Let the reader make out the rest. Let the moralist give what lesson he please, and the philosopher descant on the source of that vanity and vexation of spirit to which worthy Caxon was a victim. I, for my part, shall merely advise the tradesman to beware of ambition ;-the end of which must be,-misery and disgrace.

European Magazine.

SALVATOR ROSA.

SALVATOR, (according to Passeri,) though not above the middle stature, exhibited in his movements much grace and activity. His complexion, though dark, was of that true African colouring, which was far from displeasing; his eyes were of a deep blue and full of

fire; his hair, black and luxuriant, fell in undulating rings over his shoulders. He dressed elegantly, but not in the court fashion; for he wore no gold lace or superfluous finery. Bold and prompt in discourse, he intimidated all who conversed with him, and none ventured openly to oppose him, because he was a tenacious and stern upholder of the opinions he advanced. In the discussion of precepts, erudition, and science, he kept clear, in the first instance, from the minutiæ of particulars, but, adhering to generals, he watched and seized his moment to rush into his subject, and make his point good. It was then he shewed himself well furnished for the discussion, and this little artifice

he practised with infinite skill. He had won over many friends and many partisans to his own way of thinking; and had also raised against him many enemies, who attacked his opinions. Between these parties disputes frequently arose in his assemblies, which sometimes led to scandalous ruptures.

His imitators have been countless; and it is supposed, that more than a fourth of the small landscapes ascribed to him, have been executed by those who rather exaggerated his faults, than copied his merits. Of those who closely followed him, both in his defects and his excellencies, the most justly celebrated is the Cavaliere Fidenza of Rome; but in all, the mastergenius, the power of invention was wanting; and the best were but tame and servile imitators of the great and unrivalled original.

While the public character, the person, manner, and exterior modes of Salvator Rosa, such as he appeared in what is called the world, have been treated with amplitude by Passeri, others of his biographers have entered more deeply into the domestic qualities, the temperament, and daily habits of the private individual: and the home character of genius is always interesting. A thousand individual traits in the various biographical details, and, above all, in the private letters of Salvator Rosa, speak a man full of those warm and zealous affections which convert predilection into passion, and tinge even the most moderate sentiments with the ardour of enthusiasm. Headlong in his enmities, as in his friendships, his bitterness to those he hated was finely contrasted by his tenderness to those he loved. In his private and domesticated manners, he is said to have

been full of amenity, pleasant humours, and confidential: "For the rest," says Pascoli, (who came to Rome while the impressions Salvator had made in its circles were still fresh,)-" For the rest, though Salvator was by temperament both sensual and sarcastic, those faults were compensated by virtues, which made them the more to be lamented, if not to be excused. For he was charitable, alms-giving, and generous; gracious and courteous; a decided enemy to falsehood and fiction, greedy of glory, eminent in all the professions to which he addicted himself, yet still prizing his talent more in that department of the arts, in which he did not excel, than in that line in which he had no competitor."

To the patent of Salvator's merit as a painter, the successive generations of nearly two centuries have set their seals, and time and posterity have long consecrated the judgment passed on his works by such contemporary critics as were not influenced by envy, nor warped by prejudice and party-spirit. The opinions of Passeri (and the disciple and worshipper of Domenichino, was no incompetent judge), of Baldinucci, of Pascoli, and of many other virtuosi of his own times, or of those which immediately followed them, are on record. The qualified eulogium of Sir Joshua Reynolds, (who, in refusing Salvator that grace which none but himself ever denied, accords him "all the sublimity and grandeur of the Sacred Volume from which he drew his subject of Jacob's Dream,") has long been before the British public; and to such testimonies may be added, the hitherto unpublished opinion of one, from whose refined taste

and superior judgment, few in the present day will be inclined to appeal-I mean the Baron Denon. In a letter to the author, this venerable Corypheus of the arts observes of Salvator, that he was "grand compositeur, dessinateur spirituel, penseur poetique, grand paysagiste, et tout-à-fait original dans ce genre ; vaste et grandiose en tout. Les arbres sur le devant ont une audace pour ainsi dire impertinente, qui leur donne de la noblesse," &c.

As an engraver, he had all the originality of manner which characterized his paintings; and notwithstanding the praises which have been lavished on the execution of his etchings, the designs or conceptions they embodied were still superior to the manual dexterity displayed his touch was light, bold, and spirited though he is accused of wanting the force and energy that characterised his pencil. He never engraved any pictures but his own.*

As a musical composer, his merits must be estimated by the progress which the most charming of all the arts had made in his own times. The music of Milton's modern Orpheus,

"Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song,
First taught our English music how to span

Words with just note and accent," &c.

would, in the present day, be as little palatable to an English public, as the strains of Dante's favourite

* The original plates, nearly worn out, were sold by the present family to the government, för 1000 dollars, and are now in the Papal Chalcographic office. Copies were, however, piratically executed by a living artist, Rainaldi. Volpato, Strange, and Boydell, have engraved his principal pictures.

minstrel, Casseli, would be endurable to the cognoscenti audience of "the San Carlos." It is enough to establish the musical genius of Salvator Rosa,* that his compositions were pronounced by the most learned and elegant musical professor of the last century, to be "in point of melody, superior to most of the masters of his time. Of his skill in architecture, (which, however, he never practised professionally) we have only a passing observation of Pascoli, who asserts, that "he understood it perfectly."

As a comic actor, an improvissatore, a performer on many musical instruments, and (to use a French term for a talent, which, for very obvious reasons has no fit English one) as a delightful causeur, the merits of Salvator Rosa must be taken upon trust! These brilliant qualifications, which render life so much more easy and delectable, than higher talents and sublimer powers, have nothing to do with time-they belong to the moment, and are equally evanescent; but the testimony which all who witnessed these personal accomplishments of the great poet-painter, bear to their excellence, endows him with a sort of individual and characteristic fascination, which, perhaps, in the "hey

• While the air of "Vado ben spesso," and others of Salvator Rosa's compositions are to be found in the elegant little musical albums of half the fashionables of London, with quadrilles by Queens, and waltzes by Duchesses, in Rome, all to whom I applied, (either personally, or through her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire, and my friend General Cockburn,) denied that Salvator ever had composed a bar : "they had never even heard he was a musician." They had probably never heard of the works of Baldinucci, Passeri, Pascoli, and other pictorial biographers, which are known and read every where, but at Rome. Two of Salvator's airs will be found at the end of this volume.