Having lately been led to compose an inscription for one of our Garden statues,

it has occurred to me that an authentic account of two such extraordinary works of art ought to be applied to has appeared to me so desirable that I even wonder at myself for having so long delayed to write one. It is the more incumbent on me to do this, because neither of the artists have thought proper to inscribe their names upon these masterpieces xx their skills, – either from that modesty which often accompanies the highest genius, or from a dignified consciousness that it was unnecessary to set any mark upon them, the works themselves sufficiently declaring from what hands they came.

I undertake this becoming task with the more pleasure because our friend M^rs Keenan

has kindly offered her assistance, to illustrate the intended account by drawings of both statues, – having as you may well suppose been struck with admiration by them. The promise of this cooperation induces me not to confine myself to a mere description, but to relate on what occasion they were made, & faithfully to record the very remarkable circumstances which have occurred in consequence, of this circumstances I will venture to say, as well attested & as well worthy of preservation as any of those related in the History of the Portugueze Images of Nossa Senhora, in ten volumes quarto,

– a book of real value, & which xx, you know, I regard as one of the curiosities most curious in my collection. If in the progress of this design I should sometimes appear to wander in digression, you will not impute it to any habitual love of circumlocution; & the speculative notions which I may have occasion to propose, you will receive as mere speculations & judge of them accordingly.

they were composed perhaps to make some little man contented with that office, & certain it is that in all ages & all countries it has been an object of as much consequence to preserve the seed from birds when sown, as to sow it. No doubt Adam himself when he was driven to cultivate the ground

felt this, & we who are his lineal descendants (tho I am sorry to say we have <not> inherited xxxx <a rood> of his property <estates>) have felt it also, in our small but not unimportant concern, the Garden. M^rs Lovell, the Lady of that Garden used to complain grievously of the depredations committed there, especially x upon her pease. Fowls & Ducks were condemned either to imprisonment for life, or to the immediate larder for their offences of this kind; but the magpies (my protegées) & the sparrows, & the blackbirds & the thrushes bade defiance to the coop & the cook. She tried to fright them away by feathers fastened upon a string – but birds were no more to be frightened by feathers than to be caught by chaff. She drest up two mopsticks; not to be forgotten, because when two youths sent their straw hats upon leaving Keswick to Kate & Bertha, the girls consigned them <the hats> to these mopsticks which they named <& named the xxxxx figures thus attired> in due honour of the youths, Leland Noel, & Charles Kennaway.

These mopsticks however were well drest enough to invite thieves from the town, – & too well to frighten the birds. Something more effectual was wanted, & M^rs L. bespoke a man of Joseph Glover.

Such is the imperfection of language that write as carefully & warily as we can it is impossible to use words which will not frequently admit of a double construction, upon this xxxxx indeed it is that the Lawyers have founded the science of the Law, which said science xxxxxx <they xxx display> in extracting <any meaning> from <any> words <& generally that> meaning that shall entirely frustrate <be most opposite to> the intention for which they were used. When I say that your Aunt L. bespoke a man of Joseph Glover I do not mean that she emp commissioned him to engage a labourer: nor that she required him <actually>to make a man like Frankenstein,

– tho it must be admitted that such a man as Frankenstein made, would be the best of all scare crows provided he were broken in so as to be perfectly manageable. This <To have made a man indeed> would have been more than even Paracelsus would have undertaken to perform; for according to the receipt which that illustrious Bombast ab Hohenheim has delivered to posterity, an homunculus cannot be produced in a hot bed in less than forty weeks & forty days;

x xxxx & this would not have been in time to save the pease; not to mention that one of his homunculi had it been ready could not have served the purpose, for by his account, when it was produced, it was smaller even than Mark Thumb.

Such an order would have been more unreasonable than any of those which Juno imposed upon Hercules;

whereas the task imposed by M^rs Lovell was nothing more than Glover thought himself capable of executing, for he understood the words <direction> plainly & simply in their direct <its proper> sense, as a carpenter ought to understand them it.

