Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 011.djvu/248
sonal vanity! Such it certainly is, for I thought my own head' would' make a very laudable addition to the collection, and I daresay there are very few people who would be of the same opinion.§ =) But there were some unreproachable with these faults, possessed, indeed, of great interest and beauty: There were young and lovely heads, to which youth and loveliness were evidently natural—heads of manliness and expression, where it was clear they were not assumed. But what interested me most was, meeting the portraits of features. which had become familiar through their possessors' celebrity: Of these there were many, some favourite busts, some recopied for sale: Of Napoleon, of course, the image met you at every turn, that fine head so fitted for sculpture by the beauty and strong expression both of 'its general contour and its minuter forms. There were several models of this head of various sizes, and different characteristics; some with the wreathed crown, some with the small three-cornered hat which he commonly wore, some without any covering. I thought most of them were extremely successful, both in likeness and expression. Of Fox, too, the busts were in great number; and Bartolini told me that there was more demand for it than almost for any head that he had ever modelled. Even the at'achés to our Embassy had them! Tell this not in Gath, that is; in Downing-street—what would they say there? or rather what would they have said there two years ago? aobeigl yeeisees These, of course, were familiar to me; but there was one ee manifold as its copies are, and well hots as it is in England, I did not at first recognize. This was a bust of Lord Byron, taken about eighteen months ago. He must be greatly changed sineé he left England, for Bartolini said the bust was a very happy likeness. 'The face is quite altered in contour, and thence partly in expression, from what 'it formerly was. It is greatly fallen away in the lower part, which tends also to throw the nose more prominently+forward:» There are: lines also of mingled sadness and aigreur, formed: about the mouth, which one might so well expect to be there!) bo was cece See those mournful and most beautiful stanzas beginning » |) 9) ""No more, no more, oh! never more on me veg el ithe The freshness of the heart shall fall like dew 1"? 'youlstiom The face spoke that consciousness of the vanity, the "uni ce . great gifts, and mental acquirements and fame, which cons t haps, the bitterest of all reflections. 'There' were other chang The hair which used to be curled close to the head, now floy and graceful curls after the old Italian fashion, which, in my estee least, is the addition of a beauty. But I am told that he afterwe had again cut itshort. It had grown grey, 'al mit « But now, at thirty years, myhairisgrey—.——ss—i(i'—~S I wonder what it yal be like at frig cs babi ene 2
andyhe therefore did not like it to be long. In speaking Fe hairs, he said Je les ai coupé pour ne plus les conter. 14: feeds Near his bust stood that of the Contessa Y. . Inth _ wuch disappointed, for I had.thought always highly of | ideas. of female beauty, not only from his poems, - but. als +d some hints | dropped here and there in his notes, But. in| his | there was little either of beauty or expression. The face is | round in the upper part and the cheek-bones, and then slopes