DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.36582#0050
24
THE DO RE GALLERY.
Rabelais exhibit the same qualities, but in a far lower stage of development. The artist
was then very young; his style was not matured, and he worked cheaply, rapidly, and
somewhat coarsely. Striking, original, and full of promise as the Rabelais sketches were,
they did not reach the level attained some years later in the “ Don Quixote ” series. The
wonderful story of Cervantes has been here realised in all its elements. Its drollery, its
pathos, its grotesqueness, its grandeur, its dramatic characterisation, its romance, its wildness
of scenery, richness of accessories, and quaint union of the chivalrous and the satiric, are
by turns embodied in the numerous wood-cuts with which M. Dore has embellished the
work. The conceptions of the two chief characters are for the most part very good. In
the novel itself, the high-souled but insane nature of the Don is effectively relieved by
the practical good sense, but coarse and somewhat sordid disposition, of Sancho Panza;
and this contrast of two very distinct characters is clearly brought out by the artist.
In a few of the illustrations the figure of Quixote is exaggerated in its excessive length
and tenuity; but the face is generally most felicitous. M. Dore seldom forgets that the Don
is a gentleman and a fine human creature, however far he may have gone astray in the
pursuit of a generous but visionary idea. There is nothing more touching than the
devotion of unselfish natures to impossible schemes of perfection—or what they conceive
to be perfection. Quixotism, with all its failures and mad errors on its head, is one of
the great redeeming facts of the world, because it springs from a profound belief in good,
and a strong desire for natural justice. The “Republic” of Plato, the “Utopia” of Sir
Thomas More, the “Oceana” of Harrington, the modern democracy of F'rench and other
Continental revolutionists, the communism of Fourier and Owen, the Pantisocracy of young
Coleridge and Southey, the commonwealth which good old Gonzalo would have established
on Prospero’s enchanted island, and fifty more such dreams : what are they but so many
forms of Quixotism ?—extravagant, absurd, impossible, mischievous, it may be, when too
hotly pressed, yet with something noble at the heart of them. This idea appears to have
been present to the mind of Cervantes in his development of the character of Don Quixote,
and it has evidently not escaped the perception of M. Dore. Plis knight of La Mancha
is a fine old Spanish hidalgo, distraught with a monomaniacal idea, and identified with all
kinds of ludicrous disasters, yet preserving to the last a certain moral grandeur. The Don
is in fact a madman—in these days we should place him under restraint, after due inquiry
before a commission—and the shadow of his insanity is seen in M. Dore’s representation of
his face. The illustration in which he is shown reading his romances of chivalry, surrounded
by a shadowy crowd of phantom creatures, and another in which he is riding along
a dreary road towards nightfall, with a sky full of visionary and ominous shapes, begotten
of the sunset and the clouds, are in the highest mood of imaginative sympathy. The
views in the Sierra Morena, the long, bright, dusty plains of the Peninsula, and the
softer glimpses of Spanish scenery, are beautiful as specimens of landscape-drawing; and
the architectural subjects, with their fascinating combination of Gothic and Moorish forms,
THE DO RE GALLERY.
Rabelais exhibit the same qualities, but in a far lower stage of development. The artist
was then very young; his style was not matured, and he worked cheaply, rapidly, and
somewhat coarsely. Striking, original, and full of promise as the Rabelais sketches were,
they did not reach the level attained some years later in the “ Don Quixote ” series. The
wonderful story of Cervantes has been here realised in all its elements. Its drollery, its
pathos, its grotesqueness, its grandeur, its dramatic characterisation, its romance, its wildness
of scenery, richness of accessories, and quaint union of the chivalrous and the satiric, are
by turns embodied in the numerous wood-cuts with which M. Dore has embellished the
work. The conceptions of the two chief characters are for the most part very good. In
the novel itself, the high-souled but insane nature of the Don is effectively relieved by
the practical good sense, but coarse and somewhat sordid disposition, of Sancho Panza;
and this contrast of two very distinct characters is clearly brought out by the artist.
In a few of the illustrations the figure of Quixote is exaggerated in its excessive length
and tenuity; but the face is generally most felicitous. M. Dore seldom forgets that the Don
is a gentleman and a fine human creature, however far he may have gone astray in the
pursuit of a generous but visionary idea. There is nothing more touching than the
devotion of unselfish natures to impossible schemes of perfection—or what they conceive
to be perfection. Quixotism, with all its failures and mad errors on its head, is one of
the great redeeming facts of the world, because it springs from a profound belief in good,
and a strong desire for natural justice. The “Republic” of Plato, the “Utopia” of Sir
Thomas More, the “Oceana” of Harrington, the modern democracy of F'rench and other
Continental revolutionists, the communism of Fourier and Owen, the Pantisocracy of young
Coleridge and Southey, the commonwealth which good old Gonzalo would have established
on Prospero’s enchanted island, and fifty more such dreams : what are they but so many
forms of Quixotism ?—extravagant, absurd, impossible, mischievous, it may be, when too
hotly pressed, yet with something noble at the heart of them. This idea appears to have
been present to the mind of Cervantes in his development of the character of Don Quixote,
and it has evidently not escaped the perception of M. Dore. Plis knight of La Mancha
is a fine old Spanish hidalgo, distraught with a monomaniacal idea, and identified with all
kinds of ludicrous disasters, yet preserving to the last a certain moral grandeur. The Don
is in fact a madman—in these days we should place him under restraint, after due inquiry
before a commission—and the shadow of his insanity is seen in M. Dore’s representation of
his face. The illustration in which he is shown reading his romances of chivalry, surrounded
by a shadowy crowd of phantom creatures, and another in which he is riding along
a dreary road towards nightfall, with a sky full of visionary and ominous shapes, begotten
of the sunset and the clouds, are in the highest mood of imaginative sympathy. The
views in the Sierra Morena, the long, bright, dusty plains of the Peninsula, and the
softer glimpses of Spanish scenery, are beautiful as specimens of landscape-drawing; and
the architectural subjects, with their fascinating combination of Gothic and Moorish forms,