Page:Landon in Literary Gazette 1827.pdf/16

 recently completed; the one a group of small figures, the subject, Samson slaying the Philistines; the other, a colossal figure of Milo, the Crotonian athlete, at the moment when, being unable to disengage his hands from the cleft of the tree he was endeavouring to tear asunder, he is devoured by wild beasts. They are both perfectly miraculous. There is no evasion of difficulties, but a daring defiance, and a complete conquest of them. We will not assert that there may not be slight inaccuracies of detail (although the parts are admirably marked); but we are free to declare, that they are such productions as only the most exalted and powerful genius could conceive and execute. His Milo, we are informed, tumbled to pieces three times while he was about it, from his not having money to purchase the materials necessary for its support! He will need support no longer, or England is insensible to the noblest efforts of the human mind.

As something of the history of such a being must be interesting, we shall state the result of our inquiry. In his boyhood Mr. Lough amused himself in modelling the peasantry about him in common clay. The accidental perusal of Gibbon's Decline and Fall gave a classical turn to his mind, and he sought London to improve it. In London, for about two years, his course must have been one of intense study and prodigious labour, which nothing but the most undaunted spirit and irrepressible enthusiasm could have enabled human nature to sustain.

By this notice of him we trust to be the means of putting an end to his privations—of cheering him on his glorious way—of procuring him the support he so pre-eminently deserves—and of seeing him enabled, by the prosecution of his studies in an adequate manner at home and in Italy, to reflect back an honour upon his country and age,—and we shall rejoice in having been the instrument to make his value known and appreciated.