observing little Tom, asked him, 'Are you too, musical, my little man?' 'Oh yes, Sir,' replied Tom Linley with naïveté, We are all geniuses!' -.. "At Bath, when the fame of his wonderful countryman, Buona part, was the topic of discourse, Paoli observed to Miss Lee, author of The Canterbury Tales,' that he was godfather to two or three of the Buonaparte family; but as none of them bore his name (Pascal,) he was not certain whether Napoleon might be one of the number or not; whether or not the defender of his country's liberties had to answer for the sins of the enemy of the liberties of mankind!" 4.-The Life and Times of Salvator Rosa. By Lady Morgan. Salvator, with all his genius, was in the moral scale worthy of his fraternity. A bandit in the wilds of the Abruzzi; his brotherin-law doomed and put to death for a capital felony; a conspirator with Massienello, and one of that bloody band which went about butchering all who were proscribed by Spagnuolo; ever at war with the world, and devoted to lawless excess in the enjoyment of his pleasures: he had but to set against this sad array of guilt and crime, his astonishing genius, not merely as a painter, but as a musician, an improvisatore, a scholar, and a poet. Indeed, his powers seem to have been unbounded. Nature was prodigal to her favourite; and there is an energy and bravery about his character, that if they cannot make his vices respectable, at least ren der us lenient and piteous while we contemplate them. From Cimabue to Salvator Rosa and Carlo Maratti (its founder and latest ornaments) the Italian School comprised a period of nears ly 500 years. Salvator was born in 1615, and the account of this leading event in the life of man will afford a fair specimen of Lady Morgan's manner in these volumes. "Swelling from the base of the savage St. Elmo, smile the lovely heights of San Martino, where, through chesnut woods and vineyards, gleam the golden spires of the monastic palace of the Monks of the Certosa. A defile cut through the rocks of the Monte Donzelle, and shaded by the dark pines which spring from the crevices, forms an umbrageous pathway from the superb convent to the Borgo di Renella, the little capital of a neighbouring hill, 1 which, for the peculiar beauty of its position and the views it commands, is still called 'l'ameno villaggio.' At night, the fires of Vesuvius almost bronze the humble edifices of Renella; and the morning sun, as it rises, discovers from various points the hills of Vomiro and Pausilippo, the shores of Puzzuolo and of Baiæ, the islets of Nisiti, Capri, and Procida, till the view fades into the extreme verge of the horizon, where the waters of the Mediterranean seem to mingle with those clear skies, whose tint and lustre they reflect. "In this true nido paterno' of genius there dwelt, in the year 1615, an humble and industrious artist called Vito Antonio Rosa,a name even then not unknown to the arts, though as yet more known than prosperous. Its ac tual tual possessor, the worthy Messire The family were in poverty, Antonio, had, up to this time, and poor Vito was deeply disstruggled, with his good wife tressed. Giulia Grecco and two daughters still in childhood, to maintain the ancient respectability of his famis ly. Antonio was an architect and land-surveyor of some note, but of little gains; and if over the old architectural portico of the Casaccia of Renella might be read Vito Antonio Rosa, Agremensore de Architetto, the intimation was given in vain! Few passed through the decayed Borgo of Renella, and still fewer, in times so fearful, were able to profit by the talents and profession which the inscription advertised. The family of Rosa, inconsiderable as it was, partook of the pressure of the times; and the pretty Borgo, like its adjacent scenery (no longer the haunt of Consular voluptuaries neither frequented by the great nor visited by the curious,) stood lonely and beautiful, unencumbered by those fantastic belviderás and grotesque pavilions, which in modern times rather deform than beautify a site, for which Nature has done all, and Art can do nothing, bas onerof "The cells of the Certosa, indeed, had their usual complement of lazy monks and Frati conversi.' The fortress of St. Elmo then, as now, manned by Austrian troops, glittered with foreign pikes. The cross rose on every acclivity, and the sword guarded every pass; but the villages of Renella, San Martino, of the Vomiro, and of Pausilippo, were thinned of their inhabitants to recruit foreign armies; and this earthly paradise was dreary as the desert, and silent as the tomb." a woma 1 "Still, however, with few wants and a penurious economy, he had contrived to struggle on with his wife and daughters, in a sort of decent insolvency, when the birth of a son, in the latter end of the to raise the year 1615, came spirits of the family, as an auspicious event. The birth of a male child, among the Neapolitans, to whom female children are always à charge, was then, as now, considered a special favour conferred by the tutelar saint of the family. Madonna Giulia had scarcely gotten over her ricevimento* (a ceremony