FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38  
39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   >>   >|  
2 he died of apoplexy, his sole living companion being a cat, for which he had evinced at extraordinary affection. His crimes seem to have had an important effect upon his art. They gave a strong personality to his style, a quality that his early work certainly lacked. In a note to the _Life of Dickens_, Forster mentions that in 1847 Lady Blessington received from her brother, Major Power, who held a military appointment at Hobart Town, an oil portrait of a young lady from his clever brush; and it is said that 'he had contrived to put the expression of his own wickedness into the portrait of a nice, kind- hearted girl.' M. Zola, in one of his novels, tells us of a young man who, having committed a murder, takes to art, and paints greenish impressionist portraits of perfectly respectable people, all of which bear a curious resemblance to his victim. The development of Mr. Wainewright's style seems to me far more subtle and suggestive. One can fancy an intense personality being created out of sin.--_Pen, Pencil and Poison_. CARDINAL NEWMAN AND THE AUTOBIOGRAPHERS In literature mere egotism is delightful. It is what fascinates us in the letters of personalities so different as Cicero and Balzac, Flaubert and Berlioz, Byron and Madame de Sevigne. Whenever we come across it, and, strangely enough, it is rather rare, we cannot but welcome it, and do not easily forget it. Humanity will always love Rousseau for having confessed his sins, not to a priest, but to the world, and the couchant nymphs that Cellini wrought in bronze for the castle of King Francis, the green and gold Perseus, even, that in the open Loggia at Florence shows the moon the dead terror that once turned life to stone, have not given it more pleasure than has that autobiography in which the supreme scoundrel of the Renaissance relates the story of his splendour and his shame. The opinions, the character, the achievements of the man, matter very little. He may be a sceptic like the gentle Sieur de Montaigne, or a saint like the bitter son of Monica, but when he tells us his own secrets he can always charm our ears to listening and our lips to silence. The mode of thought that Cardinal Newman represented--if that can be called a mode of thought which seeks to solve intellectual problems by a denial of the supremacy of the intellect--may not, cannot, I think, survive. But the world will never weary of watching that troubled soul in its
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38  
39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
personality
 

thought

 

portrait

 

Perseus

 

turned

 

pleasure

 
terror
 

Florence

 

Loggia

 
forget

easily

 

strangely

 

Sevigne

 

Madame

 
Whenever
 

Humanity

 

bronze

 
wrought
 

castle

 

Francis


Cellini

 

nymphs

 
confessed
 

Rousseau

 

priest

 

couchant

 
called
 

intellectual

 
problems
 
represented

listening

 

silence

 

Cardinal

 

Newman

 

denial

 

watching

 

troubled

 

intellect

 

supremacy

 
survive

opinions
 

character

 

achievements

 

matter

 
splendour
 

supreme

 

autobiography

 
scoundrel
 

Renaissance

 

relates