but as we presume it speaks the sense of a very large description of respectable persons in Dublin, we cannot help congratulating the Irish nation on the possession of such a fund of excellent sense on a subject far the most interesting that can at present engage its attention, in an operative, busy, and efficient state. We feel that we can safely say, that the business of education is well understood in Ireland-at least as well as in our own country; and we trust to the energies of that intelligent people, to follow out so good a beginning to its great and infallible results. While in this country we feebly struggle with the corruptors of the rising generation, and faction pursues its ends by a course that leads to the annihilation of what it contends for; while here, among the patrons of education, are found those who so little know what education should be, that when the people embody themselves in their own defence against the pollutions of the press, they are among the foremost to oppose the design; while here, with the domes and turrets of our prosperity glittering in the sun-beams, blasphemy and sedition traverse our streets, and threaten the basis of our security, Ireland is occupied in a great and simple work of moral improvement, and sends forth from her capital a digest of public discipline in religion and morals, which, were it adopted in this country, and carried into universal practice, would leave little for the legislature, in the supreme concern of national education, but the duty of forwarding the objects of those societies for the regulation of the press, which it has been madly and mischievously called upon to condemn.

ART. II.-Memoirs of the Life of Nicholas Poussin. By Maria Graham, Author of a Journal of a Tour in India, &c. 8vo. Longman and Co. London, 1820.

rence.

THE life of a painter written by an author, not only inexperienced in the theory and practice of the art, but disavowing all pretensions even to that slender knowledge of it which goes by the name of connoisseurship, is by no means an ordinary occurOf course, we except from our remark those biographical accounts of eminent artists which occur in express compilations, such as that, for instance, of Moreri. But though we may have been softened by the frankness and diffidence of Mrs. Graham's acknowledgment, we regret that we cannot speak of her production with much commendation. As a literary composition, it is below mediocrity; and as a criticism upon the works of Poussin, superficial and injudicious. It is evidently built

with French materials, having the appearance of being an almost literal translation of some obscure work, patched together from Lanzi, Bellori, and Vasari. But although these may be the original sources from which it has been taken, the idiom, the structure of the sentences, and the frivolous and sentimental remarks which are scattered about it, bear unequivocal attestation to the fact of its having been immediately deduced from the above-mentioned language.

The biography, however, of so learned and diligent an artist, executed only with tolerable accuracy, cannot be wholly uninteresting to the general reader; and the early struggles, as well as the maturer triumphs of genius, must be always matter of useful and encouraging admonition to those who, in the same department of study, are contending against the same difficulties, and are ambitious of the same distinction. We shall, therefore, make no apology for placing before our readers the principal passages of Poussin's life, not merely from the book before us, but from other authorities, which we found it necessary to consult, as supplementary to the meagre sketches of Mrs. Graham.

Nicholas Poussin was born at Andelys, in Normandy, in 1594. From his childhood he evinced that predilection for drawing, which is a distinctive feature in the life of all great painters, and one of the most ordinary omens of their future greatness; and it appears that he received lessons in that art from a provincial portrait painter of the name of Parin. Having, at the age of eighteen, journeyed friendless and destitute to Paris, he was there introduced to Courtois, the king's mathematician, who gave him access to a large collection of prints after Raffaelle and Guido Romano. The person to whom he was indebted for this introduction, was a young nobleman who intended to confer upon him more substantial patronage; and for that purpose took him to his country seat, where his mother, who had a humbler notion both of art and artists, employed him in the management of her domestic affairs; an office which, not corresponding with the independent spirit of the young painter, nor the estimate he had made of his own powers, soon disgusted him; and having determined rather to lose the protection of the son, than submit to the vulgar insolence of the mother, he returned on foot to Paris, where he supported himself for some time by selling small pictures in distemper, at a low price. It is to this exercise that his faults and his excellencies may be attributed: it imparted to his style that hard and cold manner, as well as the freedom and grandeur, by which it was ever after characterized.

Inflamed, like other artists, with an ardent desire to visit Rome, he reached Florence, on his pilgrimage to that city of the arts.

But it does not appear how long he remained there, or why he returned without prosecuting his journey. On his return to Paris, he obtained employment from Duchesne in the ornamental paintings of the Luxembourg; and, with the little money which he was enabled to save from his earnings, he again set out for Rome, but was again prevented from reaching it by a severe illness which attacked him at Lyons. In 1623, he acquired considerable reputation by a series of pictures for the Jesuits' College at Paris, upon the subject of the miracles wrought by Loyola and St. Francis Xavier; and, amongst other friendships, he obtained that of Marini, who received him into his house with hospitality and affection. While the painter employed himself in the lighter and less severe exercises of his art, the poet recited aloud from Latin or Italian authors, and not unfrequently from his own works. From the prevalent images and the general style of Marini's poetry, he probably derived his first predilections for those compositions of which nymphs, and bacchanals, and fairies, constitute so large a portion of the subject. At this time, Poussin executed one of his finest pictures, that upon the Death of the Virgin, for the Goldsmiths' Company at Paris; and in 1624 joined Marini at Rome, by whose kind offices he was introduced to Cardinal Barberini, and the Del Pozzo family, who adhered to him with the greatest constancy of attachment.

