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Register-Deaths.

that place, in the 54th year of his age, and the
28th of his ministry.

Dec. 25. At Glasgow, Robert Starret, Esq. late
merchant in the island of Carriacou, Grenada.

-At Dumbarton, Mrs Christian Macintosh, relict of the late Mr D. Murdoch, merchant there. 26. At Kirkenan, Alexander Reid, Esq.

27. At Scalpa, aged 81, Normand Macdonald, Esq. of Barrisdale.

-At Havering-atte-Bower, Essex, Miss Balls, aged 65, celebrated for her attachment to goats; she had at the time of her decease 24 lodging with her in the house, sharing all things in common. 28. In Stafford-Street, Edinburgh, Mrs Margaret Borthwick, widow of the late Lieut.-Colonel John Borthwick, of the 71st regiment.

-At Libberton Cottage, Jane Todd, wife of Lieut. Moxey, R, N. in the 44th year of her age. 30. At Torquay, Devon, Sarah, Viscountess Kilcoursie.

-At Edinburgh, Mr George Nielson, of the Commercial Banking Company of Scotland, eldest son of the late Mr George Nielson, secretary to the Bank of Scotland.

At Leith Links, Mr Alexander Goodlet, late of the Customs.

- Mr William Scott, jun. leather-merchant, Glasgow.

1824. Jan. 1. At Edinburgh, Mr Allan Grant, messenger at arms.

-At Canongate, Edinburgh, Mrs Janet Brodie, wife of Duncan Cowan, Esq.

-Miss Emily Shirriff, second daughter of the late Lieut.-Colonel William Shirriff, of the Madras cavalry.

2. At Irvine, Isabella Lang, third daughter of the Rev. Gilbert Lang, of Largs.

-At Cormiston, Daniel Collyer, Esq.

-At Glasgow, Miss Pagan, of Bogton, aged 81

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-At Eaton Hall, the Hon. Gilbert Grosvenor, the infant son of Lord Belgrave.

At Lochfinehead, Mary M'Naughtan, in the 83d year of her age, and the last in the parish of the ancient family of the M Naughtans of Dundaramh.

3. At Edinburgh, aged 24, Richard Beckwith Craik, younger of Arbigland, Esq. advocate.

-At the vicarage, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Euphemia, the wife of the Rev. William M'Douall, and mother of his nine children, the youngest four months old, in the 33d year of her age.

4. At Glasgow, John Machen, Esq. in the 51st year of his age.

5. At Macduff, James Lyal, Esq. fish-curer, and long eldest Bailie of that burgh.

-At Garden, Arch. Stirling, Esq. of Garden.

At Bath, aged 51, Hugh Campbell, Esq. of Mayfield, in the county of Ayr, late Captain in the 85th regiment.

At Easter Balado, Mrs Antonia Hardie, wife of James Beveridge, Esq. of Easter Balado, in the 72d year of her age.

At Fordel, in Fife, John Smith, aged 97. He had been in the service of the Fordel family, as cook, for seventy years, and actually filled that situation until three years ago.

6. At London, the Lady of John Loch, Esq. -At Park, Robert Govane, Esq. of Drumquhassle, aged 53 years.

-At Glasgow, Miss Rebecca Boyd, youngest daughter of the late Thomas Boyd, Esq. of Kilmarnock, Jamaica.

7. At Aberdeen, John Davidson, of Kebbaty, Esq. in his 74th year.

At Jedburgh, Mrs Haswell, aged 85, spouse of the late Mr Robert Haswell.

-At Luddington House, Surrey, Walter Irvine, Esq. in the 76th year of his age.

-At Leith, Mr John Parker, agent, late of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

-At Devonport, at the house of J. Forbes, Esq. Captain John Hutcheson, 82d regiment.

8. At Dumfries, Robert Jackson, Esq. Comptroller of the Customs at that port, and late proprietor and editor of the Dumfries Journal, in the 52d year of his age.

9. At Brechin, Mrs Smith, aged 74, relict of the late Mr William Smith, West Drums.

Jan. 9. At Leith Walk, Mrs Esther Annetonies, relict of the late Mr William Ker, goldsmith, Edinburgh.

-At Saltcoats, Mr William Wilson, stationer, in the 78th year of his age.

