The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862

V >> Various >> The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862

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Author-borrowing should also be encouraged, because it tends to
language's perfection, and thus to incrementing the value of the ideas
it vehicles; for though a gilding diction and elegant expression may not
directly increase a thought's intrinsic worth, yet by bestowing beauty
it increases its utility, and so adds relative value--just as a rosewood
veneering does to a basswood table. There may be as much raw timber in a
slab as in a bunch of shingles, but the latter is worth the most; it
will find a purchaser where the former would not. So there may be as
much truly valuable thought in a dull sermon as in a lively lecture;
but the lecture will please, and so instruct, where the dull sermon will
fall on an inattentive ear. Moreover, author minds are of two classes,
the one deep-thinking, the other word-adroit. Providence bestows her
favors frugally; and with the power of quarrying out huge lumps of
thought, ability to work them over into graceful form is rarely given.
This is no new doctrine, but a truth clearly recognized in metaphysics,
and evidenced in history. Cromwell was a prodigious thinker; but in
language, oh! how deficient. His thoughts, struggling to force
themselves out of that sphynx-like jargon which he spake and wrote,
appear like the treasures of the shipwrecked Trojans, swimming '_rari in
gurgite vasto_'--Palmyra columns, reared in the midst of a desert of
sentences. And Coleridge--than whom in the mines of mental science few
have dug deeper, and though Xerxes-hosts of word-slaves waited on his
pen--often wrote apparently mere bagatelle--the most transcendental
nonsense. Yet he who takes the pains to husk away his obscurity of style
will find solid ears of thought to recompense his labor. Bentham and
Kant required interpreters--Dumont and Cousin--to make understood what
was well worth understanding. These two kinds of
authors--thought-creditors and borrowing expressionists--are as mutually
necessary to each other to bring out idea in its most perfect shape, as
glass and mercury to mirror objects. Dim, indeed, is the reflection of
the glass without its coating of quicksilver; and amalgam, without a
plate on which to spread it, can never form a mirror. The metal and the
silex are

'Useless each without the other;'

but wed them, and from their union spring life-like images of life.

But it may be objected that in trying to improve a thought we often mar
it; just as in transplanting shrubs from the barren soil in which they
have become fast rooted, to one more fertile, we destroy them. 'Just as
the fabled lamps in the tomb of Terentia burned underground for ages,
but when removed into the light of day, went out in darkness.' That this
sometimes occurs, we own. Some ideas are as fragile as butterflies, whom
to handle is to destroy. But such are exceptions only, and should not
preclude attempts at improvement. If a bungler tries and fails, let him
be Anathema, Maranathema; but let not his failure deter from trial a
genuine artist. Nor is it an ignoble office to be thus shapers only of
great thinkers' thoughts--Python interpreters to oracles. Nor is his
work of slight account who thus--as sunbeams gift dark thunder-clouds
with 'silver lining' and a fringe of purple, as Time with ivy drapes a
rugged wall--hangs the beauties of expression round a rude but sterling
thought. Nay, oftentimes the shaper's labor is worth more than the
thought he shapes. For if the stock out of which the work is wrought be
ever more valuable than the workman's skill, then let canvas and
paint-pots impeach the fame of Raphael; rough blocks from Paros and
Pentelicus, the gold and ivory of the Olympian Jove; tear from the brow
of Phidias the laurel wreath with which the world has crowned him.
Supply of raw material is little without the ability to use it. Furnish
three men with stone and mortar, and while one is building an unsightly
heap of clumsy masonry, the architect will rear up a magnificent
cathedral--an Angelo, a St. Peter's. And so when ideas, which in their
crudeness are often as hard to be digested as unground corn, are run
through the mill of another's mind, and appear in a shape suited to
satisfy the most dyspeptic stomachs, does not the miller deserve a toll?