in which all the Neapolitan women, not of the lowest rank, indulge,) than she began to consult with the good Messire Antonio on the destiny of their infant child. He, 'good easy man,' had but one proposition to make: it was, that his son should not be an artist, and, above all, that he should not be a painter; to which Madonna Giulia the more readily agreed, not only because she was herself, like her husband, come of a family of indigent artists, but because, at the very moment of this parental discussion, her brother, Paolo Grecco, was nearly starving in the midst of his own pots and palettes, in a little workshop in the Strada Seggio del Nido. Paolo Grecco was, in truth, but pittore assai mediocre,' as one of the family chroniclers affirms; and he was chiefly employed (when he had employment), ་་ ་་་ ་ ;"* like others in his neighbourhood of the Strada Seggio, in painting family saints and padrona virgins, as bespoke. From concurrent testimony it appears that Madon na Giulia was a devotee of the true Neapolitan cast-full of sanguine and familiar superstition. She saw the hierarchy of heaven, 'not as through a smoked glass, but face to face,' could tell the colour of the Virgin's eyes, the number of St. Peter's keys, and had a gossiping acquaintance with every saint in the calendar. She wore her spindle in one side of her girdle, and her crucifix in the other, and spun and prayed with equal unction and facility; but, above all, she took no step, either with reference to this life or the next, without a special conference with her confessor and the Madonna. It was, perhaps, under the particular inspiration of both that she formed the idea, with the consent of the complying Vito Antonio, of devoting their son-their only son--to the church; or, in the words of the family historian, ' alla Lettura ;' for none then approached the Muses but in the livery of religion. The Italian poets of that age were at least Abbati; and the councils of the Della Crusca rarely admitted genius that came not duly labelled with the petit collet. "The sacred calling of the future Reverendissimo began in the parish church of Renella, where, to secure his salvation by the shortest road to Paradise, he received at the baptismal font that name which was supposed to consecrate its owner to the special protection of Heaven, the name of SALVATORE. For never,' says an Italian divine, has it been known that God has permitted the devil to torture in hell a man who bore this name.' The destination for the Church led to one valuable result; for though the wild and irregular mind of Salvator broke through the restraints, yet the education he received was of infinite advantage to him. His bias for Art was early exhibited; and he was well flogged, when a child, for griming a church-wall over with burnt sticks. At the age of 16, he left his ecclesiastical school suddenly, and first devoted himself to Music, in which he composed skilfully. But an event occurred, which changed the destinies of his future life, and gave his love of painting the ascendency. "At one of the popular festivities annually celebrated at Naples in honour of the Madonna, the beauty of Rosa's elder sister captivated the attention of a young painter, who, though through life unknown to 'fortune,' was not even then 'unknown to fame.' The celebrated and unfortunate Francesco Francanzani, the innamorata of La Signorina Rosa, was a distinguished pupil of the Spagnuoletto school, and his picture of San Giuseppe for the Chiesa Pellegrini had already established him as one of the first painters of his day. Francanzani, like most of the young Neapolitan painters of his time, was a turbulent and factious character, vain and self-opinionated; and though there was in his works a certain grandeur of style, with great force and depth of colouring, yet the impatience of his disappointed ambition, and indignation at the neglect of his acknowledged merit, already already rendered him reckless of public opinion. "It was the peculiar vanity of the painters of that day to have beautiful wives. Albano had set the example; Dominichino had followed it to his cost; Rubens turned it to the account of his profession; and Francanzani, still poor and struggling, married the portionless daughter of the most indigent artist in Naples, and thought perhaps more of the model than the wife. This union, and still more, a certain sympathy in talent and character between the brothers-in-law, frequently carried Salvator to the stanza or workroom of Francesco. Francesco, by some years the elder, was then deep in the faction and intrigues of the Neapolitan school; and was endowed with that bold eloquence which, displayed upon bold occasions, is always so captivating to young auditors. It was at the foot of this kinsman's easel, and listening to details which laid, perhaps, the foundation of that contemptuous opinion he cherished through life for schools, academies, and all incorporated pedantry and pretension, that Salvator occasionally amused himself in copying, on any scrap of board or paper which fell in his way, whatever pleased him in Francesco's pictures. His