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himself as a patron of the Arts. It is said, that Leonardo made his first appearance at the usurper's court, in a sort of competition of the best Italian lyrists. He came forward with a lyre of his own invention, constructed of silver in the shape of a horse's head. He sang to its accompaniment unpremeditated verses, he maintained a thesis, and, in short, by the variety and charm of his accomplishments, fascinated the Duke and the whole city. While residing at Milan, he was occupied in the same irregular way in which it was the peculiar bent of his genius to exert itself. He engaged, as engineer, in plans for making the Adda navigable; he busied himself in fortification and hydraulics; he directed buildings; he made in clay an immense model of a horse which was to have been cast in bronze, but was battered to dust by the Gascon cross-bow men. But the chief labour of his brilliant mind and master-hand was the Last

Supper," that wonderful composition of which the history is so interesting, and the fate so deplorable. The Refectory which this noble fresco ornamented, stood in so low a situation as to be under water in wet seasons, while the wall on which it was painted, had been built of bad materials, and the preparation used by Leonardo, was so injudiciously compounded, as to scale off. The consequence of this combination of untoward circumstances was, that in 1540, the colours were half-effaced, and that twenty years after, nothing remained but the contour. In 1652, the worthy Dominicans having taken it into their heads that the door of their Refectory required enlarging, mutilated the legs of the principal figures in order to effect that important object, while the remainder of the picture was injured by the jarring of the wall during the operation. These excellent monks, moreover, fastened on the upper part of the painting, an enor inous escutcheon with the arms of the Emperor.

In 1726, the successors of these enlightened ecclesiastics began to feel considerable vexation that so admirable a production should have been thus scurvily neglected, and engaged a dauber named Bellotti, who pretended to have a secret for reviving faded colouring, to exercise his talents on da Vinci's hapless master-piece. He surrounded himself and his apparatus with canvas, absolutely repainted the whole excepting the sky, and then claimed and received his reward from his gratified employers. In 1770, one Mazza was employed again to retouch the work, under the patronage of Count Firmiani, governor of Milan, and had nearly finished his injurious scrapings and plasterings, when a new and more sagacious prior stopped him short, and saved the heads of three of the Apostles. In 1796, Bonaparte paid a visit to the venerable remains, and signed on his knee before mounting on horseback, an order that the place should be exempted from all military occupation; but, soon

after, some vulgar-souled general turned it into a stable, and his dragoons thought it a good joke to pelt the Apostles with brick-bats. After this, the Refectory became a magazine of stores, and though the municipal authorities obtained permission to wall up the door as an effectual bar to further injury, yet, in 1800, it was flooded to the depth of a foot, and no steps were taken to draw off the stagnant water. In 1807, the Convent having been converted into barracks, the viceroy, Beauharnois, caused the hall of Leonardo to be set in order, and due attention to be paid to the preservation of the remaining traces of his hand. Several tolerable copies of the painting are in existence, and an immense transcript in mosaic, of the same size with the original, was executed by order of Napoleon.

After the fall of Louis, Leonardo returned to Florence, and found a patron in the magistrate Soderini. Here he occupied himself chiefly in portraits, with the exception of some casual productions, and of his grand battle cartoon, in which he put himself in competition with Michael Angelo. It is singular, that the three great efforts of Leonardo, Iris colossal Horse, the Last Supper, and the combat of Anghiari, should all have perished.

Leonardo's residence at Rome was short, and led to no permanent results. In 1615, Francis 1. gained the battle of Marignano, and entered Milan. Early in the following year, Leonardo accepted that monarch's invitation to France, and at an advanced age left Italy, never to return. In 1518, he died in the arms of Francis.

Towards the close of the first volume of the present work, the following anecdote makes its appearance. We do not very clearly understand what it is designed to illustrate; but, as it is interesting in itself, we shall extract it.

In 1795, the Prussian officers of the garrison of Colberg, established an economical mess, of which certain poor emigrants were glad to partake. They observed one day an old major of hussars, who was covered with the scars of wounds received in the "seven years' war," and half-hidden by enormous grey_mustachios. The conversation turned on duels. A young stout-built cornet began to prate in an authoritative tone on the subject.. "And you, Major, how many duels have you fought?"-"None, thank Heaven," an swered the old hussar in a subdued voice; "I have fourteen wounds, and, Heaven be praised, they are not in my back; so I may be permitted to say that I feel myself happy in never having fought a duel."" By Jove! you shall fight one with me," exclaimed the cornet, reaching across to give him a blow. But the sacrilegious hand did not touch the old mustachios. The major, agitated, grasped the table to assist him in rising, when a unanimous cry was raised“Stehen sie rhuic herr major!" "Don't stir, Mr. Major." All' the

officers present seized the cornet, threw him out at the window,and sat down again to table as if nothing had occurred. Every eyewas moist with tears.'

We have been detained so long by the first volume, that we have very little room to spare for the second. Happily, we are released from any very urgent necessity for lengthening this article, by the quality and subject of the remaining matter. The first half of the volume consists of a series of rambling and incoherent remarks on the beauty of the antique, and on the ancient and modern beau idéal. The Author means to be very pitby and profound; but, as we have the misfortune not to understand him, we must be excused for passing by this portion of his work. The principal part of the remainder is devoted to the life of Michael Angelo, which has probably been familiarized to most of our readers by the elegant memoir of Mr. Duppa. Our present notice must, on this account, be very brief.

