Page:Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition, 1868 (IA gri 33125011175656).pdf/44

34 The picture called "Rosalind and Celia" gives us graver and deeper offence. Of the landscape nothing evil shall be said, and nothing good; but the figures cry aloud for remark and reprobation. These women are none of Shakspeare's. Think but in passing of the fresh grace, the laughters as of April, the light delicate daring, the tender and brilliant sweetness of the true "Ganymede;" what is left of all this? She figures here as a fair-faced ballet-girl, with a soul absorbed by the calf of her leg. And this dull, sickly, stolid woman huddling heavily against her is Celia; this is the purest rarest type that Shakspeare could give of heroic and sweet devotion; this is she who alone even among his women could not live but in another's life. And Touchstone—can this sour ape-checked face be the face that Jaques "met i' the forest?" these the lips that rallied Corin and wooed Aubrey? "Bear your body more seemly," Touchstone. And with all this debasement and distortion of Shakspeare's figures, we do not even get by way of amends a well-wrought piece of work; forget if you will the names attached, this is still but an unlovely picture. It seems that Mr. Millais has forgotten how to paint a lady; his women here all smack of the side-scenes or the servants' hall. Admirable for its strong sure power of painting, the "Stella" is, nevertheless, pitiably vacuous. If the sailors at Nelson's tomb appeal somewhat overmuch to popular sentiment of no deep or delicate kind, the picture is yet a noble one and impressive. The faces are full of simple and keen feeling, of tacit and loyal reverence. There is a superfluous ugliness in the two wooden stumps; and perhaps the knack by which the light is arranged so as to strike out severally from each pane of the glass lantern is too like one of those petty feats which are as lime-twigs laid to catch the eyes and tongues of the half-trained sightseers who jostle and saunter through a gallery, pausing now and again to "wonder with a foolish face of praise." The worst of these pictures, painted by a meaner man, would justly win notice and applause; but it is no small thing that a great man should do no greater work than some of this. The clear eye and the strong hand have not forgotten