10. At London, the Right Hon. Lady Caroline Pennant.

-At Greenock, Mr Patrick Mories, merchant. -At Rothney, William Gordon, Esq. of Rothney, W. S.

11. Captain William Niven, late surveyor of the
customs at Greenock. By fame he was reputed
the son of that facetious and well-known charac
ter described in Roderick Random under the title
of Strap.

land, the Right Hon. Lord Ventry.
-At Burnham House, county of Kerry, Ire

-At Dalruzian, Thos. Rattray, Esq. aged 82.
At Edinburgh, Alexander Charles, youngest
son of Robert Kerr, of Chatto, Esq.

12. At London, of an apoplectic lit, Joseph Marryatt, Esq. M. P. for Sandwich, and Chairman to the Committee of Lloyd's.

- Mr William Auld, goldsmith, Treasurer to
the Trades' Maiden Hospital, Edinburgh.

-At 41, North Hanover-Street, Edinburgh,
Miss Katharine Fleming.

-At the Manse of Mid Calder, Mary Anne E.
Donaldson, youngest daughter of the deceased
Charles Donaldson, Esq. late of Calcutta.

-At Kettyfield, Roxburghshire, in the 90th
year of his age, Mr David Minto, for about half
a century farmer of Linglie, near Selkirk.

15. At Newhails, near Edinburgh, Lady Home, relict of Vice-Admiral Sir George Home of Blackadder, Bart.

-At Kinsale, the Hon. Governor De Courcey,
brother to the late Lord Kinsale.

-At Largs, Captain Patrick Carnegie, R. N.
who fought under Rodney on the memorable
12th of April 1782. He was buried with military
jesty's sloop of war Nimrod.
honours at Port-Glasgow, on the 17th current, un-
der the direction of Capt. Rochfort, of his Ma-

14. At Glasgow, Jasper Tough, Esq. of Hillhead.
-At Pittenweem, Major John Duddingstone,
late of the 1st battalion Royal Scots.

-In London, John Ross, Esq. Lieut.-Colonel, late of the 28th regiment.

15. At his house, Shandwick Place, Edinburgh, General Francis Dundas, after a long and painful illness, which he supported with the patience of a Christian and the firmness of a soldier. General Dundas was Colonel of the 71st regiment of light infantry, and Governor of Dumbarton Castle.

- At Colchester, John Thomson, Esq. Deputy Commissary-General to the Forces, and late Private Secretary to the Most Noble the GovernorGeneral of India.

-At Leith, Mr John Durie, merchant.

-At Edinburgh, Mrs Davie, of Brotherton, aged 82.

17. In London, Bamber Gascoyne, Esq. aged 68, many years a representative in Parliament for Liverpool.

18. At Ramsgate, Capt. Bowles Mitchell, R. N. in the 74th year of his age. He was the last surviving Officer of those who accompanied Captain Cook on his second voyage round the world.

-At Edinburgh, Millicont Scott, relict of the late Rev. Robert Hutchison, Dalkeith.

20. At Collan, in the county of Louth, the seat of the venerable Lord Oriel, aged 87, the Right Hon. Margaret Viscountess Ferrard, Baroness of Oriel, the Lady of that Nobleman.

-At Edinburgh, James Bisset, Esq. Rear Admiral of the Red.

-At Richmond, James Earl Cornwallis, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and Dean of Durham, in the 81st year of his age. He is succeeded in his title and estates by his only son, James Mann, Viscount Broome, now Earl Cornwallis.

21. At Kelso, Mr Andrew Telfer, bookseller, aged 65 years.

29. In Edinburgh, Henry D. Grant, Esq. second son of the late Francis Grant, of Kilgraston, Esq-Mrs Aitken, wife of Dr John Aitken, surgeon, Edinburgh.

Printed by J. Ruthven & Son, Edinburgh.

THE

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE,

AND

LITERARY MISCELLANY.

MARCH 1824.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SALVATOR ROSA. BY LADY MORGAN.

We have the misfortune, in general, to differ from Lady Morgan so diametrically, in matters moral, political, religious, literary, and philosophical; and we have had occasion to enter, our protest so frequently and so forcibly against her intrepid assurance, and her numberless faults of flippancy and affectation, that we really feel it a relief to be able to lay our hands on any work of her's, with regard to which we can conscientiously hint approval, or hesitate a compliment; and, in truth, we are almost apprehensive, that, under the influence of a feeling so new to us, we may be somewhat tempted to transgress the bounds of a sober eulogium. Our impression, on a hasty perusal of this work, certainly is, that Lady Morgan has produced two of the most amusing octavos we have met with, even in this biographical age, when no one has the least reason to fear, that, like the predecessors of Agamemnon, his merits will be forgotten for want of a chronicle; but then our admission of their amusing character is quite distinct from a conviction of their correctness, or an approbation of their spirit and tendency. The fact is, they owe their interest to a quality too common among biographers,-an enthusiastic and indiscriminating admiration for the subject of the memoir, and a consequent determination to accomplish his apotheosis pro fas et nefas. Salvator was an enemy to things as they were the satirist of Popes, and Princes, and Cardinals, and an actor

VOL. XIV.

in the nine days' revolution of the crack-brained fisherman of Amalfi ; and this, with Lady Morgan, is a passport to immortality. The opinion of his cotemporaries must be controverted,-the statements of his Italian biographers must be disproved by the superior information of an Irish woman of the nineteenth century, his talents must be exaggerated,

his vices palliated and explained away, till the companion of the banditti of the Abbruzzi, purified by the hand of Lady M., steps forth one of "the wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best" of men, that ever was calumniated by political intolerance. Accordingly, in this party-pleading for the political painter,-this oration for Salvator, she seems to have prescribed to herself one simple principle, which she has followed out with the most resolute and persevering assiduity, namely, to receive as proofs of holy writ all which weighs in favour of her client, and to reject, without even the semblance of refutation, every thing which wears aless favourable aspect. We have no objection, in such cases, to allow a man the benefit of a doubt, and are ready to admit, that to some points in Salvator's conduct Lady Morgan has succeeded, fairly and candidly enough, in giving a favourable turn; but, though she states her case sometimes ingeniously, and always warmly and feelingly, we think she has left the question, on the whole, nearly where it was. We never thought Salvator an enfant perdu, as Lady M. assures K k

us he is represented by the ecclesiastical press of Italy; but we are just as far as ever from thinking him an angel. Even in the ex-parte statement of her Ladyship, we see the man of wild passions and mixed motives,-sullying, very often, his best actions by some display of vanity or mortified pride, as he generally redeemed his worst by some infusion of frankness and good feeling; yielding continually to the impulse of the moment, haunted by a feverish eagerness of admiration, seeking it by means which the higher and more commanding spirits of all ages would have disdained to use, and betraying a puerile impatience whenever a sally was lost, or a sarcasm fell harmless; associating alternately with princes and banditti; sighing for solitude amidst society, and flying to society back from solitude; in short, one of those fiery beings in whom the imagination has been developed at the expense of the reasoning faculty, and who revenge themselves on the unfortunate bulk of mankind, in whose mental composition these qualities happen to be more equally distributed, by sarcasm and satire, whenever the prerogatives which they arrogate to themselves are disputed, or their dicta listened to with less reverential deference than they are inclined to claim. We admire as much as Lady Morgan the frankness and uncompromising firmness of Salvator. We admire, even while we smile occasionally at his notions of independence; we believe he may have been a warm friend, as we doubt not he was a bitter enemy; we think he was, without question, one of the great est historical and landscape-painters that ever lived: but we really cannot persuade ourselves that his manners were the mildest, or his morals the most unexceptionable; we do not think him one of the greatest of the Italian poets, nor a great poet at all; we do not admire his weak attempts to attract admiration by night ly recitations of his satires, prefaced by the hesitation of affected modesty, in one to whom the very meaning of the word was unknown; and we do not believe that he courted the society of banditti solely with the view of enabling him to paint more forcibly scenes of outrage and blood,

and to give verisimilitude to portraits of ruffians and robber-captains.

All this we think just remains where it was; and if Lady Morgan, despite of these follies and faults, really believes Salvator Rosa to be the paragon of excellence which she represents him in her biography, we suspect she monopolizes the opinion. We are in nowise anxious, however, to dispute the point with her more minutely, conceiving that the discussion could not really be more important to the public at the present day, than the celebrated debate between Don Quixote and Cardenio in the Sierra Morena, touching the nature of the connection between Queen Madasima and Elisabat the surgeon. It is enough for our purpose that she has advocated her cause well and warmly, and has detailed the incidents in the life of Salvator with so much vivacity and spirit,-connecting and harmonising them by remarks often appropriate, and sometimes eloquent and ingenious, as to have rendered the life of Salvator one of the most readable of modern biographies.

Ön the summit, on a beautiful hill, at the base of the rock of St. Elmo, at Naples, stands the little village of Renella; and in the old dilapidated casaccia of some former lord of the district, lived Vito Antonio Rosa, land-measurer and architect, the father of Salvator. His wife, Giulia, was the descendant of a family of artists, and his brother-in-law, Paolo Grecco, was starving, in the midst of his pots and palettes, in the Strada Seggio del Nido. Old Rosa and his wife had seen enough of the miseries of painting to determine that that should not be the profession of their son, whom they accordingly devoted to the Church, bestowing on him the propitious name of Salvator, over the possessor of which, it appears, the devil has no power. Nature seemed, however, determined, from the first, to overturn the plans of Antonio Rosa, for the young Salvator, from his earliest years, evinced a restlessness of disposition that augured ill for his church-promotion, and his religious appellation sunk into the diminutive of Salvatoriello. Even in childhood he began to display his vocation to the Arts, by his attempts

at music, and by covering every scrap of paper he could find with architecture and picturesque scenery. As he grew up, he used to wander among the rocks and caves of Baiæ, or the wastes of the Solfaterra, filling his mind with the beauties and the terrors of Nature, and sketching, in the neighbourhood of Pausilippo and Vesuvius, her magnificent combinations. Sometimes he converted the white walls of the old casaccia into a panorama, by the assistance of burned sticks; and once, during his daily visits to the Convent of Certosa, passing along the cloisters, he unthinkingly applied his sticks to those sacred walls, for whose decoration Lanfranc and Domenichino were contending, and underwent the ceremony of flagellation on the spot. This incident determined his parents to attempt to procure his admission into one of the monastic seminaries in Naples, and the College of the Congregazione Somasca was chosen for his abode. It was in this monastic residence, and at this tranquil period of life, that Salvator is supposed to have acquired that classical knowledge, and taste for the works of the ancients, by which he was distinguished; but the study of the philosophy of the schools, which succeeded the course of classical instruction, was unsuit ed to the ardent imagination of the painter. "Giunse," says one of his biographers, "ai principj della logica ove fermossi ;" and, after many vain attempts, on the part of the Fathers, and a determined resistance on that of Salvator, he was dismissed as incurable.

Returned to his paternal roof, the wayward Salvator devoted himself, heart and soul, to the study of music, as a science, and, uniting the most perfect knowledge of the theory to grace and execution in the practice, he became one of the most popular serenaders in Naples, where music was, at that time, cultivated beyond the other Arts, and where the streets resounded, night and day, to the canzoni of Cambio Donato and the Prince of Venusa. The finishing stroke, however, was about to be given to the plans of his father, by his acquaintance with Francesco Francanzani, a Neapolitan painter, who had married his elder sister.

Francanzani was turbulent and conceited, but clever and warm-hearted; and Salvator, while he stood by his side in his stanza, or work-room, and watched the progress of his pictures, felt his old inclination revive, and soon abandoned himself, without restraint, to its indulgence. He deserted the work-room for the fields; departing with the dawn, with his portfolio and palette, and returning, at evening, from his rambles among the rocks, and rivers, and wildernesses, with his mind and his paper filled with visions of beauty and wildness. Francanzani, who used to ransack the contents of his portfolio on these occasions, would pat him on the head, as he looked at the broad, bold sketches of his brother-in-law; and, from his early plaudits, Salvator probably received the last impulse that directed him into the path in which he was destined to become so unrivalled.

With that resolute originality which distinguished every action of his life, Salvator determined to study no master but Nature. He set out, on a tour, through the wildest and most magnificent districts of Italy, painting among the mountains of Apulia and Calabria, or in the savage valleys near the base of Mount Sarchio, or wandering among the ruins of Beneventum and Eclano, the grottoes of Palignano, and the caves of Otranto,-tracing the shores of the Adriatic, and studying in the ruined temples of Pæstum. It was during these wanderings that his intercourse took place with the banditti of the Abbruzzi whom Lady Morgan, anxious to vindicate or excuse this strange step of her hero, represents as very superior, in all points, to their modern predecessors.

