We must leave Correggio for the present, and attend to the two pictures, from the brush of his contrast, Giacopo Robusti, commonly called Tintoretto, one of the brightest ornaments of the Venetian school than whom scarcely any man possessed such exuberance of fancy, with so powerful a hand to embody its purposes. At once ardent and laborious, he turned out more work than all the painters in Venice put together-painting at all times, and accepting and executing commissions at all prices. Bred under the tutorage of Vecelli, he became speedily so thoroughly initiated in that great master's principles of colour, as to beget his own expulsion; an act both mean and foolish on the part of Titian. Not at all discouraged, Giacopo did not content himself with his acquirements there, but sat down resolutely to the study of M. Angelo, and the antique, at the same time modelling in clay, perfecting himself in anatomy, and drawing from life by lamplight, whence he, no doubt, derived those grand scientific masses, yea, floods of shadows, which form one great mark of his style. Fully impressed with the fleshiness and truth of his master's tints, he was not blind to his defects in drawing and expression, which he conceived the grand project of remedying by superadding Titian's majestic tone, glow, and juice, to the severity, learning, and gigantic expansion of the forms of Buonarotti. Had his depth been equal to his warmth, and his steadiness to his industry, this noble plan, afterwards adopted by Titian himself, would have rendered him the undisputed king of the modern oil-painters. But, to use the words of Fuseli, "goaded on by the rage of doing singly the work of all, and debauched by the unexampled facility of his own execution, he gave himself neither time to conceive, to judge, nor to finish; content to catch a whim, if it had novelty, he turned his subject into a farce, or trampled its parts into undistinguished masses: and sacrificing mind, character, design, and sense, to incongruous, but picturesque imagery, and fugitive effect," he converted his art into a

See the Pietro Martire, the David and Goliath, Cain and Abel, and Sacrifice of Abraham, all given in Le Febre's " Opera Selectiora, &c." Ven. 1680.

290

plaything, leaving behind him little
more than the reputation of being
the head of the ornamental school.
The characteristics of his style
are, prodigious breadth of chiaros-
curo, richness, harmony, depth, and
originality of tone and colour,-bold
and violent fore-shortenings; con-
trasted postures, oftener rather sin-
gular than graceful, though by no
means without elegance in his fe-
males; a turbulent mode of com-
position, sometimes appropriate, al-
ways picturesque; a luxuriant in-
vention, more fiery than dignified,
more capricious than grand, more
copious than correct. These quali-
fications are rounded by a sweeping
mastery of execution, which gives to
his largest works as much unity as if
they had been dashed off at a sitting.
In Tintoretto's drawing, the effects
are not always apparently propor-
tioned to his application, and well-
chosen course of study. His men
possess muscularity and size, with-
out either grandeur or selection. His
women, more ideal and more man-
nered, particularly in their counte-
nances, style of hair (which is little
else but the mode of the period), are
often too contorted, and too osten-
tatiously postured, for grace; and
seem weak-limbed and awkward,
from their excessive length. This
last defect is perceptible in the Venus
of Lord Eardley's picture of Vulcan,
Venus, and Cupid, (one of the two
in the B. I.) but much more so in
The Birth of St. John, well engraved
by Honthemels, in the Cabinet du
Crozat. Before we leave Giacopo,
let us just look at the Rev. Mr.
Carr's picture of "St. George deli-
vering the Egyptian Princess from the
Dragon," formerly in the hands of
R. Westall, Esq. RA. where I once
saw it. The ordonnance of this
highly desirable performance is very
characteristic of the school of Ro-
busti: the line of the horizon is two-
thirds up the picture (an upright);
the figures are placed on a piece of
woody, broken, grassy ground by
the margin of the sea, which forms
one side (about a fifth) of the paint-
ing, and appears to flow behind a
dim stone castle standing in the
distance. They are grouped in such
a manner, as to shoot obliquely a-
cross the canvass, from the base to the
horizon, beginning with the terrified

