e a fierce ambitious Tyrant's sway.
Long in this isle, where Freedom finds repose,
Whilst, raving round her, loud the tempest blows,
Oh! long befriended, may the Arts excel,
And bless the sacred spot they love so well!
[Footnote A: "_Then painting grew, and from the shades_,"
&c.--The shadows of plants, and indeed of every object in Nature,
must, at a very early period, have furnished ideas of imitation.]
[Footnote B: _"Then, oh! thou_," &c.--After the ravages of the
northern barbarians, painting was revived in Italy, about the
fourteenth century, by Cimabue, who was hence styled the Father of
Painting.]
[Footnote C: "_For that Apelles_," &c.--Painting attained so
great a perfection amongst the Greeks, under Zeuxis, that Apelles
found nothing wanting but grace, which in those times he bestowed upon
the art, as Corregio did after Raphael.]
[Footnote D: "_Here Jove in_," &c.--The Greeks excelled in the
delineation of their deities, to whom they attributed all the human
passions: their Jupiter they elevated to the highest degree of
majesty, their Venus to the utmost pitch of human beauty.]
[Footnote E: "_E'en such as graceful Sculpture_," &c.--From
Cimabue to Raphael, the painters were employed by the church; and they
gave a character to the Prophets, Apostles, and our Saviour, which was
never known to the ancient sculptors. The power which the former
possessed of uniting dignity to humility is without a parallel.]
[Footnote F: "_Behold, in fulsome allegory_," &c.--As long as
the French school adhered to the principles of the Italian school, it
produced many great masters; however, the art certainly degenerated
after Raphael, by being employed in adulatory allegory, in honour of
Princes, as is to be seen in the works of Rubens and Le Brun at Paris,
artists of great talents, which they were led to misapply, through the
supreme vanity of Louis the Fourteenth.]
[Footnote G: "_And Europe's plunder_," &c.--Those who have
visited the Napoleon Gallery at Paris can attest the truth of this
observation, as those who are acquainted with the modern state of
painting in France well know, and, knowing, cannot but be surprised
at, the small number of French painters of any tolerable celebrity.]
FINIS.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Sir John Carr
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