e of fellow-artists, the warm applause of living and
deathless masters, sanctioning the enthusiasm of the popular crowd; what
struck me more than the precision of drawing, for which the artist has
been always renowned, and the just though gorgeous affluence of color
which he has more recently acquired, was the profound depth of conception,
out of which this great work had so elaborately arisen. That monk, with
his scowl toward the printer and his back on the Bible, over which _his
form casts a shadow_--the whole transition between the mediaeval
Christianity of cell and cloister, and the modern Christianity that
rejoices in the daylight, is depicted there, in the shadow that obscures
the Book--in the scowl that is fixed upon the Book-diffuser; that sombre,
musing face of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, with the beauty of Napoleon,
darkened to the expression of a Fiend, looking far and anxiously into
futurity, as if foreseeing there what antagonism was about to be created
to the schemes of secret crime and unrelenting force; the chivalrous head
of the accomplished Rivers, seen but in profile, under his helmet, as if
the age when Chivalry must defend its noble attributes, in steel, was
already half passed away: and, not least grand of all, the rude thews and
sinews of the artisan forced into service on the type, and the ray of
intellect, fierce, and menacing revolutions yet to be, struggling through
his rugged features, and across his low knitted brow; all this, which
showed how deeply the idea of the discovery in its good and its evil, its
saving light and its perilous storms, had sunk into the artist's soul,
charmed me as effecting the exact union between sentiment and execution,
which is the true and rare consummation of the Ideal in Art. But observe,
while in these personages of the group are depicted the deeper and graver
agencies implicated in the bright but terrible invention--observe how
little the light epicures of the hour heed the scowl of the monk, or the
restless gesture of Richard, or the troubled gleam in the eyes of the
artisan--King Edward, handsome _poco curante_, delighted, in the surprise
of a child, with a new toy; and Clarence, with his curious yet careless
glance--all the while Caxton himself, calm, serene, untroubled, intent
solely upon the manifestation of his discovery, and no doubt supremely
indifferent whether the first proofs of it shall be dedicated to a Rivers
or an Edward, a Richard or a Henry, Pl