BOOKS.

NAVAL MEDALS.*

" The Medal, faithful to its charge of fame, Thro' climes and ages bears each form and name : In one short view subjected to our eye, Gods, Emperors, Heroes, Sages, Beauties, lie."

—(Pope's " Epistle on Medals.")

LORD MILFORD HAvrw has done good service to the nation, to the Navy, to the sculptor's minor arts in low relief in silver, gold, and bronze, and finally to history, to portraiture, and even to literature, by his magnificent book on British Naval Medals. Here he has portrayed, by the aid of the process-block and by elaborate description, all or well-nigh all the medals struck to commemorate naval victories, acts of special heroism at sea, and great naval commanders. The mere pictures would forma valu- able footnote to history, but the concise and well-studied accounts of the incidents commemorated are of distinct historic value, while the translations of the inscriptions will be a boon to those who have never known or who have forgotten their Latin. This will help even the ordinary scholars, for, owing to abbreviations and the compression employed in the art of Latin epigraphy, it is often by no means an easy job to translate, or even to read, the legends on medals and coins.

As is proper for the nation whose immortal rights and duties have come by way of the sea, the history of medals in England begins with naval medals, and among them are those struck to commemorate the destruction of the Spanish Armada. The first two medals in Lord Milford Haven's collection are, how- ever, those made to commemorate Sir Francis Drake's voyage round the world. They bear on one side the Western and on the other the Eastern Hemisphere, and across them goes the glorious track of Drake's adventurous voyage—a dotted line which will send a thrill through every English heart. The line shows how Drake was a kind of Reconnaissance Officer for the British Empire that was to be. Place after place which he passed in his voyage now flies the flag of the British Empire. Did he see and hear in vision, we wonder, how some day our flag and the drum-taps of our soldiers would follow him round the whole world ?

Even more soul-shaking are the Armada medals, in which we see the Navy of Spain going to its doom. Most of them bear the motto, proud in its faithful humility, Flavit et Dissipati aunt, • British Naval Medals. By Admiral the Marquis of Milford Haven. London : John Murray. [112 128.1

1588—He blew and they were scattered. Never was a text of Scripture more magnificently displayed.

As a matter of fact the first Armada medal portrayed in the work before us bears not this motto but one almost as moving,

Veni, Vide, Vive, 1588—Come, see, live—followed by the legend,

also in Latin—" Thou God art great and doest wondrous things : Thou art God alone " (Psalm lxxxvi. 10). Most of the Elizabethan medals dedicated to the defeat of the Armada have on them the face and bust of Elizabeth. These are wonderful pieces of portraiture. Were Elizabeth to come back to life she would, we may feel sure, be more easily recognized by her por- trait on the obverse of the "Naval Reward, 1588," than on any of the canvases that commemorate her. Another excellent picture of " that Great Queen of Happy Memory," as Cromwell called her, is the medal described as " Dangers Averted, 1589." There we see the Queen in her habit as she lived, charming and terrifying her courtiers and her subjects. The official descrip- tion is—" Bust of Elizabeth almost full face, crown ruffed, open in front, erect behind, puffed in diamond-shaped pattern and jewelled."

The one thing we can all be agreed about in regard to Charles I. is his good taste in the arts. We see his connoisseurship in his medals, and also his instinct for abstract policy. His first medal with the King on one side and a ship at sea on the other —" sailing before a fair wind with topsails and courses set "- was struck to emphasize the British claim to the dominion of

the sea. The legend in Latin is proud, mystical, and romantic- " Nor is that a limit to me which is a boundary to the world."

Lord Milford Haven quotes Charles's own words to his Minister at the Hague—" We hold it a thing not to be questioned that the King of Great Britain is monarch of sea and land to the full extent of his dominions." Bacon put it more poetically when he declared that England was " The Lady of the Sea."