princess on the fore-ground, conti
nued by the dusky body of a dead
man, beyond whom the fierce deli-
verer, with head down, arm raised,
knees griped to the saddle, and spurs
back in the flanks, drives his white
war-horse down the slope, into the
side, and swoln, tender belly of the
already reeling dragon. A burst of
radiance from the heavens (between
a very pale orange and straw co-
lour) meets the diagonal line of com-
position, and finishes the whole.
Tintoretto has not here displayed so
ostentatiously his broad banners of
light and shade; but the glowing
depth and harmony of the colouring
are worthy of his pencil. The robe
of Sabra, warmly glazed with Prus-
sian blue, is relieved from the pale
greenish back-ground by a vermi-
lion scarf; and the full hues of both
are beautifully echoed, as it were, in
a lower key, by the purple-lake-co-
loured stuffs, and bluish iron armour
of the saint; besides an ample ba-
lance to the vivid azure drapery on
the fore-ground, in the indigo shades
of the wild wood surrounding the
castle. Mr. Westall had once a
grand Resurrection of Lazarus, full
of beautiful colour, well impasted,
and most furiously executed; and at
Mr. Hammond's, the picture-dealer,
of Greek-street, Soho, I have seen
a very fine sketch of the Last Judg-
ment, which, however, Mr. Ottley
inclines to ascribe to young Palma.
I rather wonder that the Academy
did not purchase this last, which is
an admirable study in point of co-
lour. The best specimens of Tinto-
retto's style, are the "Crucifixion,"
in the Scuola di San Rocco, at Ve-
nice; the "Resurrection," and the
"Massacre of the Innocents," in the
same place; and the "Miraculo del
Servo," painted for the S. di S. Mar-
co, whose holy deed it blazons. In
portrait, he was scarce inferior to
Titian, as may be seen from his
Archbishop of Spalatro, now in this
country. To convey an adequate
idea of his excellencies by prints is
impossible, as his most characteristic
allurement is the chromatic part. Even
his tone, somewhat more attainable,
has been generally missed by his tran-
slators; witness the enormous mis-
take engraved by Agos. Carracci from
his Crucifixion; however, take a few
of them, such as they are:

* Why will not the translator of Sintram favour us with the Summer and Autumn Romances; or the Magic King, or the Sigfried and Brunhild?

+ I trust Messrs. Stothard, Westall, and Richard Cook, (why do we see you so seldom, good Mr. Cook ?) will not put on caps intended for a very different set of people. It is a small crime to illustrate the novels of Sir W. S.; but, Lord preserve us! the dead (witness Shakspeare) are not safe.

The Wine Vat; a small circle. (C. AL
berti.) 3s. 6d.

The Twelve Gods of Antiquity, on twelve
plates. (Goltzius.) 1. 4s. or, 17. 10s.
These are sufficient to begin with.
Good b'ye.

C****d, Hampshire, Aug. 7.

PS. Before I have the pleasure of seeing you again, my dear Sir, let me counsel you to acquire, in some way or other, a choice old copy of Gaven Hamilton's Schola Italica Picturæ, large fol. Romæ, 1773, price about five or six guineas, which contains forty-one specimens, in general admirably engraved by Cunego and Volpato, from the best pictures (both fresco and oil) of M. Angelo, Raffaello, Da Vinci, Fra. Bartolomeo,

Correggio, Baroccio, Andrea del Sarto, Parmegiano, Giulio, Polidoro, Titiano, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Bassano, Palma Guido, Dominichino, M. A. de Carravaggio, Albano, Guercino, Lanfranco, and the Carracci. This book is of itself a Gallery to a young artist, or amateur; but when you have your hand in your pocket, it may not be amiss to add the set of plates called Raffaelle's Bible, published in oblong fol. 1790, by Montagnani of Rome: if you should light on a good copy of Maurer's Emblems, or Stimmer's Huntings, or, indeed, any of his works, except his Bible (small 4to. Basle, 1576), secure them immediately; and if you don't like 'em, send them to 93, Fleet-street, and you shall receive their value, and my hearty thanks.

CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM EATER:
BEING AN EXTRACT FROM THE LIFE OF A SCHOLAR.

TO THE READER.-I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period in my life according to my application of it, I trust that it will prove, not merely an interesting record, but, in a considerable degree, useful and instructive. In that hope it is, that I have drawn it up and that must be my apology for breaking through that delicate and honourable reserve, which, for the most part, restrains us from the public exposure of our own errors and infirmities. Nothing, indeed, is more revolting to English feelings, than the spectacle of a human being obtruding on our notice his moral ulcers or scars, and tearing away that decent drapery,' which time, or indulgence to human frailty, may have drawn over them: accordingly, the greater part of our confessions (that is, spontaneous and extra-judicial confessions) proceed from demireps, adventurers, or swindlers: and for any such acts of gratuitous self-humiliation from those who can be supposed in sympathy with the decent and self-respecting part of society, we must look to French literature, or to that part of the German, which is tainted with the spurious and defective sensibility of the French. All this I feel so forcibly, and so nervously am I

alive to reproach of this tendency, that I have for many months hesitated about the propriety of allowing this, or any part of my narrative, to come before the public eye, until after my death (when, for many reasons, the whole will be published): and it is not without an anxious review of the reasons, for and against this step, that I have, at last, concluded on taking it.

Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice: they court privacy and solitude: and, even in their choice of a grave, will sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the churchyard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family of man, and wishing (in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth)

Humbly to express

A penitential loneliness.

It is well, upon the whole, and for the interest of us all, that it should be so: nor would I willingly, in my own person, manifest a disregard of such salutary feelings; nor in act or word do anything to weaken them. But, on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not amount to a confession of guilt, so, on the other, it is possible that, if it did, the benefit resulting to others, from