In his youth, Michael secluded himself completely from society, that he might experience no interruption in his studies. Averse at all times to much company, he formed few friendships, and once only cherished an attachment, which was strictly Platonic. This was for the celebrated Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Peseara, who often visited him. Her death nearly deprived him of his senses, and he reproached himself bitterly that, in their last interview, he had not kissed her forehead instead of her hand. He was liberal, though his habits were economical: he frequently gave away his works, and secretly assisted great numbers of the poor, especially young artists in narrow circumstances. He was in the habit of bestowing on his nephew fifteen hundred or two thousand pounds at a time. He one day said to his old servant, "Urbino, if I were to die, what would 66 you do?"—" I must seek another master." "Poor Urbino, "I will save you from wretchedness;" replied his master, and at the same time gave him a thousand pounds. The servant, however, died before his master, who, though eighty years of age, nursed him in his last illness, and passed several nights without undressing himself.

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As an artist, Michael Angelo was indefatigable: he gave little time to rest, and less to refreshment, his meals usually consisting of a few fragments of bread, eaten on his scaffolding. He required solitude while at his work: the presence of another person confused and cramped him; and he never felt easy unless he was secured from all possible intrusion. His memory was singularly tenacious. Of the many thousand figures which he had designed, not one ever escaped his recollection; and he never traced an outline without pausing to ask himself whether he had ever employed it before. He would trust nothing con→ nected with his profession to the care or skill of others: even

the files and chisels which he used, were of his own manufacture. The same anxious desire of perfection animated him in all the branches of his art. If he perceived a defect in the statue on which he was labouring, he abandoned it immediately. It was owing to this circumstance that he finished so few pictures or marbles. So far did he carry this spirit, that he once, in a paroxysm of impatient dissatisfaction, shattered a colossal groupe which he had nearly completed. When at a very advanced age and decrepit, he was one day met by Cardinal Farnese, on foot, amid snow and sleet, entering that mighty relic of antique grandeur, the Coliseo. The prelate called to him from his carriage to inquire where he was going in such weather. "To "school," he answered; "I have much yet to learn." When John of Bologna once shewed him the model of a statue, the old man altered the position of all the limbs, and restored it to him with this impressive admonition: "Learn to sketel, "before you attempt to finish." When Michael Angelo died, he was within a few days of his eighty-ninth year.

Michael was considered as an excellent hand at a shrewd, saying; and he seems to have had that disposition to mirth of a coarser kind, in which men of strong and highly-wrought minds have not unfrequently been prone to indulge by way of unbending from severe intellectual labour. He was at all times excessively delighted when visited by a ridiculous fellow called. Menighella, a painter in the Valdarno. The usual errand of this absurd genius was, to request a design for a St. Roch or a St. Antony, which some peasant had bespoken; and Angelo, who refused princes, quitted every thing to gratify Menighella, who placed himself beside him, and suggested his ideas for every feature. He gave this man a crucifix, which made his fortune by the sale of copies in plaster to the peasants of the Apeunines.

While Michael Angelo was working at the tomb of Julius II., he gravely accosted one of his stone-cutters, and complimented him on the talent for sculpture which, unknown to himself, he unquestionably possessed. The poor man stared at the unexpected greeting, but Angelo persisted, and assured him that he required only a little instruction to become an excellent artist. He then set him at work on a block of marble, and, by dint of vociferating, from the height of his scaffolding, a series of minute directions, succeeded in enabling the mason to chip out the

The same enthusiasm characterised Roubiliac. He would destroy the labour of many months, on discovering a vein in the marble, or a false stroke of the chisel, visible only to his own eye. Few artists have held gain more in contempt, or have been animated by a loftier passion for fame.

rough semblance of a handsome statue. The man, in comic admiration of his own unsuspected powers, expressed his ardent gratitude to Buonarotti for this liberal and skilful development of latent genius....

This article, contrary to our original intention, has increased So much upon our hands, that we must leave unnoticed the exquisite epilogue,' in which a receipt is given for making a connoisseur, and almost an artist,' in fifty hours! Our readers will have perceived, that, although the title of this work promises the history of Italian art, yet, it includes only the school of Florence. We infer from a casual reference, that a continuation is intended. Should it reach our hands, we shall feel pleasure in reviving our recollections of the schools of Rome, Venice, and Bologna..

Art. III. The Martyr of Antioch: a Dramatic Poem. By the Rev. H. H. Milman, Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. 8vo. pp. 168. Price 8s. 6d. London. 1822.

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TRAGEDY, as it was anciently composed,' remarks the greatest of poets in his preface to Samson Agonistes, hath ever been held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all poems. Heretofore men in highest dignity have laboured not a little to be thought able to compose a tragedy. Gregory Nazianzen, a Father of the Church," he adds, thought it not unbeseeming the sanctity of his person to write a tragedy, which is entitled Christ suffering.' If this vindication of Tragic Poetry be no longer necessary to rescue the attempt to compose a tragedy from the infamy which then attached to it, the unpopu larity of this species of composition, is, we suspect, scarcely diiminished. Neither the encomium of the Poet nor the great authorities he adduces, backed by his own example, have hitherto procured for the ancient model many admirers or imitators. Our English Eschylus stands alone, unless the Author of Caractacus may claim to be designated as the English Euripides.

The public taste runs counter to dramatic poetry of this description. Unacted tragedies and dramas unsusceptible of representation, are, of all kinds of literary production, the least attractive to common readers; and the austere beauties of ancient tragedy are as much beyond the reach of popular admiration, as the Phidian sculptures. Lord Byron has neither been understood, nor has understood his work or himself. His tragedies are neither ancient nor modern, neither Greek nor English; neither grave, moral, and profitable' as ethical poetry, nor natural, imaginative, or interesting as dramatic poetry. As to Cain, all we shall at present say of it, is, that we wish that its alliance to the ancient model, which is apparent