THE accomplished writer, whose work, under the above title, has just issued from the press, might have spared herself the pains of replying by anticipation to the question, why she should have selected Salvator Rosa as the subject of her first essay in Biographical writing? For if, in place of the above enquiry, it had been asked-"Supposing Lady Morgan to try her versatile hand on biography, who, of all the distinguished dead that have hitherto remained without their due meed of posthumous attention, is she likely to fix upon ?" all who have been able to take an unprejudiced view of her previous writings, and through them of her peculiar turn of thought and sentiment, would probably have replied with one accord,-" Who but Salvator Rosa?" Who but he -who was, by turns, the boyish serenader of the beauties of Naples ; the youthful wanderer among the wild heights of the Abruzzi, and the captive and afterwards the companion of their banditti; the poor, but proud and unbending artist, who would study in no school but that of Nature, and submit to no patronage but that of a whole people; the graceful and accomplished lover, who courted his mistresses in his own poetry set to his own music-each of which was unrivalled in its day; the wild, witty, and enthusiastic Improvvisatore-who dared to utter, into the very ears of the great, truths which others dared scarcely to think; the sensitive and deep-thoughted philosopher, who distanced the age in which he lived, and meditated on what might be till he could scarcely endure what was; the dark and gloomy conspirator of the Torrione del Carmine, and the active champion of Liberty against Oppression as a leader in the Compagna della Morte, under that most extraordinary of all revolutionary chiefs, Masaniello, the fisherman of Amalfi; the bold, bitter, and uncompromising satirist of all the vices and corruptions of his debased but still beloved country;—he who was all these and much more; and who added to and blended with them all (at least during the latter years of his life) the character of incomparably the most original, and upon the whole the most popular and successful artist of the times in which he lived; this too in times when high art was supreme over all secular things, and high artists were permitted to hold a rank next to that which man confers upon himself— when the nobility of Nature was considered as second only to that of

name!

In fact, it must be admitted that Lady Morgan has chosen her subject most happily, both with reference to its own peculiar susceptibility of amusing and instructive developement, and to the kind of talents and acquirements which she brings to the task. It remains to be seen in what manner she has availed herself of these double advantages. But before entering into this examination, perhaps we can scarcely do the reader a more acceptable service, than by striking off a brief and rapid sketch of the Life which Lady Morgan has undertaken to develope in all its detail, and set forth to the world in all its singular variety of shades and colours. The materials we shall use for this purpose are

chiefly those which she has here placed before us; and for the sake at once of variety, and to enable the reader to judge for himself as to the mere style in which she has conducted her enquiry, we shall occasionally use extracts from her work; and the rather as it can scarcely as yet be in the hands of any of our readers.

On one of the loveliest of all the lovely sites that overlook the Bay of Naples, in the little village of Renella, was born, in the latter end of the year 1615, Salvatore Rosa-so called, probably, partly because it was the fixed intention of his pious parents to devote their son to the church; and partly because the name of Salvatore, when bestowed at the baptismal font, was considered, in the superstitions of the time and country, as something like a pass-word to eternal happiness. The little Salvatore, however, so far from exhibiting any early symptoms of saintship, soon became the scape-grace of the village; and his saving name was speedily spoiled by the expressive diminutive of ello-Salvatoriello. Still, however, his worthy and respectable, but indigent parents, were inflexible in their determination of having their only son brought up for the priesthood; and accordingly at a very early age he was placed under the discipline of the holy fathers who conducted a college at Naples, called that of the Congregazione Somasca. But even previously to this early period, Salvator had shewn unequivocal signs that his destiny was not to be controled by the will of others, whatever it might be by his own; and he had already evinced, to those who could observe them, tolerably clear indications of the point to which his genius tended. For he was in the constant habit of playing truant from his imposed studies, to wander alone among the wild and sublime scenery in the neighbourhood of his native village; and when imprisoned as a punishment for his imputed fault, he used to cover the walls of the chamber in which he was confined with rude repetitions of the various objects which had attracted his attention in his rambles— done with pieces of burnt stick which he prepared for the purpose. Nothing moved, however, by these natural indications of the line in which their son's genius destined him to move-but on the contrary, greatly scandalized at the bare possibility of his becoming an artist— they lost no time in hurrying him away to the College in which they had with some difficulty procured him admission. The following imaginary picture, of the father and son departing from their village-home for the college at Naples, may be offered as a very pleasing and characteristic specimen of the manner in which Lady Morgan treats her subject.

