Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 1.djvu/80

Rh than a rhetorical exhibition, we may imagine that he would have selected such subjects, and have treated them precisely in the manner which Barry has done. Admitting some trifling derelictions, he was great in every part of his art which is abstractedly intellectual. The conception of the work on "Human Culture" could only have originated in a mind of gigantic order; nor is the general grandeur of the design more extraordinary than the skill with which so large a mass of components has been bent to the illustration of one particular idea. Nor is it to be inferred that he was deficient in all the essentials of manual performance: though not a great painter, he was certainly a great designer. He was scientifically acquainted with the human figure, and his drawing, if not always graceful, is invariably bold and energetic. In composition, whenever the subject was well chosen, he takes a still higher ground. The picture of "The Victors at Olympia," (his finest production,) is at once, a personification of history, and the vision of a poet. It is a gorgeous assemblage of classical imagery; the whole seems inspired by one spirit, and that, the spirit of ancient Greece. In expression, though seldom intense, he was never inappropriate. The Angelic Guard in the "Final Retribution" may be adduced as an instance of accurate discrimination in this particular. The countenance of the angel who holds the balance of good and evil is pregnant with divine intelligence; and his, who leans over the brink of Tartarus, commiserating the condemned, has always struck us as an image of exquisite pathos and beauty.

Barry's deficiency in executive skill is more extraordinary, since he seems to have had a strong relish, and a keen perception of it, in the works of the old masters. Any one who should have formed an opinion of bis pictures from a previous perusal of his writings, would expect to find in them all the refinements and delicacies of surface and of colour. But this disparity between the faculties of criticism and performance is not peculiar to Barry, and it