With or without such assistance, but certainly con amore,

& with the aid of his own genius, if of no other, Glover went to work: & in a short time <ere long> shouts of admiration were heard one evening in the kitchen, so loud & of such long continuance that enquiry was made from the parlour into the cause, & the reply was that M^rs Lovells man was brought home. Out we went, father mother & daughters

(yourself among them, – for you cannot have forgotten that memorable hour) My Lady & the Venerabilis – and M^rs Lovell herself, as the person more immediately concerned. Seldom as it happens that any artist can embody with perfect success the conceptions of another, in this instance the xxx difficult & delicate task had been perfectly accomplished. But I must describe the Man, – calling him by that name at present, the character <power, æon or intelligence> which had incorporated itself with that ligneous resemblance of humanity not having at that time been suspected.

Yet methinks more properly might he have been called youth than man, the form & stature being juvenile. The limbs & body were slender, yet <tho> not so as to convey any appearance of feebleness, it was rather that degree of slenderness which in elegant & refined society is deemed xxxxxxx essential to grace. The countenance at once denoted strength & health & hilarity, & the incomparable Carpenter had given it an expression of threatful & alert determination suited to the station for which he was designed & the weapon which he bore. The shape of the face was rather round than oval, resembling methinks the broad harvest moon, the eyes were of the deepest black, xx the eye brows black also; & there was a blackness about the nose & lips, such as might be imagined in the face of Hercules, while he was in the act of lifting & strangling the yet unsubdued & struggling Antæus.

On his head was a little hat, low in the crown & narrow in the brim. His dress was a sleeved jacket without skirts, – our ancestors would have called it a gipion,

jubon it would be called <rendered> if ever this description were rendered <translated> into Spanish, gibão in Portugueze, jupon or gippon in old French. It was fastened from the neck downward with eight white buttons, two & two, & between them was a broad white stripe, the colour of the gipion being brown: whether the <stripe> was to represent xx silver lace, or a white facing like that of the naval uniform, is doubtful & xxxxx of little consequence. The lower part of his dress represented innominables & hose in one, of the same colour as the gipion. And he carried a fowling piece in his hand.

Great was the satisfaction which we all expressed at beholding so admirable a man; great were the applauses which we bestowed upon the workman with one consent; & great was the complacency with which Glover himself regarded the work of his own hands. He thought, he said, this would please us. Please us indeed it did, & so well did it answer that after short trial <M^rs Lovell> thinking that a second image would render the whole Garden secure, & moreover that it was not good for her Man to be alone, directed Glover to make a Woman also. The woman accordingly was made. Flesh of his flesh & bone of his bone,

she could not be, the Man himself not being made of flesh & bone <such materials>; but she was <wood of his wood &> plank of his plank, – which was coming as nearly as possible to it, made of the same materials <tree> & fashioned by the same hand.

The Woman was in all respects a goodly mate for the man, except that she seemed to be a few years older; she was rather below the mean stature, in that respect resembling the Venus de Medicis;

slender waisted yet not looking as if she were tight-laced, nor so thin as to denote ill health. Her dress was a gown of homely brown, up to the neck. The artist had employed his dark <brightest> colours upon her face, even the eyes & nose partook of that brilliant tint which is sometimes called the roseate hue of health or exercise, sometimes the purple light of love. The whites of her eyes were large. She also was represented in a hat, but higher in the crown & broader in the rim than the mans, & where his brim was turned up, hers had a downward inclination giving a feminine character to that part of her dress.

She was placed in the garden; greatly as we admired both pieces of workmanship, we considered them merely as what they seemed to be; xx they went by the names of M^rs Lovells Man & Woman; & even when you departed for the south they were still known only by that vague & most unworthy designation. Some startling circumstances after awhile excited a more particular attention to them. Several of the family declared they had been frightened by them; & Kate one evening came in saying that Aunt Lovells Woman had given her a jump. Even this did not awaken any suspicion of their supernatural powers as it ought to have done, till on a winters night, one of the maids hearing a knock at the back door opened it, & started back when she saw that it was the Woman with a letter in her hand! This is as certain as that Nosso Senhor dos Passos knocked at the door of S. Roques convent in Lisbon & was not taken in, – to the infinite regret of the Monks when they learnt that he had gone afterwards to the Graça Convent & been admitted there. It is as certain <as> that I have seen men women & children of all ranks kissing the foot of the said Image in the Church, & half Lisbon following his procession in the streets.

It is as certain as all the miracles in the Acta Fasti, the Metamorphoses, & the Acta Sanctorum.