"In an age and country so marked in all their forms and modes by the picturesque, this departure for the College must have been a scene to paint rather than to describe. The mind's-eye glancing back to its graphic details, beholds the ardent boy, with his singular but beautiful countenance, and light and flexile figure, both models in a maturer age, issuing forth from the old portal of the Casaccia to attend his father to Naples. He is habited in the fantastic costume of the Neapolitan youth of that day; a doublet and hose, and short mantillo, with a little velvet cap, worn perhaps even then with an air galliard, and a due attention to those black tresses so conspicuous in all his portraits for their beauty and luxuriance. Vito Antonio, on the contrary, at once to shew his loyalty and decayed gentility, affects the fashion of the reigning court mode. For then, as now all that looked Italian

*His father, Vito Antonio Rosa, was an architect and land-surveyor, and occupied the largest house, the Casaccia, of the village.

was deemed suspicious; and the old casacca di cuojo of Vito, in spite of the rudeness of its material, was doubtless made "Spanish-wise," with

'Snip and nip, and cut and slish, and slash!'

The father and son, as they brush through the vine tendrils that festoon the portico, are followed beyond its sill by Madonna Giulia and the weeping sisters. The cornicello is bestowed, to avert an evil eye; and then another and a last 'Addio, Carino,' is given, and the father and son descend the hill of Renella, towards Strada Infrascata ;-the one, with a bounding step, all emotion; the other, with a measured pace, all wisdom, pouring forth on the unattending ear of his pre-occupied companion such wise saws and modern instances' as might be deemed serviceable to him who for the first time leaves that

'Home where small experience grows.'

In their descent, what a scene developed itself to eyes that saw beauty in Nature under all its aspects,

6

'Hill and dale,

Forest and field, and flood, temples and towers,'

too soon to be exchanged for the weary round of cloistered walls! The castellated chimneys of the old Casaccia might still be seen through the dark pines. The figure of Madonna Giulia might still be distinguished by the snow-white headdress, which, like the bodkins that tressed her daughters' locks, sparkled in the sunshine. As she watches the descent of her son, she offers prayers to the Virgin that he might become, for sanctity and learning, 'Il miracolo del suo secolo.' Another turn, and the scene shifts. The hum of Naples, the most noisy city in Europe, ascends like the murmuring of Vesuvius on the eve of an explosion. The precipitous declivities, covered with pines and chesnut-woods, succeed slopes festooned with trailing vines, throwing their tendrils round every object that could catch or sustain them. There they obscure, and there they reveal, the dark chasm, shagged with horrid thorn,' and riven in the rocky soil by some volcanic convulsion; while fanciful edifices of many terraces, fragments of antique ruins, morsels of friezes and columns, hillocks of tufo, brown and bare, rise among hanging gardens and groves; and chapels, belfries, shrines, and altars gleam on every side, till the noble Strada Toledo is reached, and its palaces exclude the magic scene, supplanting it by one scarcely less picturesque. Such was the scenery of the Vomiro in the beginning of the 17th century; and such it is now. From this magnificent and spacious quarter of the city of Naples, the two Rosas proceeded to the dark and gloomy part of the Citta Vecchia. The portals of the Congregazione Somasca were but too soon reached; the bell is rung, and is answered by a lay-brother; a parental benediction is given, as it is received, with tearful eyes; and the gates of the monastic prison are gratingly closed upon one of the freest spirits that ever submitted to the moral degradation and physical restraint inflicted, in all such seminaries, on youth and nature.'

Here, in this monastic solitude,-a solitude the more galling to the free and errant spirit of the young Salvator, from its being within sight and hearing of all the hurry and hum of a city like Naples, he must have passed several years of his early youth; but the deficiency of dates which is so conspicuous in all his biographers, including the one more immediately before us-prevents us from determining how long. Certain it is, however, that his confinement here was attended by the most beneficial effects on his after-pursuits; since it impelled and enabled him to collect that very considerable store of classical knowledge which was so available to him as a direct source of appeal and illustration, while it probably nourished and confirmed that enthusiastic disposition which led to all the most interesting events of his life. The time at length arrived, however, when the rules of the Society in which he was enrolled, compelled him to abandon the above path of

study-which was well suited to his genius and temperament-for one which was directly averse to both. He was called upon at once to divorce himself from the wondrous truths of the historians of his native country, and the beautiful fictions of her poets, and to devote his whole thoughts and studies to the dry logic and the spurious philosophy of the schools. The consequences were natural enough; and not a little fortunate for others, whatever they may have been for himself. He refused to tread in the appointed steps-was expelled the college-and returned once more to his parents, as poor, and no less wild and romantic than he had left them.

