‘Close to the gate a spacious garden lies, From storms defended, and inclement skies; Tall thriving trees confess the fruitful mould, The reddening apple ripens here to gold. Here the blue fig with luscious juice o’erflows, With deeper red the full pomegranate glows; The branch here bends beneath the weighty pear, And verdant olives flourish round the year. The balmy spirit of the western gale Eternal breathes on fruits, untaught to fail; The same mild season gives the blooms to blow, The buds to harden, and the fruit to grow.’
This is Pope’s description of them in the Odyssey, which (we must say) is very bad, and if Mr. Williams had not given us a more distinct idea of the places he professes to describe, we should not have gone out of our way to notice them. As works of art, these water-colour drawings deserve very high praise. The drawing is correct and characteristic: the colouring chaste, rich, and peculiar; the finishing generally careful; and the selection of points of view striking and picturesque. We have at once an impressive and satisfactory idea of the country of which we have heard so much; and wish to visit places which, it seems from this representation of them, would not bely all that we have heard. Some splenetic travellers have pretended that Attica was dry, flat, and barren. But it is not so in Mr. Williams’s authentic draughts; and we thank him for restoring to us our old, and, as it appears, true illusion—for crowning that Elysium of our school-boy fancies with majestic hills, and scooping it into lovely winding valleys once more. Lord Byron is, we believe, among those who have spoken ill of Greece, calling it a ‘sand-bank,’ or something of that sort. Every ill-natured traveller ought to hold a pencil as well as a pen in his hand, and be forced to produce a sketch of his own lie. As to the subjects of Mr. Williams’s pencil, nothing can exceed the local interest that belongs to them, and which he has done nothing, either through injudicious selection, or negligent execution, to diminish. Quere. Is not this interest as great in London as it is in Edinburgh? In other words, we mean to ask, whether this exhibition would not answer well in London.