If ye've obeyed your master well, On this dark errand Fridolin is despatched; and the fourth plate represents him taking the orders of his mistress before setting out. The cradle groupe in this design is pleasingly disposed; the nurse adjusting the drapery is graceful and natural. The countess recommends him to enter a church which stands on his route, and to offer up a prayer for her sick child. The next subject is the interior of the sacred edifice, with the priest at mass, and the young page doing the duty of acolyte. Retzsch excels in church interiors, and this is very good, though not equal to that in Faust, with its characteristic decorations and its Albert Durer groupes. The sixth plate is Retzsch's master-piece. The page's pious delay has saved him. Eager to ascertain the success of his machinations, the villain of the tale in the mean time visits the forge, and being the first to ask the fatal question, is instantly seized by the workmen and forced into the furnace. Nothing can be finer than this groupe. The overpowering strength with which the brawny ruffians master every limb and every effort of the struggling wretch, is admirably expressed, while the various attitudes and countenances of the standers-by are in perfect keeping with the subject. In the next scene Fridolin arrives, and the savage glee with which the actors in the preceding point to the fearful evidences of their triumph, is forcibly delineated. The last design exhibits the baron introducing to his wife the unharmed page. Great, however, as are the excellences of this series, and expressively as the story may be told, there are some obvious defects which may also be traced, more or less distinctly, through the other works of the same artist. His female countenances are too prevalently insipid, and the same defect frequently extends itself to his young men and his heroes. Schiller's Fight with the Dragon', as our readers are probably aware, a poetic version of the legend which assigns this knight of the order of St. John of Jerusalem, the victory over an enormous monster, of which the original description answers more to the griffin than to the dragon. The same general criticism will apply to this as to the former series. The story is most distinctly told; the warrior is, in two or three instances, a noble figure; in others, he is of a more commonplace character: his drapery and attitude when leaning over a rocky mound, to make himself familiar with the structure of the dragon sleeping in his den, are both natural and spirited in a very high degree. The armour-smith's forge and workshop where the false dragon is in process of construction; the castle-yard where the knight trains his horse and dogs to the strange conflict; and the village-scene where he first hears of the monster's ravages, are all excellently compassed. His dragon we cannot say that we much admire : it has neither grace nor dignity, though it is sufficiently ugly, and quite as good as the average of such inventions. He has, however, only two paws, and is a mere reptile, whereas the original legend gives him four effective claws, and two auxiliary wings, wherewith he made a wondrous flapping as he rushed along. The two council-scenes, where the grand-master first expels the good knight from the order, and then restores him, are full of incident: the repetition of the same figures in the same places, but with the altered attitude and expression suited to the change of circumstances, has a powerful effect of verisimilitude. The outlines to Schiller's lively effusion-Pegasus im Jocheare full of spirit. The bearing of the noble animal under the successive stages of his degradation, is boldly and expressively marked. In the collar, the shafts, the plough, wing-tied or free, even in the lowest depths', amid the filth and foul tenantry of a cow-house, the fire of his eye is not quenched, nor do his indignant struggles for freedom cease. The beautiful and beautifully illustrated Song of the Bell', demands from us a sacrifice of space which we are unable to afford. Our article has already grown upon our hands beyond anticipation, and we have matter before us that will not be overlooked. The original is one of those compositions in which Schiller excelled, blending powerful description with emphatic application; he passes through the vicissitudes of domestic and social life, in singular but most skilfully managed accompaniment to the successive processes of bell-casting. Into the deep moral pathos which pervades this noble poem, Retzsch has, in a kindred spirit, as deeply entered; and if any painter should need a lesson in the art of identifying himself with his author, we cannot give him better advice, than in the recommendation to study together these designs and their original. Successful, however, as Retzsch has been, while illustrating the great poets of his own country, and popular as may be his recent efforts to give express and visible form to the magical combinations of one incomparably greater, we shall not attempt to conceal or modify our opinion, that, in the attempt to grapple with the strength of Shakspeare, he has fairly broken down. Before the majesty of that unrivalled intellect, his genius is rebuked. He displays infinite skill in his scenic management, in the disposition of his groupes, and occasionally in the conception and discrimination of character, but he seems hardly ever to get below the mere surface: he is like a river navigator, feeling for the bottom with a boat-hook, rather than a venturous seaman heaving the deep-sea-line in the broad ocean. He can master the fantastic diablerie of Goëthe, or adapt himself to the vigorous VOL. XIV.-N.S. H simplicity and material sublime' of Schiller, but he is foiled by the intensity and universality of Shakspeare, 6 Retzsch has hitherto illustrated only two of the great master's works; Hamlet and Macbeth. The first is, in our opinion, decidedly the best; it presents, on the whole, an interesting series of sketches, with much of vigour and of beauty, drawing freely on the rich resources of art, and, though without ever rising into its higher regions, exhibiting fairly what it is capable of effecting in the hands of a skilful artist. The characters best understood are those of the Queen and Polonius. Perhaps the former has too little of the glory of regality' about her; she is somewhat too much of the mere matron, and not enough of the high-born dame, but her characteristic expression is admirably seized and preserved. Retzsch felt that he had not a Lady Macbeth under his pencil, but a weak, misguided woman, amiable amid her frailties, and capable of better feelings, and he has kept throughout to this pervading element. In the closet-scene, her horror at the catastrophe of poor Polonius, so mortally given to eavesdropping, and so ignominiously spitted as a rat behind the arras, is well discriminated from the awe-struck anxiety with which she watches Hamlet's countenance at the entrance of his father's ghost. Polonius is expressively rendered as a mean-looking, prying, bustling personage, but rather too palpably deficient in gentlemanly aspect and bearing for so courtly an office as that of lord-chamberlain. The ghost is but an insipid sort of apparition, with nothing spirit-like about him, excepting attenuation of outline, and an indication of misty transparency by the faint marking of objects which a body perfectly opake would entirely intercept. No majesty of port, no loftiness of aspect, none of the fiery sweep or commanding energy of movement and attitude which give such striking effect to Fuseli's wild and original, but very unshakspearian ghost, distinguish that unearthly vision as called up by Retzsch. Hamlet himself will hardly pass for a successful personification. 