The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-07-01
PI6StK1AL POPULARITY.
Brcal ne rex Man Gazette.

Aho HhoolOn lOI plCtOflal. luuSbfAJlOn OF.
literary works seems to characterize two very
different epochs in the mental education of a
community. As children love TO have the
text of what they read accompanied with ex-
planatory pictures, so do the reading public
generally in those early stages of cultivation
which, in a community, answer TO childhood
in man. Letter-press accompanied with rude
wood-cuts constituted the common method of
introducing works of narrative, historical or
fictitious, to circulation for the first century
or so after the discovery of printing. And an
age of advanced intellectual refinement seems
now to be resorting to the lavish use of simi-
lar decorations once again. We want our
literature spiced with the additional condi-
ments of art, not because, like our ancestors,
we are SO imperfectly educated as to call in the
eye to aid the perception of the intellect, but
because our interest in common reading has
grown dull, partly from over-indulgence, and
partly from the over-supply and consequent
badness of literary material. Pictures, how
ever roughly executed, feed the mind agreeably
on the whole as a relief from trashy and
superficial writing And thus illustrated
travels, histories, newspapers, and the like,
of cheap and flimsy material doubtless, but
still showing a considerable advance in art
beyond those of a generation ago, are the
order of the day, not excepting those latest
and too often unattractive creations of public
taste the monthly wood-cuts which accom-
pany the serial romances of our magazines.
But passing from the ephemeral to the
more permanent, these modern fancies may
lead one to inquire little more closely into
the connection between art and literature
Why do we find, in all countries and times
that the representations of scenes and Incl
dents taken from some works of general in
terest are invariably popular, are repeated in
thousands of copies, are met with continually
in every common collection of prints and
adjoining the walls of ordinary rooms, while
other works not only equally celebrated but,
perhaps, as much read, and deserving it as
WELL hardly furnish a single specimen to the
general repository of popular art? A ques-
ton which, fully investigated, may lead us
little beyond its own immediate scope into
meditation on the true meaning and limits of
literary fame.
In order to achieve real pictorial popularity,
and to become thoroughly familiar to the
minds of the general public, not only through
reading but through the eyes, we suspect that
q poetical OF romantic narrative must possess
three distinct qualities, besides the leading
one of genius 1t must be of kind to in
terest, not the cultivated classes only, but
mankind in general Its special qualification
must be that of work of incident, not of senti-
ment. And its conceptions must be tho
roughly genuine and original
Let us go back to antiquity for our first ex-
ample. The artistic relics of the classical
ages which we possess, notably those of sculp-
ture and of the Pompeian paintings, represent
chiefly NEUROLOGICAL subjects. OF these a
very large proportion indeed is taken from
the writings of Homer His gods, his heroes,
in their loves, fights, and adventures, meet
us at every turn. Homer was evidently the
great pictorial poet of antiquity. The
Greek dramatists furnish some subjects
to the wall decoration of classical houses
l1..4
any. Possibly the ''nnotive of the LAGOON
may be found in his verses; but possibly,
also, in some unknown Greek original. There
is, we believe, only one Pompeian fresco
(Eneas wounded) which seems from internal
evidence to represent scene in the "Eneid. I"
Yet Virgil was extremely popular in his way.
His absence from the Pompeian heroes may
no doubt be partly accounted for by the fact
that Pompeii was Greek city. But Pompen
had a Latin-reading population too; Roman
naknes prevailed among its citizens, verses
from Roman poets are scribbled on its walls.
We suspect that the comparative prescription
of Virgil was in accordance with the canons
whiath we have laid down: he interested the
cultivated classes not the general public; and
his conceptions of incident had no originality,
and therefore did not take hold of the fancy
as creations.
The worldwide notoriety of Shakespeare
is, of course, displayed in the frequency of
pictures and prints taken from his plays, as it
is in SO many other ways. But in regard to
him, as to other dramatists, there is so much
of the theatrical mingled with the purely i'm
aginative in these representations, that they
do not exactly fall within the scope of oul
present inquiry. Probably it is the case with
all of us that when we try to image to ourselves
great Shakespearian character, he appears tt
us in the likeness of some actor whom we
have seen either on the stage OF in pictures
But of modern writer's of fiction, not drama
lists, Cervantes was the first to attain that pic
torial popularity of which we are speaking. Th
Knight of the Rueful Countenance and his phi
losophic squire have become in this way a
familiar to us all as personages whom W.
have known in the flesh Even to this day
series of prints from ''Don Quixote" will bt
found among the commonest adornments o
old parlor and bedroom walls, although more
modern subjects have, of course, extensively
displaced them. And next, perhaps, to DoI
Quixote, if not before him, in point of uni
versal demand of this sort, comes our OLE
fayorite Robinson Crusoe. The intense truth
fulness of De Foes creation, and it's thorough
originality, have met in this their appropriate
reward Pursuing our search lower down
we find that scarcely any of our popular poet
or novelists of the last century have left an,
trace of themselves in framed prints whicl
answer to the frescoes of antiquity. Thei
fame is not parietal, to speak. Field
ing and Smollett were enormously read; bu
e6 few of us have ever seen print representing
scene in either except in illustrated edition.
or in portfolios. They were too artificial e
attain to the honor of wall exhibition. Stern,
was somewhat more fortunate, but not to any
v great extent. This peculiar honor was re
served for one of whom the learned and witty
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