Gerard de Lairesse, Parley ings with

( Parley ings with Certain People of Importance in their Day : 1877, No. VI.) [ The Man. ] “Gerard de Laire e, a Flemish painter, was born at Liége in 1640. He early began his career, and produced portraits and historical pictures at the age of fifteen. He was of di ipated life, extravagant, and fond of dre , notwithstanding that he was of deformed figure. The Dutch admired him very much, and modestly called him their ‘second Raphael,’ Heemskirk being the first. He painted for many years at Amsterdam, and towards the close of his life was much troubled by his eyesight, which several times left him. He died in 1711. Very fond of teaching, he was always ready to communicate his method to students, and his name is a ociated with a Treatise on the Art of Painting , which it is not, however, thought that he wrote. His execution was very rapid, and there is a story told that he made a wager that he would paint, in one day, a large picture of Apollo and the Muses, and that he not only gained the wager, but painted into the picture a capital portrait of a curious bystander. His method of work was eccentric: he would prepare his canvas, and, sitting down before it, take up his violin and play for some time; then, putting down the instrument, he would rapidly sketch in the picture, and again resuming the fiddle, would derive fresh inspiration from the music.” ( Pall Mall Gazette , Jan. 18th, 1887.) [ The Poem. ] Browning rejoices that, though Gerard had lost his sight, his mouth was unsealed and “talked all brain’s yearning into birth.” He prizes his saying that the artist should discern abundant worth in commonplace, and not despise the vulgar things of town and country as unworthy of his art. Beyond the actual, he taught there was ever “Imagination’s limitle domain”: even dull Holland to him became Dreamland. And so in that great “Walk” of his, written after his blindne , he could evolve greater things than we with all our sight. Perhaps his sealed sight-sense left his mind free from obstruction to indulge fancies “worth all facts denied by fate.” But though we cannot see what the poets of old saw in nature when they invested trees with human attributes, and yet lost no gain of the tree, “we see deeper.” “You,” says Browning, “saw the body,—’tis the soul we see.” We can fancy, too, though fact unseen has taken the place of fancy somehow. Poets never go back at all: if the past become more precious than the present, then blame the Creator! But it can never be so. He invites Gerard to ‘walk with him and see what a poet of the present time discerns in the face of Nature, in her varying moods from daybreak till the shades of night.’ Then follows a series of magnificent descriptions of a thunderstorm in the mountains, the defiant pine tree daring all the outrage of the lightning. Then the laugh of morning, the baffled tempest, the trees shaking off the night stupor from their strangled branches. Diana, with her bow and unerring shaft; for gentle creatures, even on a morn so blithe, must writhe in pain—so pitile is Nature still! And then the conquering noon: the mist ascends to heaven, and the filmy haze soothes the sun’s sharp glare till tyrannous noon reigns supreme. And when at last the long day dies, clouds like hosts confronting each other for battle come trooping silent. Two shapes from out the ma show prominent, as if the Maced on i an flung his purple mantle on the dead Darius. And now the darkne gathers, the human heroes tread the world of cloud no longer. ’Tis a ghost appears on earth: “There he stands, Voicele , scarce strives with deprecating hands.” But, says Browning, though we to-day could paint Nature in this manner in the colours of the Past, we rather prefer “the all-including, the all-reconciling Future: ‘Let things be—not seem, Do, and nowise dream.’ Sad school was Hades! Let it be granted that death is the last and worst of man’s calamities: come what come will—what once lives never dies.” Notes. —2. “ The Walk ”: this was the title of a part of Gerard’s work entitled The Art of Painting , by Gerard de Laire e, translated by J. S. Fritsch, 1778. 5. Dryope : the fable of Dryope turned into a tree is told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses , book ix. 9. Artemis , Diana, the huntre godde . 10. Lyda , a nymph beloved by Pan, but who disdained his uncouth pathos. 11. Maced on i an : Alexander, king of Macedonia, invaded Persia, and was met by Darius with an army of 600,000 men. Alexander defeated them, and Darius was slain by the traitor Be us. Alexander covered the dead body with his own royal mantle, and honoured it with a magnificent funeral.