whom the artist was upon terms of intimacy (which may account for the rural deity's not being represented with goat's legs); it is very possible, therefore, that the Apollo, who reclines gracefully against a verdant bank, may be another portrait, and that the whole pictured fiction may be the offspring of private friendship. Whether so or not, it is the most elegant of compliments to the music-master to have it supposed he was capable of pleasing and instructing an Apollo! and among its minor, or collateral, beauties of thought, may be noticed the double flute, which Apollo has hung on a tree beside him, of which the significant meaning must be, that the newly invented syrinx will supersede, or suspend, the use of the double flute. The knowledge of these localities may be lost-they have been in part lost; and Caracci has wisely contrived that the picture shall always be sufficiently intelligible, and extremely interesting, without it.

Mr. Ottley says, "This small picture is supposed to be done in distemper." The picture has no oleaginous glare; and, in truth, it possesses all that simplicity, and crisp freshness, in the execution, which are characteristic of that method, as well as of frescopainting.

"The figure of Apollo (continues Mr. Ottley) has a certain youthful timidity, and at the same time archness of expression, joined to gracefulness of attitude and deportment, which render it particularly captivating. He has just ceased to play, and holding the reed-pipe with both hands, listens attentively to the observations of his instructor; who, resting his elbows on his knees, sits with the assumed dignity of a judge, and appears to have just uttered some remark

relative to the progress which his young pupil has made on the instrument. Both the figures are drawn with simplicity of outline, and executed with great boldness of manner; and the landscape, and other accessories, are in a truly classical taste."

On consulting Lanzi's History of the School of Bologna, we find him stating of the work before us, that it is painted a colla-that is, in colours of which the yolk [or, as we rather suspect, the albumen, or white] of an egg, is the vehicle. But, it may gratify a better principle than curiosity, to observe-not merely how much critics differ, in their estimates of the same performance, but-how they differ: that is to say, the kind as well as the degree of their difference. And in particular, that each connoisseur of taste, in return for the pleasure that such a picture as this, from the pencil of Annibale Caracci, affords him, reflects a portion of the essence of that pleasure back on the work, and along with it the prevailing tone, or colour, of his own delighted imagination, We differ in our tastes, to a proverb; and when it happens, as in the present case, that the differences of good judges can be brought to a focus, the mystic perceptions of the high priesthood cannot but be interesting, if not instructive, to the tyro, and even to the hierophant. If he catch not the spirit of critical philosophy, his taste, and his fancy, can scarcely fail to be gratified. We shall, therefore, place Lanzi, on the subject under review, in apposition to Ottley, and finally, the fervent enthusiasm of Hazlitt, to both.

"It rivals, I had almost said (writes the Abaté Lanzi) the best pieces of Herculaneum. It is a Pan teaching Apollo to play on the pipes; figures at once designed, coloured, and disposed, with the hand of a

great master. They are so finely expressive, that we see in the countenance of the youth, humility, and apprehension of committing an error; and in that of the old man, peculiar attention to the sound; his pleasure in possessing a pupil so accomplished; and his anxiety to conceal from him his real opinion, lest he might happen to grow vain."

On the whole, we prefer Mr. Ottley's construction to Lanzi's, about which there appears more of mingling, and refinement, and semi-demi-distinction, than we think Caracci, or any other sensible painter, would attempt to express, especially on so small a scale. Let, however, the reader of discernment, observe and consider here-Does not the peculiar enjoyment of Pan, rather appear to result, from having been himself the inventor of the Syrinx-an instrument with which even the god of music is evidently delighted? This seems a stronger motive; a loftier pleasure; and therefore more germain to the occasion, than Lanzi's conception.

But there is more poetry and zest in Hazlitt. After quoting him, we shall feel it to be our duty to leave each reader to decide and enjoy for himself. We had our reasons for not choosing to mingle the enthusiasm of Hazlitt, with the cooler judgment of the English and Italian historians of Art. Perhaps the chief of those reasons may have been, that we do not like to torment ourselves, or others, with too multifarious a task of comparison. Two or three things we can compare much more efficiently than four or five. Possessed of Hazlitt's "sketches," we had no intention of dispensing with what we might perceive to be pertinent and profitable in a writer of so much generous enthusiasm, and terseness of communion: one

who teaches to enjoy pictures, by sympathy and sentiment, at least as much as by reason.

Hazlitt says, "There is but one other picture in the Angerstein Collection, that strikes us, as a matter of taste or fancy, like the Susanna, and that is the Silenus [meaning Pan] teaching a young Apollo to play on the pipe-a small, oblong picture, executed in distemper by Annibal Caracci." The corpulence of the music master, and the absence of the goat's legs, with which Pan is generally represented, very naturally led Mr. Hazlitt into the supposition that a Silenus was here intended. Most persons would think so yet the classic ascription of the invention of the syrinx to the god Pan, leaves no further question upon the subject. Beside which, we are bound to recollect, that Silenus made his appearance elsewhere on the same highly-honoured harpsichord, as the reader will perceive by our next article. Hazlitt pertinently proceeds

"The old preceptor is very fine, with a jolly, leering, pampered, look of approbation; half inclining to the brute, half conscious of the god: but it is the Apollo which constitutes the charm of the picture, and is indeed divine. The whole figure is full of simple, careless grace, laughing in youth and beauty, he holds the Pans-pipe in both hands, looking up with timid wonder, and the expression of delight and surprise at the sounds he produces, is not to be surpassed."

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This is far more natural, lively, and poetical- -and more simple withal-than Lanzi's humble apprehensiveness of committing an error (and his et cetera of complicated littlenesses), which is not at all godlike, or becoming an Apollo: and this will probably be

thought the true intention of Annibale, who was himself of a lively and spirited character. But after all, Apollo was not wont to dress in the skins of wild animals; and if there had not been already rather too much written about this picture, considering its relative importance, specious, and perhaps sound, reasons might have been offered, why critics had better not make oath that the work was not intended for a Silenus giving a lesson to a young Bacchus.

This picture belonged to the late Mr. Angerstein.

SILENUS GATHERING GRAPES.

ANNIBALE CARACCI.

THIS picture is said to have once adorned the same harpsichord with that which we have just dismissed, of Pan instructing Apollo, or presenting Apollo with his newly invented instrument. Whatever connexion originally subsisted between the two pictures, is become obsolete. Silenus, according to some classic authorities, was the son of Pan; and perhaps this idea, lifted into more obvious meaning by some local incident arising out of private friendship, or the pleasantries of good fellowship, which is lost to us, may have connected the two designs. Both came to England from the Lancelotti palace; and both are painted without oleaginous glare, or, as the Italian phrase is, "a colla."

The Silenus, while it is scarcely less poetical than the Apollo and Pan, is in a more Arabesque taste, and reminds us, in its contrivance and style, both of