Finally, author-borrowing has been hallowed by its practice, in their
first essays, by all our greatest writers. Turn to the scroll on which
the world has written the names of those it holds as most illustrious.
How was it with him whom English readers love to call the
'myriad-minded?' Shakespeare began by altering old plays, and his
indebtedness to history and old legends is by no means slight. How with
him who sang 'of man's first disobedience' and exodus from Eden? Even
Milton did not, Elijah-like, draw down his fire direct from heaven, but
kindled with brands, borrowed from Greek and Hebrew altars, the
inspiration which sent up the incense-poetry of a Lost Paradise. And all
the while that Maro sang 'Arms and the Man,' a refrain from the harp of
Homer was sounding in his ears, unto whose tones so piously he keyed and
measured his own notes, that oftentimes we fancy we can hear the strains
of 'rocky Scio's blind old bard' mingling in the Mantuan's melody. If
thus it has been with those who sit highest and fastest on
Parnassus--the crowned kings of mind--how has it been with the mere
nobility? What are Scott's poetic romances, but blossomings of engrafted
scions on that slender shoot from out the main trunk of English
poetry--the old border balladry? Campbell's polished elegance of style,
and the 'ivory mechanism of his verse,' was born the natural child of
Beattie and Pope. Byron had Gifford in his eye when he wrote 'English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' and Spenser when he penned the
'Pilgrimage.' Pope, despairing of originality, and taking Dryden for his
model, sought only to polish and to perfect. Gray borrowed from Spenser,
Spenser from Chaucer, Chaucer from Dante, and Dante had ne'er been Dante
but for the old Pagan mythology. Sterne and Hunt and Keats were only

Bees, in their own volumes hiving
Borrowed sweets from others' gardens.

And thus it ever is. The inceptions of true genius are always
essentially imitations. A great writer does not begin by ransacking for
the odd and new. He re-models--betters. Trusting not hypotheses
unproven, he demonstrates himself the proposition ere he wagers his
faith on the corollary; and it is thus that in time he grows to be a
discoverer, an inventor, an _originator_.

Toward originality all should steer; but can only hope to reach it
through imitation. For if originality be the Colchis where the golden
fleece of immortality is won, imitation must be the Argo in which we
sail thither.

INTERVENTION.

Intervene! and see what you'll catch
In a powder-mill with a lighted match.
Intervene! if you think fit,
By jumping into the bottomless pit.
Intervene! How you'll gape and gaze
When you see all Europe in a blaze!
Russia gobbling your world half in,
Red Republicans settling with _sin_;
Satan broke loose and nothing between--
_That's_ what you'll catch if you intervene!

MACCARONI AND CANVAS.

VII.

'A REEL TITIANO FOR SAL.'

There was a shop occupied by a dealer in paintings, engravings,
intaglios, old crockery, and _Bric-a-brac_-ery generally, down the Via
Condotti, and into this shop Mr. William Browne, of St. Louis, one
morning found his way. He had been induced to enter by reading in the
window, written on a piece of paper,

'A REEL TITIANO FOR SAL,'

and as he wisely surmised that the dealer intended to notify the English
that he had a painting by Titian for sale, he went in to see it.

Unfortunately for Mr. Browne, familiarly known as Uncle Bill, he had one
of those faces that invariably induced Roman tradesmen to resort to the
Oriental mode of doing business, namely, charging three hundred per cent
profit; and as this dealer having formerly been a courier,
commissionaire and pander to English and American travelers, naturally
spoke a disgusting jargon of Italianized English, and had what he
believed were the most distinguished manners: _he_ charged five hundred
per cent.

'I want,' said Uncle Bill to the 'brick-Bat' man, 'to see your Titian.'

'I shall expose 'im to you in one moment, sare; you walk this way. He's
var' fine pickshoor, var' fine. You ben long time in Rome, sare?'

No reply from Uncle Bill: his idea was, even a wise man may ask
questions, but none but fools answer fools.

Brick-bat man finds that his customer has ascended the human scale one
step; he prepares 'to spring dodge' Number two on him.

'Thare, sar, thare is Il Tiziano! I spose you say you see notheeng bote
large peas board: zat peas board was one table for two, tree hundret
yars; all zat time ze pickshoor was unbeknounst undair ze table. Zey
torn up ze table, and you see a none-doubted Tiziano. Var' fine
pickshoor!'

'Do you know,' asked Uncle Bill, 'if it was in a temperance family all
that time?'

'I am not acquent zat word, demprance--wot it means?'

'Sober,' was the answer.

'Yas, zat was in var' sobair fam'ly--in convent of nons.'

'That will account for its being undiscovered so long--all the world
knows they are not inquisitive! If it had been in a drinking-house, some
body falling under the table would have seen it--wouldn't they?'

Brick-bat reflects, and comes to the conclusion that the 'eldairly cove'
is wider-awake than he believed him, at first sight.

'Now I torne zis board you see on ze othaire side, ze Bella Donna of
Tiziano. Zere is one in ze Sciarra palace, bote betwane you and I, I
don't believe it is gin'wine.'

'I don't know much about paintings,' spoke Uncle Bill, 'but I know I've
seen seventy-six of these Belli Donners, and each one was sworn to as
the original picture!'

