Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/407

 Intentors as Martyrs to Science.

��391

��Lamartine gives liiin this iiigli but well deserved praise :

"Bernard De Palissy is the most perfect model of the workman. It is bv his example rather than his works that he has exercised an influence upon civilization, and that he has re- served a place to himself among the men who have ennobled humanity. Though he had remained unknown and istlsss, making tiles in his fa- ther's pottery ; though he had never purified, moulded, or enamelled his handful of clay ; though his living groups, his crawling reptiles, his slimy snails, his slii)pery frogs, his lively lizards, and his damp herbs and dripping mosses had never adorned those dishes, ewers, and salt- cellars, — those quaint and elaborate ornaments of the tables and cup- I)oards of the sixteenth ceutur}-, — it is true nothing would have been wanting to the art of Phidias or of Miciiael Angelo, — to the porcelain of Sevres, of China, of Florence, or Japan, — but we should not have had his life for the operative to admire and imi- tate."

Mr. William C. Prime, the best au- thority on " keramics " in this coun- try, gives his opinion about Palissy in a decided way, very different from ti)e ideas expressed in the Sunday- school biography of him. It «*.s diffi- cult to reconcile his ardent piety and his neglect of his family, unless we believe that such an all-conquering ambition amounts to a possession of the whole man, which renders him irresponsible.

Mr. Prime says, — "With the high- est respect for artistic pursuits, and all the admiration of our own time

��for artistic results, we nevertheless owe far more hearty sympathy to the wife and family of Palissy than is commonly expended on liim during this period. He deserved thoroughly whatever of misery he personally en- dured. No reasonable blame can be attached to a wife who regards her- self as ill used by a husband who leaves her and her children to starve while he omits to provide for them, neglecting his trade and proper means of livelihood to pursue a fancy. The success of the pursuit has no bearing on the propriety of it. The achieve- ments of fine art are glorious, but the misery of a wife and children is in no * way compensated by the glory. Very much of sentiment has been wasted on this portion of the career of Palissy, in books designed to teach morality, which would better have been left unwritten. The many o-raves of his little children in this time, six at least, for whom his wife mourned if he did not, are more eloquent than the labors of their father, who neg- lected them for the pursuit of his fa- vorite art project. . . . The re- sult of Palissy's labors was magnifi- cent success. In the sequence the}'^ were of pecuniary benefit to France and to Europe. In our day the re- production of his works, which have had wide sale of late years, have given employment to thousands of laborers, and have introduced his art ideas into innumerable homes. But God forbid that all this should be in any manner a justification of the cost at which he achieved success, — the cost of an injured wife, a broken family, a row of little graves."

Longfellow paid him a glowing tribute :

�� �