long-latent genius thus accidentally awakened, resembled the acqua buja, whose cold and placid surface kindles like spirits on the contact of a spark. In these first, rude, and hasty sketches, Francanzani, as Passeri informs us, saw 'molti segni d'un indole spiritosa,' ('great signs of talent and genius,') and he frequently encouraged, and sometimes corrected the copies, which so nearly approached the originals. But Salvator, who was destined to imitate none, but to be imitated by many, soon grew impatient of repeating another's conceptions, and of following in an art in which he already perhaps felt, with prophetic throes, that he was born to lead. His visits to the workshop of Francanzani grew less frequent; his days were given to the scenes of his infant wanderings; he departed with the dawn, laden with his portfolio filled with primed paper, and a pallet covered with oil colours: and it is said that even then he not only sketched, but coloured from nature(dal naturale.) When the pedantry of criticism (at the suggestion of envious rivals) accused him of having acquired, in his colouring, too much of the impasto of the Spagnuoletto school, it was not aware that his faults, like his beauties, were original; and that he sinned against the rules of art only because he adhered too faithfully to nature. Returning from these arduous but not profitless rambles, through wildernesses and along precipices impervious to all, save the enterprise of fearless genius, he sought shelter beneath his sister's roof, where a kinder welcome awaited him than he could find in that home where it had been decreed from his birth that he should not be a painter." Pursuing these rambles on a wider field, he became a prisoner and companion to a tribe of banditti, among whom he impressed his mind with those scenes and figures so often multiplied in his works. How he returned to civilized society is unknown; but he soon after attracted the notice of Lanfranco, then on a visit to Naples, and this was his first step to public fame, though it embroiled him with envious competitors, whose sneers and criticisms he answered by epigrams and satires. He was induced to go to Rome, the grand emporium of the Arts; but returned unsuccessful. He next painted at Viterbo, and at tracted more notice, especially that of Abbati the poet. Here he paint ed his only frescoes. Returning to Rome, his Prometheus completely established his great reputation; and thenceforward he was acknowledg ed as a master, and had only to struggle against contemporary op position. "All Rome was occupied with praising its beauties or decrying its faults. Envy and admiration were perpetually employed in analyzing its pretensions to the public suffrages. But the public, with its sure instinct, decided in favour of the laborious Salvatoriello of the rivenditori of the Piazza Navona; and the fame of the future historical painter was laid upon the firm basis of the public opinion." - - This encouraged the painter to return to Rome under better auspices; but still he did not rise so fast as his ambition, and he took a strange means of obtaining more notorious popularity. During the carnival he disguised himself and some associates as mountebanks, and assuming the character of Formica (a Neapolitan actor,) so distinguished himself by lashing and satirizing the follies and vices of the day, as to draw all Rome after his wit and humours. He was now courted by all ranks, and had more commissions than all his rapidity could execute, though he often finished a picture in one day. "Rosa,' says his biographer, who was eminently musical, and accompanied himself on the late with wondrous skill, now went from one conversazione to another, singing and reciting al improviso, thus extending his fame by giving himself up to society. He saw all Rome desirous to possess him; and it was now easy for him to make his singular genius known to all, not only as a painter, but a poet.' It appears, in fact, from other testimony, that the lute and canzonetti of the delightful Neapolitan musician, gli facessero strada nell'uscir fuori come Pittore, paved the way for the fame of the painter." His character at this era is thus drawn: "A stoic upon principle, but a voluptuary by temperament, Salvator endeavoured to assimilate opinions and tastes so little in aecordance. Scarcely escaped from penury and absolute want, he already began to find Le superflu, chose très nécessaire. His dress became as remarkable for its studied elegance, as it was affectedly free from the showy splendour of that ostentatious age. It was a fine sight, (says his friend Baldinucci) to see him pass along the streets of Rome, with a certain dignified deportment, followed by a servant with a silverhafted sword, while all who met him gave way to him.' The many pictures he painted of himself, and the descriptions left of his person by his contemporary biographers, are proofs that the personal vanity which his enemies have numbered among his vices, was not without some foundation; and it appears that if he had been good for nothing else, he would have been at least bon à peindre. A person |