Before we pass on to an even greater epoch in the medallist's art we must note the singularly beautiful portrait medal of Prince Rupert. Here the art of portraiture in metal as practised in the seventeenth century may be said to have attained its highest point. We have the authentic Rupert, soldier, sailor, inventor, and artist. In spite of the fact that the Commonwealth had so great an artist as gimon for its coins and medals, and in spite also of the glories won by the Commonwealth at sea, the naval medals given by Parliament or the Protector, though good, are not particularly striking. The best is perhaps the " Naval Reward, 1653."

The reigns of Charles II., James II., and William and Mary all show attractive examples of pieces struck to commemorate victories at sea and notable seamen, but we must pass to the age of Anne, in which the medallists in their sphere did work as splendid as that done by our sailors and our soldiers on sea and land. A medal possessed of a singular poignancy is that of Admiral Sir George Rooke and Maria Rooke, his wife. It was struck in 1703, just after the taking of Gibraltar. This delightful work, with the gentleman on one side and the lady on the other, is one of the most representative and attractive of the illustrations in Lord Milford Haven's book. In the first place we see Rooke as he was, the intelligent, powerful, able naval commander—the kind of man willing and able to prevent " the foreigners from fooling us," to use Blake's immortal phrase. Rooke honestly took as his motto—it stands on his medal—" Great is truth and it shall prevail." The picture of Maria Rooke is fascinating. Maria, born a Luttrell of Dunstor, and so a daughter of one of the staunchest of the Whig families of the West of England, is all that a great country lady should be, not so handsome as to be a mere beauty, but very personable, buxom as a girl, and comely later, with a firm nose, lip, and chin, and honest, sensible eyes—the sort of lady who would be quite capable of keeping a handsome Admiral up to the mark both in public and private life if he had appeared to require it. They are the kind of eyes that can telegraph " None of your nonsense there ! " without being either prudish or shrewish. Lord Milford Haven, who is always at home with the ladies' hair and dresses, thus describes Maria's coiffure and get-up- " Lady Rooke's bust, hair compactly arranged except one loose look behind." The lock is a delightfully calculated stray of hair, and most clearly shown in the medal. Doubtless Maria Rooke was very proud of it. (Somersetshire knew the fashions even in 1702.) Remember that this was the fashionable coiffure of the day. Just such a lock is immortalized in Pope's great poem. As seen in the medal one does not wonder that the " Peer " was tempted to larceny and domestic treason and fell,

though we may feel sure he would not have dared to approach Maria as he approached Belinda.

We wish we could find space to deal with the hundreds of delightful middle and late eighteenth-century naval medals, some of well-known heroes and some of great deeds of daring, which have somehow been forgotten, though they deserve to live for ever. Tho Vernon medals are of course well known, and some of them are singularly attractive in their quaint realism.

It is very interesting to note that in the Louisbourg medals we get a head of Britannia which any one might have been excused for taking as a not unsuccessful effort of one of Flaxman's pupils. It is also curious to observe that this medal probably influenced the Victorian who made the well-known side-face view of the Queen on the Victorian pennies and half- pennies. The Louisbourg example must be described as " a throw-forward."

Before we leave the historic side of the present book we may note one or two omissions. By this we mean omissions, not on the part of Lord Milford Haven, but of the givers of medals, or shall we say of the Muse of History Y She seems somewhat blindly to have scattered her naval laurels. Why, for example, was not a deed historically so magnificent as our taking of the city of Rome in 1799 not recorded by a medal ? We venture to say that not ten per cent. of the readers of the Spectator have ever heard of the occupation of the immortal city by a British naval force. Yet it occurred, and is recorded in the Annual Register of the year 1799. Wo have also a reference in James's Naval History which tells how Captain Thomas Lewis of the ' Minotaur ' was rowed up the Tiber in MI barge, followed by a flotilla carrying bluejackets from the British Fleet, occupied the city of Rome, and " hoisted the national colours upon the CapitoL" To use more commonplace language, what happened was this. The French General Macdonald, owing to Suvarow's victories on the Gothard and in the North of Italy, had hastily to evacuate Rome, from which the Pope and his Government had fled some months before. There was therefore no one to keep order in Rome. Naturally the ecclesiastical authorities turned, as people generally turn in such circumstances, to the British Fleet, then cruising off the Italian coast under Nelson. He was asked to arrange for the keeping of order in Reins, and accordingly told his well- trusted subordinate, Captain Lewis, one of the " band , of brothers " of the Nile, to lead a force up the Tiber like a Viking of old. No doubt Captain Lewis hoisted the national colours on the Capitol as James tells us, but he lived in the Castle of St. Angelo, flying two flags, the flag of the Crossed Keys above and the British flag below. When Captain Lewis and his bluejackets were withdrawn he was warmly thanked by the Papal authorities. They presented him, indeed, with a marble statue, which the innocent seaman to the day of his death regarded as a genuine antique. It was in reality a somewhat flimsy example of the school which we now catalogue as that of Canova. The present writer has, as he writes, his eyes fixed upon Captain Lewis's Venus of the ShelL Her simpering and meretricious beauty was, however, never noted by the gallant seaman. He dreamt of classical statuary in the arms of a Forgery.