'Var' true, sare, var' true, Tiziano Vermecellio was grate pantaire, man
of grate mind, and when he got holt onto fine subjick he work him ovair
and ovair feefty, seexty times. Ze chiaro-'scuro is var' fine, and ze
depfs of his tone somethings var' deep, vary. Look at ze flaish, sare,
you can pinch him, and, sare, you look here, I expose grand secret to
you. I take zis pensnife, I scratgis ze pant. Look zare!'

'Well,' said Uncle Bill, 'I don't see any thing.'

'You don't see anne theengs! Wot you see under ze pant?'

'It looks like dirt.'

'_Cospetto!_ zat is ze gr-and prep-par-ra-tion zat makes ze flaish of
Tiziano more natooral as life. You know grate pantaire, Mistaire Leaf,
as lives in ze Ripetta? Zat man has spend half his lifes scratging
Tiziano all to peases, for find out 'ow he mak's flaish: now he believes
he found out ze way, bote, betwane you and I----' Here the Brick-bat
man conveyed, by a shake of his head and a tremolo movement of his left
hand, the idea that 'it was all in vain.'

'What do you ask for the picture?' asked Uncle Bill

The head of the Brick-bat man actually disappeared between his shoulders
as he shrugged them up, and extended his hands at his sides like the
flappers of a turtle. Uncle Bill looked at the man in admiration; he had
never seen such a performance before, save by a certain contortionist in
a traveling circus, and in his delight he asked the man, when his head
appeared, if he wouldn't do that once more, only once more!

In his surprise at being asked to perform the trick, he actually went
through it again. For which, Uncle Bill thanked him, kindly, and again
asked the price of the Titian.

'I tak' seex t'ousand scudi for him, not one baiocch less.'

'It an't dear,'specially for those who have the money to
scatterlophisticate,' replied Uncle Bill cheerfully.

'No, sare, it ees dogs chip, var' chip. I have sevral Englis' want to
buy him bad; I shall sell him some days to some bodies. Bote, sare, will
you 'ave ze goodniss to write down on peas paper zat word, var' fine
word, you use him minit 'go--scatolofistico sometheengs--I wis' to larn
ze Englis' better as I spiks him.'

'Certainly; give me a pencil and paper, I'll write it down, and you'll
astonish some Englishman with it, I'll bet a hat.'

So it was written down; and if any one ever entered a shop in the
Condotti where there was a Titiano for Sal, and was 'astonished' by
hearing that word used, they may know whence it came.

Mr. Browne, after carefully examining the usual yellow marble model of
the column of Trajan, the alabaster pyramid of Caius Cestius, the verd
antique obelisks, the bronze lamps, lizards, marble _tazze_, and
paste-gems of the modern-antique factories, the ever-present Beatrice
Cenci on canvas, and the water-color costumes of Italy, made a purchase
of a Roman mosaic paper-weight, wherein there was a green parrot with a
red tail and blue legs, let in with minute particles of composition
resembling stone, and left the Brick-bat man alone with his Titiano for
Sal.

SO LONG!

Rocjean came into Caper's studio one morning, evidently having something
to communicate.

'Are you busy this morning? If not, come along with me; there is
something to be seen--something that beats the Mahmoudy Canal of the
Past, or the Suez Canal of the Present, for wholesale slaughter; for I
do assure you, on the authority of Hassel, that nine hundred and
thirty-six million four hundred and sixty-one thousand people died
before it was finished!'

'That must be a work worth looking at. Why, the Pyramids must be as
anthills to Chimborazo in comparison to it! Nine hundred and odd
millions of mortals! Why, that is about the number dying in a
generation--and these have passed away while it was being completed? It
ought to be a master-piece.'

'Can't we get a glass of wine round here?' asked Rocjean, looking at his
watch; 'it is about luncheon-time, and I have a charming little thirst.'

'Oh! yes, there is a wine-shop only three doors from here, pure Roman.
Let us go: we can stand out in the street and drink if you are afraid to
go in.'

Leaving the studio, they walked a few steps to a house that was
literally all front-door; for the entrance was the entire width of the
building, and a buffalo-team could have passed in without let. Outside
stood a wine-cart, from which they were unloading several small casks
of wine. The driver's seat had a hood over it, protecting him from the
sun, as he lazily sleeps there, rumbling over the tufa road, to or from
the Campagna, and around the seat were painted in gay colors various
patterns of things unknown. In the autumn, vine-branches with pendent,
rustling leaves decorate hood and horse, while in spring or summer, a
bunch of flowers often ornaments this gay-looking wine-cart.

The interior of the shop was dark, dingy, sombre, and dirty enough to
have thrown an old Flemish Interior artist into hysterics of delight.
There was an _olla podrida_ browniness about it that would have
entranced a native of Seville; and a collection of dirt around, that
would have elevated a Chippeway Indian to an ecstasy of delight. The
reed-mattings hung against the walls were of a gulden ochre-color, the
smoked walls and ceiling the shade of asphaltum and burnt sienna, the
unswept stone pavement a warm gray, the old tables and benches very rich
in tone and dirt; the back of the shop, even at midday, dark, and the
eye caught there glimpses of arches, barrels, earthen jars, tables and
benches resting in twilight, and only brought out in relief by the faint
light always burning in front of the shrine of the Virgin, that hung on
one of the walls.

In a wine-shop this shrine does not seem out of place, it is artistic;
but in a lottery-office, open to the light of day, and glaringly
common-place, the Virgin hanging there looks much more like the goddess
Fortuna than Santa Maria.

But they are inside the wine-shop, and the next instant a black-haired
gipsy-looking woman with flashing, black eyes, warming up the sombre
color of the shop by the fiery red and golden silk handkerchief which
falls from the back of her head, Neapolitan fashion, illuminating that
dusky old den like fireworks, asks them what they will order?

'A foglietta of white wine.'

'Sweet or dry?' she asks.

'Dry,' (_asciutto_,) said Rocjean.

There it is on the table, in a glass flask, brittle as virtue, light as
sin, and fragile as folly. They are called Sixtusses, after that pious
old Sixtus V. who hanged a publican and wine-seller sinner in front of
his shop for blasphemously expressing his opinion as to the correctness
of charging four times as much to put the fluoric-acid government stamp
on them as the glass cost. However, taxes must be raised, and the
thinner the glass the easier it is broken, so the Papal government
compel the wine-sellers to buy these glass bubbles, forbidding the sale
of wine out of any thing else save the _bottiglie_; and as it raises
money by touching them up with acid, why, the people have to stand it.
These _fogliette_ have round bodies and long, broad necks, on which you
notice a white mark made with the before-mentioned chemical preparation;
up to this mark the wine should come, but the attendant generally takes
thumb-toll, especially in the restaurants where foreigners go, for the
Roman citizen is not to be swindled, and will have his rights: the
single expression, 'I AM A ROMAN CITIZEN,' will at times save him at
least two _baiocchi_, with which he can buy a cigar. There was a time
when these words would have checked the severest decrees of the highest
magistrate: now when they fire off 'that gun,' the French soldiers stand
at its mouth, laugh, and say; '_Boom!_ you have no balls for your
cartridges!'

The wine finished, our two artists took up their line of march for the
object that had outlived so many millions on millions of human beings,
and at last reached it, discovering its abode afar off, by the crowd of
fair-and unfair, or red-haired Saxons, who were thronging up a staircase
of a house near the Ripetta, as if a steamboat were ringing her last
bell and the plank were being drawn in.

'And pray, can you tell me, Mister Buller, if it's a positive fact that
the man has been so long as they say, at work on the thing?'

'And ah! I haven't the slightest doubt of it, myself. I've been told
that he has worked on it, to be sure, for full thirty years; and I may
say I am delighted, that he has it done at last, and that it is to be
packed up and sent away to St. Petersburg next week. And how do you like
the Hotel Minerva? I think it's not a very dirty inn, but the waiters
are very demanding, and the fleas--'

'I beg you won't speak of them, it makes my blood run cold. Have you
seen the last copy of _Galignani_? The Americans, I am glad to see, have
had trouble with us, and I hope they will be properly punished. Do you
know the Duke of Bigghed is in town?'

'Really! and when did he come--and where is the Duchess? oh!--she's a
very amiable lady--but here's the picture!'

Ushered in, or preceded by this rattle-headed talk, Caper and Rocjean
stood at last before Ivanhof's celebrated painting--finished at last!
Thirty years' work, and the result?

A very unsatisfactory stream of water, a crowd of Orientals, and our
Saviour descending a hill.

The general impression left on the mind after seeing it, was like that
produced by a wax-work show. Nature was travestied; ease, grace,
freedom, were wanting: evidently the thirty years might have been better
spent collecting beetles or dried grasses.

Around the walls of the studio hung sketches painted during visits the
artist had made to the East. Here were studies of Eastern heads,
costumes, trees, soil by river-side, sand in the desert, copied with
scrupulous care and precise truth, yet, when they were all together in
the great painting, the combined effect was a failure.

The artist, they said, had, during this long period, received an annual
pension of so many roubles from the Russian government, and had taken
his time about it. At last it was completed; the painting that had
outlasted a generation was to be sent to St. Petersburg to hibernate
after a lifetime spent in sunny Italy. Well! after all, it was better
worth the money paid for it than that paid for nine tenths of those
kingly toys in the baby-house Green Chambers of Dresden. _Le Roi
s'amuse!_

And the white-haired Saxons came in shoals to the studio to see the
painting with thirty years' labor on it, and accordingly as their
oracles had judged it, so did they: for behold! gay colors are tabooed
in the mythology of the Pokerites, and are classed with perfumes,
dance-music, and jollity, and art earns a precarious livelihood in their
land, where all knowledge of it is supposed to be tied up with the
enjoyers of primogeniture.

ROMAN THEATRES.

The Apollo, where grand opera, sandwiched with moral ballets, is given
for the benefit of foreigners, principally, would be a fine house if you
could only see it; but when Caper was in Rome, the oil-lamps, showing
you where to sit down, did not reveal its proportions, or the dresses of
the box-beauties, to any advantage; and as oil-lamps will smoke, there
settled a veil over the theatre towards the second act, that draped
Comedy like Tragedy, and then set her to coughing.

During Carnival a melancholy ball or two was given there: a few wild
foreigners venturing in masked, believed they had mistaken the house,
for although many women were wandering around in domino, they found the
Roman young men unmasked, walking about dressed in canes and those
dress-coats, familiarly known as tail-coats, which cause a man to look
like a swallow with the legs of a crane, and wearing on their impassive
faces the appearance of men waiting for an oyster-supper--or an
earthquake.

The commissionaire at the hotel always recommends strangers to go to the
Apollo: 'I will git you loge, sare, first tier--more noble, sare.'

The Capranica Theatre is next in size and importance; it is beyond the
Pantheon, out of the foreign quarter of Rome, and you will find in it a
Roman audience--to a limited extent. Salvini acted there in _Othello_,
and filled the character admirably; it is needless to say that Iago
received even more applause than Othello; Italians know such men
profoundly--they are Figaros turned undertakers. Opera was given at the
Capranica when the Apollo was closed.

The Valle is a small establishment, where Romans, pure blood, of the
middle class, and the nobility who did not hang on to foreigners, were
to be found. Giuseppina Gassier, who has since sung in America, was
prima-donna there, appearing generally in the _Sonnambula_.

But the Capranica Theatre was the resort for the Roman _minenti_, decked
in all their bravery. Here came the shoemaker, the tailor, and the small
artisan, all with their wives or women, and with them the wealthy
peasant who had ten cents to pay for entrance. Here the audience wept
and laughed, applauded the actors, and talked to each other from one
side of the house to the other. Here the plays represented Roman life in
the rough, and were full of words and expressions not down in any
dictionary or phrase-book; nor in these local displays were forgotten
various Roman peculiarities of accentuation of words, and curious
intonations of voice. The Roman people indulge in chest-notes, leaving
head-notes to the Neapolitans, who certainly do not possess such
smoothness of tongue as would classify them among their brethren in the
old proverb: 'When the confusion of tongues happened at the building of
the Tower of Babel, if the Italian had been there, Nimrod would have
made him a plasterer!'

You will do well, if you want to learn from the stage and audience, the
Roman _plebs_, their customs and language, to attend the Capranica
Theatre often; to attend it in 'fatigue-dress,' and in gentle mood,
being neither shocked nor astonished if a good-looking Roman youth
should call your attention to the fact that there is a beautiful girl in
the box to the left hand, and inquire if you know whether she is the
daughter of Santi Stefoni, the grocer? And should the man on the other
side offer you some pumpkin-seeds to eat, by all means accept a few; you
can't tell what they may bring forth, if you will only plant them
cheerfully.

Do not think it strange if a doctor on the stage recommends conserve of
vipers to a consumptive patient; for these poisonous reptiles are caught
in large numbers in the mountains back of Rome, and sold to the city
apothecaries, who prepare large quantities of them for their customers.

When you see, perhaps the hero of the play, thrown into a paroxysm of
anger and fiery wrath by some untoward event, proceed calmly to cut up
two lemons, squeeze into a tumbler their juice, and then drink it
down--learn that it is a common Roman remedy for anger.

Or if, when a piece of crockery, or other fragile article, may be
broken, you notice one of the actors carefully counting the pieces, do
not think it is done in order to reconstruct the article, but to guide
him in the purchase of a lottery-ticket.

When you notice that on one of his hands the second finger is twined
over the first, of the Rightful-heir in presence of the Wrongful-heir,
you may know that the first is guarding himself against the Evil Eye
supposed to belong to the second.

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