, unless he takes great care, to prefer shew to substance and become theatrical. May these young men fulfil the hopes entertained of them. If to a spirit of rational independence in art, our growing school shall add the same spirit as men and as a body, a spirit alike remoyed from the misan. thropy

04

thropy of Biry and the courtliness of his enemies,—the Fine Arts of this country will soon be worthy of it's poetry and philosophy.

K

ART. XXII.-Retrospect of the Theatre.

It is universally agreed, that the Drama, with respect to intellect, is at the lowest point of degradation. This is a matter that tó men of taste never wanted proof, and that no longer remains to be proved to the town in general. It is no longer necessary to point out, how entirely the modern playwrights, in their inability to reach the arduous walks of writing, have agreed to sink into the lowest and easiest; it is no longer necessary to point out how entirely character has been degraded into caricature, plot and sentiment into common-place, wit into punning, and composition into sheer ignorance of the language. Comedy has become such mere farce, and the serious drama such mere floweriness, that cri. ticism has for a long time had nothing to do but to quote repetitions, and to vary, if possible, it's modes of contempt.

All our dramatists, it is true, are not alike ignorant; but there is little distinction in the general aspect of their productions. Mr. Colman, otherwise a master of broad humour, has chosen, in his indolence, to accommodate himself to the worst taste of Dibdin and Reynolds; and what is worse, Mr. Kenney, a young author who promised a better ambition, and bade fair to be the reformer of the stage, has lost himself in the common vortex of old jests and trickery. The new pieces therefore, though they appear much seldomer than formerly, exhibit the usual run of features, and the critic is only employed one month in recognizing the countenances he has seen in another. The months just past, for instance, present nothing whatever that is worthy of notice upon an enlarged scale. Mr. Dimond, the sole surviving butterfly of the Della Cruscans, has given us his usual flutterings among the flowers in a piece called the Secrets of a Palace ;-Mr. Reynolds, who has lately become very serious, now that his jest-books begin to fail him, produces a specimen of his romance reading in an after-piece called the Bridal Ring; and Mr. Arnold does the same in an opera called Plots, or the North Tower, the very name of which will let the reader into the whole secret. These gentlemen are at least original in their prefaces. Mr. Dimond tells us that, sincerely speaking, he thinks his production abovementioned a good one; and he moreover informs us, that all the

critics,

critics, whose praise is worth having, thought so too,-meaning thereby the Post. Mr. Reynolds, I am afraid, is not quite so candid, for he tells us in one of his prefaces, that he is conscious of writing bad pieces; but that if the town approves them, it is not his fault. In this touch, so characteristic of the dramatic feeling of the times, one does not know which to admire in preference the writer's entire want of ambition, or the extreme good-nature of the public towards him.

In some former remarks on the degeneracy of our drama, * 【 attributed it to one particular circumstance the sudden change of comedy from the sentimental to the laughable, effected by Goldsmith and others, and vulgarized into what it is by the fol lowers of O'Keefe. Sentimental writing was an unexpected relief to the town from the grinning and malignant farces that had just been in vogue; but it suited neither the humour nor temper of the nation; and farce, with it's sting taken out, became in it's turn a relief from sentiment. This still appears to me the immediate cause; but considered as the only one, it was a very narrow view of the subject, for several others must be added, arising from accident as well as from changes in the nation itself. It may be doubted, in the first place, whether the general diffusion of letters has not had it's share in contributing to the mediocrity of the drama. What are called the Augustan ages of literature have not been diffuse in this respect; it is in those ages the streams burst sparkling forth, but in the next they spread in fertilizing shallows, and the nation is content to reap what they produce, without troubling itself to search after new springs. An age, under these circumstances, rather enjoys literature than cultivates it; a taste for books becomes a common part of education; and the consequence is, that while real genius is repressed by it's own. fastidiousness, or seeks for the likeness of originality in eccentricity or over brilliancy, mediocrity, less delicate and less ambitious, comes forward with the sole intention to amuse, imposes upon the multitude who have just become crities enough to mistake it, and like a buffoon at court, is endured for a long time by the better sort, who suffer themselves to be amused by what they ought to despise. Such has been the case for years past with regard to the Drama; and the progress of society helped materially to maintain it. The English public, never much attached to theatrical amusements, and at best inclined to consider them as objects of mere relaxation, seemed to have been more than ever diverted from any care on the subject by the encreasing interest

of

*An Essay on the Appearance, Causes, and Consequences of the Decline of British Comedy, written in 1805, and printed in another publication.