FINE ARTS. •
SCOTT'S PRINCE LEGION DESIGNS.* Blake—David Scott—these have been perhaps hitherto the only British artists (not even excepting Fuscli) who can be strictly called ideally con- ceptive ; who invented works of their own of which the direct primary purpose was narrative symbolism. With these Von Hoist might to some extent claim to be joined: but he, though in one sense a British artist, belonged, mentally at least, to Germany ; besides which, his genius was legendary and fantastic, seldom abstract. A less contestable claim to the fellowship is preferred by Mr. William Scott in the designs before us.
Prince Legion is the man of the mass, the "representative man " of an artificial state of society. His faculties, his aims, are those of the multi- tude ; his attainment that at which all men successful in the common acceptation of the term arrive in their degree, more or less. The St. Vitus's Dance of the title is the pauseless disquiet of life..
The The frontispiece presents the dreams of youth and age—love, glory, the arts, for the first—heavy Mammon matter for the second ; and both are tied down in their places by the chain of necessity. In the first design of the series, Prince Legion is born : a hand which draws back the curtain of existence lets the stars be seen far out in space ; and the forward-eyed spirit bears him across the threshold. A male and a female Caryatid sup- port the entrance pillars. Prince Legion is nursed next : Superstition dandles him on her foot, and Folly keeps up her bell-jingling in his ear ; and he is circled round in the magic ring of custom, formula, and tradi- tion. He is a youth now, and aspires to know. He gazes down into a stream of water, and it mirrors back to him himself only : his foot touches it, and it ripples out, circle beyond circle. At his back, the boys are plodding into school, behind which the old church-spire appears ; his lexicon and grades are by him, laid aside. In the following plate he leaves school, and is directed in life. He hesitates a moment between the poetic and the conventional, t but the step he is about to take will be with the last. Now youthful love engages him: his lady passes him, and has scattered flowers in his path. He erases the name of Agnes from the tree he leans against, and
• Chorea Sancti Viti ; or Steps in the Journey of Prince Legion. Twelve Designs by William Bell Scott. t We are inclined to think that the two figures symbolizing the two guides in life are intended for Shakspere and Dr. Johnson : but Mr. Scott is not a good hand at a t likeness,
inscribes Rosa. After this he enters into masquerade—the masque of life. Some play their parts here as knight or soldier : the law- yers, too, and the priests, and the ladies, are all masques ; and he himself, the vizard over his face, holding loosely the hand of one, kisses his fingers to another. The attendant imps of the place are apes ; and the night passes to the music of Figaro. The revel is still proceeding within doors, when he meets his friend and his mistress, who has brought him a flower. But the mask remains on his face, and his greeting is formal and ceremonious. He is beginning to be a man of the world. To this succeeds, at one view, the scenery of twenty-five years of Prince Legion's life. He is an advocate. A kick from a spurred foot, the earnest appeal of a widow for her orphan, the pertinacity of a creditor, the flouting scorn of an offended lady, the rage of one suitor and the eagerness of others, all are received by him with bland complacence, as he stands, having the Sermon on the Mount under his feet. The mask has grown to be his own proper face. And now Prince Legion has attained. A deputation waits upon him—to induct him into office, it would seen; or to present him with some other mark of honour more substantial than the address which their spokesman is reading. On the Wall hang side by side indifferently, portraits of George the Fourth and Wilberforce, and a draft-bill for the recapture of runaway slaves has been thrust behind the latter. Prince Legion has attained, but his soul still drags, itself on; pain- fully clutching the ground, if perchance he may crawl a step further, His escutcheon looms amid the clouds—a legal wig, and full purses. Mean- while he arrives at the end of his journey. Again a hand draws a cur- tain back. The stars are there yet; but this time it is an old withered body in a shroud, which, ushered onward by a skeleton, is carried back across the threshold into the unknown. The words are being read- " Dust to dust, and the spirit to God who gave it." And Prince Legion has attained this—that his mourner stops the nose at him. Probably what we have said of these thoughtful designs, by way of description of their significance, is the best praise we can award them. We need not add that they are deeply and poetically conceived. Their application is at once universal and special, and their suggestiveness, whether singly or as a series, -very great. In point of art, we may call attention to the ideal truth in the expression of the Spirit of Birth. Everything is newness and expectancy. She has no past; the future is to impress all. The nursing of Prince Legion is strongly characterized ; and the last two steps of the journey are, felt intensely. The faults of the plates are some weakness in drawing, and in execution a certain florid manner occasionally which is quite distinct from finish.
The designs are left to explain themselves with the aid of appropriate motto-quotations : nor is more needed. They have long, as Mr. Scott states, been lying by him, and are now issued with a full consciousness as to their chance of popularity. It is added that Mr. Lewes had once proposed to write to them. We know not, however, if any such accom- paniment were deemed desirable, why Mr. Scott should not have trusted to himself; and we are confident there will not be wanting those who, howsoever the designs may stand with the public, will recognize them as worthy of the mind he has more than once manifested in poetry.
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