He was at this time obliged to sell three pictures for sixteen crowns, to provide for his immediate wants; and it is recorded that a copy of one of these, which had brought him only two crowns, was afterwards sold by another painter for double the whole sum. From the society of Algarde, he acquired an ardent taste for sculpture, and that passion for the antique which has impressed its character so strongly on his works. He applied himself also to the study of architecture with great diligence. And his pictures are examples of the contributary effect of architectural features, when adopted by the painter as secondary and instrumental to his principal subject, and of the dignity which may be imparted to topics for the most part treated as of little or no importance in themselves. The pyramid of Caius Sextius, the Pantheon, the Ruins of the Forum, and the Walls of Rome, have a conspicuous place in several of his best pictures.

"Every hour," says Mrs. Graham, or rather the French author whom she translates, "that he could spare from his severer studies, Poussin spent in the different villas near Rome, where, besides the most exquisite remains of antique sculpture, he might enjoy the unrivalled landscape that surrounds that city, where every hill is classical, where the very trees have a poetic air, and where nothing reminds one of common nature, so much is it dignified by the noble wrecks, whose forms, and magnitude, and combinations, excite in the soul a kind of

dreaming rapture from which it would not be awakened, and which those who have not felt can scarcely understand." (P. 34.)

These were studies which occupied him to his latest years. He was frequently to be seen in the Campagna, or on the banks of the Tyber, with his handkerchief full of stones, moss, or flowers, which he always copied exactly from nature. But the highest object of his ambition was the acquisition of a perfect and anatomical knowledge of the human frame; and he pursued that study under a celebrated surgeon. He studied, moreover, the living model in the school of Domenichino, which. was then in high reputation at Rome, and not unfrequently modelled his subjects, in order to obtain a correcter knowledge of their forms. To form a style of his own, he applied himself to the copying of good masters, and, amongst others, the Ludovisi Titian, whose splendid colouring he was at first somewhat inclined to follow; but he soon returned, as to a native element, to the austere but grand manner which he had originally chosen. Having attained a splendid fame by his Ark of God amongst the Philistines (a picture which produced him only 60 crowns), he attracted the notice, and was honoured by the patronage, of the Commander Del Pozzo, who was then superintending the excavations on the site of the ancient Præneste. The celebrated mosaic found there was assiduously studied by our artist.

The part which he espoused, when the rival schools of Domenichino and of Guido excited such bitter contentions among the Roman artists, was very honourable to his character. Domenichino was nearly overwhelmed by the opposite faction; and his picture, the Communion of St. Jerome, had been torn from the church of San Girolamo della Canta, and thrown into a garret, where it remained in oblivion, till the monks, desirous of having a new altar-piece, requested Poussin to furnish it for them, and sent him Domenichino's picture as old canvass for the work. The first glance convinced him of its merits. He carried it to the church for which it had been executed, and gave a public lecture upon it, fearlessly comparing it with the Transfiguration itself. This bold and judicious criticism brought back taste and common sense to Rome; and the seductive and effeminate graces of the Guido school gave place to the high and dignified qualities of Domenichino.

Severe sickness about this time interrupted his studies, and the ills of sickness were embittered by those of indigence. Jean Dughet, cook to the senator of Rome, a Frenchman by birth, received him into his own house, and nursed him with the most. affectionate assiduities. A speedy recovery was the fruit of this kindness. Six months afterwards Poussin married his daughter; and as they had no children, our artist adopted his wife's bro

ther, Gaspar, who assumed his name, and emulated his renown as a painter with a parallel success. With a part of his wife's fortune, he purchased a house on the Pincian hill, where he passed the happiest and most prosperous period of his life.

From Cardinal Barberini he obtained a commission to paint' one of the pictures which was to be executed in mosaic for St. Peter's; and it was for that patron that he executed the celebrated picture of the Death of Germanicus. Of this work, Mrs. Graham seems not to have noticed the most remarkable incident, that the face of Agrippina is turned aside and veiled; an expression of unutterable agony not new, indeed, but irresistible in its effect upon the spectator. In 1639, Poussin was honoured by a letter from Louis XIII. and received the appointment of the king's painter. His reception at the court of Versailles was highly flattering; and he began his labours by some cartoons for tapestry, now unfortunately lost. But he soon found reason to complain that he was hurried in his studies, employed about trifles, and amused with fine speeches. Nor was the jealousy of contemporary artists wanting to his inquietude; and when he produced his plan for the decoration of the Tuilleries, Vouet, Le Mercier, and Fouguieres, were in arms against him. Disgusted with these cabals, he obtained leave to return to Rome, having bequeathed to his enemies a picture, the subject of which was a sort of thirteenth labour of Hercules, combating with Folly, Ignorance, and Envy. These allegorical personages were likenesses of his three opponents. His pension was three thousand livres, and Louis XIV. generously continued it.

In 1643, being about forty-nine years of age, he returned to Rome in tranquillity. He had now a competent income, and was actively engaged in his beloved art; he was honoured highly as an artist, and loved affectionately as a man. His time was for the most part spent in his painting-room, where he admitted no visitor. His friends, therefore, waited for him on the terrace near his house, where he walked, like an ancient philosopher, surrounded by his disciples. Gaspar, Claude Lorraine, Charles Le Brun, and other painters, attended him on these occasions, gathering from his easy and perspicuous discourse the just principles of the art, and listening to his counsels on the true method of studying nature.

He meditated deeply upon these subjects. Stella, who had succeeded him as King's painter to Louis XIV, and for whom he had executed his Moses Striking the Rock, one of the finest of his landscapes, communicated to him some criticisms upon it, particularly referring to the depth of the basin into which the water falls. Poussin's answer shows how clearly he was enabled to express himself on a subject which he so well understood.