The conflicts of unregulated interests, and of lawless but powerful volitions,➡→→ the stern elevation of character, reckless

of all human suffering, beyond all social relations, the play of strong antipathies, and operation of strong instincts,-the fierce rebuff of passions, wild as the ele ments among which they were nurtured, -the anatomy of the mixed nature of man, laid bare, and stripped of all disguise, were subjects of ennobling study to one who saw all things as a philosopher and a poet-one who was prone to trace, throughout the endless varieties of exter

nal forms, the deep-seated feelings that produced and governed their expression. In the fierce guerrilla warfare of the Abbruzzi, between the Spanish and German troops and the mountain-bands, may be traced the leading character of that vast and wondrous battle-piece * which is destined to be the study of successive generations of artists; and to the necessities of the outlaw's life we are indebted for many of those singular groupings and views of violence and danger, which form the subjects, not only of the pencil, but of the graver, of Salvator Rosa.

There is one engraving which, though evidently done à colpo di pennello, seems so plainly to tell the story of the wandering artist's captivity, that it may, as an historic fact, if not as a chef-d'œuvre of the art, merit a particular description. In the midst of rocky scenery appears a group of banditti, armed at all points, and with all sorts of arms. They are lying, in careless attitudes, but with fierce watchfulness, round a youthful prisoner, who forms the foreground figure, and is seated on a rock, with languid limbs hanging over the precipice which may be supposed to yawn beneath. It is impossible to describe the despair depicted in this figure it is marked in his position, in the droop of his head, which his nerveless arms seem with difficulty to support, and in the little that may be seen of his face, over which, from his recumbent attitude, his hair falls in luxuriant profu sion (and the singular head and tresses of Salvator are never to be mistaken). All

is alike destitute of energy and of hope, which the fierce beings grouped around the captive seem, in some sentence recently pronounced, to have banished for ever. Yet one there is who watches over the fate of the young victim: a woman stands immediately behind him. Her hand stretched out, its forefinger resting on his head, marks him the subject of a discourse which she addresses to the listening bandits. Her figure, which is erect, is composed of those bold straight lines, which in art and nature constitute the grand. Even the fantastic cap or turban, from which her long dishevelled hair has escaped, has no curve of grace; and her drapery partakes of the same rigid forms. Her countenance is full of stern melancholy-the natural character of one whose feelings and habits are at variance, whose strong passions may have flung her out of the pale of society, but whose feminine sympathies still remain unchanged. She is artfully pleading for the life of the youth, by contemp

tuously noting his insignificance. But she commands while she soothes. She is evidently the mistress, or the wife of the Chief, in whose absence an act of vulgar violence may be meditated. The youth's life is saved; for that cause rarely fails to which a woman brings the omnipotence of her feelings.

The time spent by Salvator among these outlaws has never been verified; but it is probable, and indeed evident, that he remained sufficiently long to fill both his imagination and his memory with accumulated combinations of the magnificent and the terrible. It is not impossible that the adventurous artist owed the security in which he pursued the interests of his art, in such abodes of violence and danger, to the exertion of talents both musical and poetical, not less calculated to amuse his ferocious hosts by the midnight fires of their earthembosomed dens, than to captivate the voluptuous auditory of a Neapolitan saloon. One almost sees the melancholy severity of the well-pictured female who saved his life, softening into feminine emotion as she listens to lays composed for the syrens of the Chiaja, which she once may herself have merited and received; while the stern features of her bandit lover now relax into pleased attention at some humorous improvviso which recalls his native Naples, now contract into looks of dark distrust as he watches the mellowed expression of those black bright eyes, whose wildness never before softened to other accents than his own. The mountain auditory of the lyrist of Renella were, indeed, banditti, the outcasts of society; but they were Italians; and original conformation may have triumphed over habits little favourable to the arts, or the tastes they engender.

How or when the bandit painter returned to Naples is not known; but he immediately commenced his career as a painter, under circumstances the most discouraging,— painting for the Jews of the Ghetto, compelled to labour for a miserable pittance, and denying himself the recreation of poetry and music. Even in these early works, the characteristics of his great productions are said to have been visible. All was vast and magnificent. His rocks, trees, clouds, and figures-all were expressive and characteristic; and that energy which characterised the man,

Now in the Musée, at Paris.

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