It so happened that, at the period of Salvator's happy escape from the drudgery of metaphysics, music was the ruling passion of the Neapolitan people, and every thing but love gave way before it. What, then, could the sensitive and enthusiastic youth of sixteen, just emancipated from the thraldom of a cloister, be expected to do, but throw himself freely into the arms of these two sister deities? And what could he do better?—At all events, he did so; and presently became one of the most successful serenaders and accomplished musicians of the day, both as a composer and a performer. In addition to which he is understood to have furnished music, even at this early period, with some of the most pleasing songs and lyrical pieces, which the language of his day could boast. His genius, however, was of too strong and peremptory a character, to admit of his trifling much of his time away in delights of this kind. When he was between seventeen and eighteen years of age, his sister married a young painter of some celebrity, named Francesco Francanzani; and being compelled, at this time, by the continued indigence of his parents, to choose a profession for himself, he at once fixed on painting-for which his old passion returned, as soon as he began to frequent the study of his new brother-in-law. It appears that the latter, observing evident signs of talent and power in all that Salvator attempted in his new pursuit, would willingly have afforded him every instruction in the study of it. But, luckily for Art and for the world, the young aspirant was too impatient of restraint to follow any precise rules, and too conscious of innate power to abide by the practice of any particular school. Nature was the only model that he would consent to study and imitate, and his own perceptions of her qualities and attributes were the only criterions by which he would permit his performances to be measured and judged. Accordingly, the course which he now adopted was perfectly untried, and the results to which it led were no less striking than they were new and original. It was the fashion of the day for every student in painting to commence, or rather to prepare himself for, his public career, by making a professional tour through the principal Italian cities; studying and practising by turns the various styles then in vogue, and finally fixing on that which might seem best adapted to his views and talents. Salvator, too, commenced his career by making a professional tour; but it was one of a very different kind from the above, and its consequences were no less so. He sought out as models the different works of Nature alone; and it was her different manners only that he thought worthy of study and imitation. In short, he set out on a desultory and

unpremeditated pilgrimage, among the rude mountains and natural fastnesses of Calabria, and the still less cultivated and accessible heights of the Abruzzi-passing in his way thither, and on his return, through all the wild, romantic, and lovely scenery, that lay in the more immediate neighbourhood of his native village; and every where he collected and placed on record (either on paper, or in his almost equally retentive memory) all that struck him as calculated to serve his after-purposes. It was in this singular tour, too, that he had a rare opportunity of cultivating that taste for the wild and romantic in manners and habits, as well as in scenery, which never quitted him in after-life. It is an unquestionable fact, that he passed a very considerable time among a banditti that inhabited the heights of the Abruzzi; and it seems almost equally certain, that his stay among them was voluntary—at least after a time, for in no part of his life do we learn any thing to contradict the fact, even from his friends-though his numerous enemies and calumniators made it a perpetual subject of charge against him. That this romantic tour, and the adventures which he met with in the course of it, produced a striking effect both on the moral and physical character of his style, can scarcely be doubted; and it is to be feared that the somewhat savage and intractable disposition which never quitted him afterwards, even in the height of his prosperity, was at least called into action, if not created, by the same circumstances. At all events, on his return to Naples, nothing-not even the absolute want and misery of his family, which was now left, by his father's death, entirely dependent on him-could induce him to submit to the usual means of obtaining employment in his art. The state of patronage in Naples at that time was such, that if Salvator had chosen to enrol himself in either of the schools that were then dividing the favours of the church and the public, his great and original talents would have procured him instant notice and distinction. But his haughty and unyielding spirit would truckle to no means of obtaining fame and favour, but the direct one of deserving it; and the consequence was, that he remained entirely unknown and unemployed, except by the little dealers of the market-place, while artists of infinitely inferior talents were engaged in ornamenting the palaces of princes and the altars of the church. At last, however, the celebrated Lanfranco-who was just arrived in Naples on an engagement to ornament the cupola of the Chiesa del Gesu-happened to see one of Salvator's historical landscapes, at the door of a little shop where it was hanging for sale,-which he not only purchased, but after making fruitless enquiries concerning Salvatoriello, the artist whose name it bore, gave orders to his numerous pupils to collect for him all the works they could meet with bearing the same signature. This fact presently came to the knowledge of the delighted artist; and it was the first foundation of his still tardy, but from this time progressing fortunes. This happened at about his nineteenth year. In his twentieth he repaired to Rome; but not meeting the encouragement he had expected, and his health also suffering from the mal-aria, he again sought employment in his native country; but was soon afterwards induced to accept of an asylum, for such it was, in the palace of the Cardinal Brancaccia; for whom he painted a loggia and an altar-piece: the first great works he had attempted. Soon, however, disgusted with what he could not help considering as