Another deed which surely ought to have been commemorated by a medal was the attack on the Peiho forts. It was them that a gallant American Admiral " nicked " for all time our relations with our American kinsmen in one lucky if not altogether intelligible sentence : " Blood is thicker than water." It is astonishing to think that such an occasion as the official visit, under heavy fire, of the American Admiral to his British colleague to wish him success in a desperate situation —obviously the most memorable ceremonial visit ever paid— should not have been commemorated in gold, silver, or bronze.

We cannot leave the subject of naval medals without saying a little more in regard to Pope's famous Epistle, four lines of which we have taken as the motto of this article. The Epistle, written in Pope's youth, and addressed to Addison on the publication of his Dialogue on Medals, is one of the most fasci- nating and original of all Pope's compositions. As so often is the case with Pope's critical work, he says everything that could be wisely or wittily said in regard to the matter in hand. It is a perfect apology for the art of the medallist. Pope begins by a splendid bravura passage on the ruins of Rome, and tells how temple and tower have comp to the ground and put to shame the vanity of the men who thought that their

vast palaces and towering columns would commemorate them for ever. Seeing this, Ambition turned to the medal :—

" Ambition sighed ; she found it vain to trust The faithless column and the crumbling bust ; Huge moles, whose shadow stretched from shore to shore

Their mins perished and their place no more.

Convinced, she now contracts her vast design, And all her triumphs shrink into a coin, A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps, Beneath her palm here sad Judea weeps : Now scantier limits the proud arch confine, And scarce are seen the prostrate Nile or Rhine ; A small Euphrates through the piece is roll'd And little eagles wave their wings in gold."

Mark the curious felicity of these lines and their complete appropriateness to the present situation. Will not our medallists

give us a medal showing how beneath her palm happy Judea no longer weeps ? Allenby—how changed from Titus and Vespasian !—has not conquered her, but set her free. Note

too the allusion to the Nile and the Rhine, and how, if we commemorate, as surely we ought, the Mesopotamian Campaign, we shall want a small Tigris as well as a small Euphrates rolled through the piece, and on it little river steamers instead of little eagles. Truly we want the medallist, if ever, now.

Once more we may say with Pope :-

'` Oh, when shall Britain, conscious of her claim,

Stand emulous of Greek and Roman fame ?

In living medals see her wars enroll'd.

And vanquished realms supply recording gold ?

Here, rising bold, the patriot's holiest face, There warriors frowning in historic brass.

Then future ages with delight shall see How Plato's, I3acon's, Newton's looks agree."

It will indeed be a disgrace if not merely our naval deeds, but the war as a whole, be not commemorated in appropriate

medals.

Lord Milford Haven adds an Appendix containing a list of naval medals struck between 1914 and 1918. With the strong desire to be sympathetic to the artists, we are bound to say that wo cannot regard them as in the least worthy of the great occasions with which they deal. If British art cannot do better than this, it had better go down in silence. But unquestion- ably it can do better. One of the few cheering things about recent Academy Exhibitions has been the work of the younger men in low relief, and generally in the minor arts of the sculptor.