Glen Collection of printed music > Printed music > British minstrel, and musical and literary miscellany

202
THE BRITISH MINSTREL; AND
THE ST. GEORGE.
It stood in the artist's studio; all Florence came
to look at it; all examined it with curiositj; all
admired it with eagerness ; all pronounced it the
capo d' opera of Donatello. The whole town were
in ra))tures, and lovely ladies, as they bent from
their carriages to answer the salutes of the Princes
and Dukes, instead of the common-place frivolities
of fashion, said, " Have you seen the new statue by
Donatello?"
Is there an art like that of sculpture ? Painting
is a brilliant illusion — a lovely cheat. Sculpture,
while it represents a reality, is itself a reality. The
pencil pours its fervid hues upon perishable canvass,
and they fade with the passing air; but the chisel
works in eternal marble — strikes out a creation im.
mortal as the globe, and beautiful as the soul.
"I told thee, Donatello," said Lorenzo, "thou
would'st excel all thy rivals !"
" Fling by thy chisel now," cried another, " thou
canst add nothing to that."
"I shall cease, hereafter, my devotion to the an-
tique," cried a third.
"The power of Phidias," exclaimed one.
" The execution of Praxiteles I" said another.
"You will draw votaries from Venus," v\hispered
a soft Italian girl, as she turned her melting eyes on
the old man.
" The Apollo will hereafter draw his how un-
heeded," cried an artist, whom many thought the
best (if his day.
Among the crowds who flocked to the studio of
Donatello, there was a youth who had given some
promise of excellence. Many said that, with in-
tense study, he might one day make his name heard
Deyond the Alps ; and some went so far as to hint
that in time he might tread close on the heels even
of Donatello himself, but these were sanguine
men, and great friends of the young man ; besides,
they spoke at random. They called this studeu'
Michael Angelo.
He had stood a long time regarding it with fixed
eyes and folded arms. He walked from one position
to another, measured it with his keen glances from
head to foot, regarded it before, behind, and studied
its profiles from various points. The venerable
Donatello saw him, and awaited his long and
absorbed examination with the flattered pride ol'
an artist and the afteetionate indulgence of a father.
At length Michael Angelo stopped once more
before it, inhaled a long breath, and broke the pro
found silence. " It wants only one thing," muttered
the gifted boy.
"Tell me," cried the successful artist, "what it
wants. This is the first censure which my St.
George has elicited. Can I improve? Can I alter?
Is it in the clay or the marble? Tell me !"
But the critic had disappeared.
Donatello knew the mighty genius of Michael
Angelo. He had beheld the flashes of the sacred
tire, and watched the development of the "God
within him."
"Diablo!" cried the old man, "Michael Angelo
gone to Rome, and not a word of advice about my
statue! The scapegrace! but I shall see him
again, or, by the mass, I will follow him to the
••ternal city. His opinion is worth that of all the
world! But one thing!" He looked at it again —
he listened to the murmurs of applause which it
drew from all who beheld it — a placid smile settled
on his face. " But one thing! — what can it be?"
Years rolled by. Michael Angelo remained at
Rome, or made excursions to other places, but had
not vet returned to Florence. Wherever he had
been, men regarded him as a comet — something
fiery, terrible, tremendous, sublime. His fame
spread over the globe; what his chisel touched it
hallowed. He spurned the dull clay, and struck
his vast and intensely brilliant conceptions at once
from the marble. Michael Angelo was a name
to worship — a spell in the arts — an honour to Italy
— to the world. What he praised, lived ; what he
condemned, perished.
As Donatello grew old, his anxiety grew more
powerful to know what the inspired eyes of the won-
derful artist had detected in his great statue.
At length the immortal Florentine turned his
eyes to his native republic, and, as he reached the
summit of the hill which rises on the side of Porta
Romano, he beheld the magnificent and glorious
dome, and Campanile, shining in the soft golden
radiance of the setting sun, with the broad topped
tower of the Palazzo Vecchio lifted in the yellow
light, even as this day it stands.
Ah, death! can no worth ward thee? Must the
Inspired artist's eyes be dark, his hand motionless,
his heart still, and his inventive brain as dull as the
clay he models? Yes! Donatello lies stretched
on his last couch, and the light of life passing from
his eyes; yet even in that awful hour his thoughts
ran on the wishes of his past years, and he sent for
the Florentine artist.
His friend came instantly.
•' I am going, Michael, my chisel is idle, my
vision is dim, but I feel thy hand, my noble boy,
and I hear thy kind breast sob. I glory in thy re-
nown ; I predicted it, and I bless my Creator that I
have lived to see it; but before I sink into the tomb,
I charge thee, on thy friendship, on thy religion,
answer my question truly- "
"As I am a man, I will."
"Then tell me, without equivocation, what it is
that my St. George wants?"
"The gift of Speech!" was the reply.
A gleam of sunshine fell across the old man's
face. The smile lingered on his lips long alter he
lay cold as the marble upon which he had so often
stamped the conceptions of his genius.
The statue remains the admiration of posterity,
and adorns the exterior of the Chiesa d'or San Mi-
ckeies — Scottish Annual.
ALEXANDER AT PARADISE.
'Twas a soft and sunny land
To which the conqueror came.
Though now the place of that radiant strand
Is a blank in the chart of Fame.
'Twas far in the Indian regions, lone.
The delicious land he found ;
O, when shall there be, of its brightness thrown
A glimpse upon earthly ground.
It passed Alexander's eyes before,
Like a beautiful dream, it is now no more.