Many remarkable things were now called to mind xx both of the Man & Woman; – how on one occasion they had made Miss Christians

maid miscarry of – half a message; & <how> at another time when Isaac

was bringing a basket from M^r Calverts he was frightened into his wits by them. But on Sunday evening last the most extraordinary display of their wonderful power <occurred> both xxxx: for in the evening the Woman, instead of being in her place among the pease, appeared standing erect on the top of M^r Fishers

haymow in the forge field, & there on the following morning she was seen by all Keswick, who are witnesses of the fact.

You may well suppose that I now began to examine into the mystery, & manifold were the mysteries which I discovered, & many the analogies in their formation of which the maker could never by possibility have heard, & many the points of divine philosophy & theurgic science which they illustrated. In the first place two Swedenborgian correspondencies

flashed upon me in the material whereof they were constructed. They were intended to guard the Garden. There is a proverb which says set a thief to catch a thief, & therefore it is that they were fir statues. Take it in English & the correspondence is equally striking; they were made of deal, because they were to do a deal of good. <The dark aspect of the male figure also was explained; for being stationed there contra fures,

it was proper that he should have a furious countenance.>

Secondly there is something wonderful in their formation: – they are xx xthxx statues xxx fixtures, bifronted, not merely bifaced like Janus,

but bifronted from top to toe. xxx <Let> the thief be as cunning as he may he cannot get behind them. – They have no backs, & were they disposed to be indolent & sit at their posts it would be impossible. They may xxxxx <can appear as> if at the kitchen door, they may breakfast or on the hay mow, they may <can> give the children & even the grown xxxxxx persons of the family a jump, but to sit is beyond their power however miraculous it may be: for impossibilities cannot be effected even by miracle, & as it is impossible to see without eyes, or to walk without legs, – or for a ship to xxx float without a bottom, so is it for a person in the same predicament as such a ship – to sit.

Yet farther mysteries; both hands of these marvellous statues are right hands & both are left hands, they are at once ambidexter & ambisinister. It was said by Dryden of old Jacob Tonson that he had two left legs:

but these marvellous statues have two left legs & two right legs each, & yet but two legs apiece four legs between them, that is to say but two apiece. In the whole course of my reading I have found no account of any thing like <statues so wonderful as> these. For though the Roman Janus was bifronted, & my old acquaintance Yamen

had in like manner a double face, & many of xxxx <the> Hindoo & other oriental Deities have their necks set round with heads, & their elbows with arms, yet it is certain that all these Gods have backs, & sides to them also. In this point no similitude can be found for them <our Images>. They xxxx <may be> likened <to> the sea as being bottomless, – but as being without a back & in the mystery of having both hands & legs equally <at once> right & left, xxxx they are unequalled; none but themselves can be their parallel.

This supposition therefore being proved to be absurd, which in mathematics is equal to a demonstration that the contrary must be true, it remains xx to enquire into the real origin of their stupendous qualities. Both the <ancient> Heathens & the Romanists believe <teach> that certain Images of the Gods or of the Saints have been made without the aid of human hands, & that they have appeared no one knew whence or how. The Greeks called such images Diopeteis, as having fallen from the sky, & I could enumerate were it needful sundry Catholic Images which are at this day venerated as being either of angelic workmanship or celestial origin. We cannot however have recourse to this solution in the present case; for Glover is so veracious a man that if he had found these figures in his workshop without knowing how they came there, – or if he had seen them grow into shape while he was looking on, – he would certainly not have concealed a fact so extraordinary. All Keswick <would have known it. It must have become as notorious as Prince Hohenloe’s

miracles.>

There remains then another hypothesis, which is also common to the ancient Pagans & the Romanists; – that some superior powers finding a congruity in the Images have been pleased to communicate to them a portion of their influence, & even of their presence, & so if I may be allowed the word, have actually become inligneate in them. Were my old acquaintance Thomas Taylor

here, who entirely believes this, he would at once determine which of his Heathen Deities have thus manifested their existence. Who indeed that looks at the Youth but must be reminded of Apollo?

Said I that his face resembled in its rotundity the Moon? the Sun would have been the fitter similitude, – the sun shorn of its beams: – Phoebus, – such as he appeared when in the service of Admetus. And for his fellow female companion, her beauty & the admiration which it excites in all beholders, identify her with no no less certainty for Venus.

We have named them therefore the Apollo de Lovell, & the Venus de Glover; in honour justice to both artists; & in farther honour of them & of the Images themselves have composed the following inscription: