[25] Gray’s _Letter from Pembroke Coll._, 1769.
When sculptors learn again that their art is to shape many materials in various ways for diverse uses, and that a statue is not necessarily of whitest marble or to be exhibited on the 1st of May, then we may get back the delight of sculpture in the garden.
Sculptured marble, unless the art is of a high order, does not please us out of doors by a pond or on a terrace, if it is not weathered down to a ruin, but lead is homely and ordinary and not too good to receive the _graffiti_ of lovers’ knots, red letter dates and initials. Here is a sketch of a Mercury not at all too fine for further decoration of this sort; it came from a London sale room, the surface was quite white and exfoliated like old stone. The jaunty messenger has a garden thought too, for it is honeycomb in his hand.
One of the best known of these garden statues was a group of Cain and Abel that so recently gave an interest to the great grass quad of Brasenose College, Oxford. It was given by Dr. Clarke, of All Souls, “who bought it of some London statuary.” Hearne speaks of it as “some silly statue”--superiority has always been the greatest enemy to beauty. Forty or fifty years ago there was a Mercury in Tom Quad which has also been improved away.
[Illustration: FIG. 43.--Sun-dial, Temple Gardens.]
Our next example fulfils a purpose. It is the sun-dial formerly in Clement’s Inn, which was known locally as the “Blackamoor.” It is strongly, if simply modelled, a piece of art full of character, and we may be glad that it has been restored to us although now placed in the gardens of the Inner Temple, instead of before the “Garden House” in Clement’s Inn.
The negro is the full size of life and bears the stone disc of the dial on his head with one hand, the other being free. The dial is beautifully engraved and is signed on the edge of the gnomon _Ben Scott in the Strand Londini Fecit_. The sides have the initials of the donor, P. I. P., and the date, 1731. Mr. Hare in his _Walks in London_ states that it was brought from Italy late in the seventeenth century by Holles Lord Clare, whose name is preserved in the neighbouring Clare market. This statement is also found in Thornbury’s _Old and New London_, and the statue is said to be bronze, which it is not, nor do the initials and date above agree with Mr. Hare’s statement, who goes on to remark that “there are similar figures at Knowsley, and at Arley in Cheshire,” but he does not say if these also were brought from Italy by Lord Clare.