'He's fat and scant of breath-more fat than beseems a ghostseer and a prince. His physiognomy lacks significance; it is neither sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,' nor marked with the loftier lines of intellect and feeling. In his general and more quiet movements, he is graceful enough, but his action in the more stirring scenes is languid and ineffective: the fencing match is strangely wanting in energy. Ophelia is a fair representation of the love-sick damsel: if she does not come conspicuously forward, she at least groupes well with more expressive figures. Laertes shews well in his traveller's dress, but he retains it too long; we find him, amid all the various circumstances of his appearance, still in his journeying habiliments, and he fights the sword-play with Hamlet, in boots and spurs. This may seem small criticism, but it is strictly applicable to Retzsch, much of whose attraction depends upon the dexterous management of his accessories, and who is, to do him justice, usually point-device in these matters. In fact, the good points of this work are, with the exceptions we have stated, mainly beauties of detail, and a highly successful handling of subordinate characters. In the most complicated groupes the business is effectively carrying on, while, amid the general movement, individual character is never sacrificed. In the first scene, where the usurper pours the poison upon his sleeping brother, a striking, if not quite legitimate effect is produced by representing all the details of the picture as wakened into preternatural life by that fearful violation of Nature's most sacred law. The unveiled eye of the statue of justice; the spider descending by a long-spun thread upon the butterfly amid the flowers; the grotesque head on the door-post eyeing the murderer askance these things may not be strictly defensible in the appeal to high and severe principle, but they are wonderfully impressive. We have already intimated our preference of Retzsch's Hamlet to his Macbeth. In the latter, the hero himself seems but inadequately conceived; and this primary failure is but imperfectly retrieved by success in other instances. We are aware how difficult it is to give distinct expression to the subtile inflections of character as touched by Shakspeare; but we cannot even say that the first bold and indefinite sketch is adequately given by Retzsch. The Scottish chief, brave, able, and ambitious, of high military bearing, dignified, yet courteous in demeanour, is made, in these Outlines, to enact the part of a melo dramatic hero, striding, starting, staring in the most approved attitudes of stage prescription. His posture and the disposition of his drapery in the dagger-scene are affectedly theatrical; and in the chamber, while sternly grappling with the dying king, Kis hair stands systematically erect around his scared countenance, like the horrent snakes of Medusa's head, or the sun's gilt rays on a sign-board. His kingly figure in the closing exhibitions is better, and the last fight is full of spirit and energy, though we do not quite understand the spectrology of the picture: indeed, the immaterialism of Retzsch does not seem in these sketches to be particularly good; the bawling goblins, whether lares, larvæ, or lemures, in the assassination scene, are but an awkward attempt to give bodily shape to sounds and sensations. The effort may be courageous, and the execution ingenious, but the mysterious and the appalling have melted away in the process. Neither has Retzsch succeeded, to our mind, in his portraiture of Macbeth's imperious dame. She is represented as a welldraped, lady-like sort of dame, somewhat insipid in countenance, and neither in action nor in expression exhibiting any of that de cided and commanding character so fearfully brought out in the original. In truth, the artist seems to have shrunk from a resolute encounter with this difficult part of his subject, and to have passed by some of the most interesting situations, and best adapted for the crayon: those, for instance, where Lady Macbeth gives to her husband the first dark suggestion of her bloody purpose- and when goes hence?' and where she taunts him with his irresolution-infirm of purpose!' He has, indeed, attempted the sleep-walking scene, but altogether without success: the side view of a figure with staring eye, flowing drapery, unbound hair, and an attitude which is neither striding, sliding, nor starting, but an unmeaning compound of all three, gives no idea of that terrible personification of dream-haunted guilt. The witches are more like Thessalian sage than the hellbought beldames of Scottish sorcery. They have been at pains with their toilet, and their garments float in classic style, mocking the air with idle state,' or hang in monumental folds. They are 'draped and attitudinized for effect; the enchantresses of a ballet, not the foul and midnight hags' of Shakspeare. Some of their appendages, however, are ably managed: in the incantation scene, the general disturbance among the hideous shapes and crawling things, the gnomes and imps of Hecate's cave, at the intrusion of Macbeth, is skilfully worked up the cat on the witch's shoulder is in a towering passion. Hecate herself is a failure, an unsuccessful attempt to blend the classical and the romantic. The assassination of Banquo is a sort of companion to the furnace business in Fridolin. The attitude and action of the ruffian who masters Banquo's sword-arm are excellent, and scarcely less so that of the murderer who plunges the dagger in the chieftain's breast. In With a mere reference to the recently published, but not particularly interesting Fancies' of this spirited Designer, we pass on to a closing remark or two on some of his peculiarities which have not been specially noticed in the preceding criticisms. his own way, Retzsch is learned: he every now and then exhibits a touch of Durer and Cranach, with an occasional imitation of Spranger and Goltzius, in his skilful adaptations of the garb and grouping of the old German school. The furniture, costume, and domestic habits of the olden time are often introduced with correctness and good effect; and he frequently produces considerable impression by the repetition of a scene either with dif ferent persons, or with the same individuals in varied occupation. His action is, in general, good, though in principle theatrical; and his exhibition of his subject shows, as we have already intimated, his admirable tact in telling a story to the eye. But we must quit a subject which has already occupied a larger space than we |