There cam' a strange wicht to our town-en',
An' the fient a body did him ken;
He tirl'd na lang, but he glided ben
Wi' a dreary, dreary hum.
His face did glow like the glow o' the west,
When the drumlie cloud has it half o'ercast;
Or the struggling moon when she's sair distrest,
O sirs! 'twas Aiken-drum.
I trow the bauldest stood aback,
Wi' a gape an' a glow'r till their lugs did crack,
As the shapeless phantom mum'ling spak,
Hae ye wark for Aiken-drum!
O! had ye seen the bairns' fricht,
As they stared at this wild and unyirthly wicht,
As they skulkit in 'tween the dark an' the licht,
An' graned out, Aiken-drum!
"Sauf us!" quoth Jock, "d'ye see sick e'en?"
Cries Kate, "There's a hole where a nose should ha' been;
An' the mouth's like a gash that a horn had ri'en;
Wow! keep's frae Aiken-drum!"
The black dog growlin' cow'red his tail,
The lassie swarf'd, loot fa' the pail;
Rob's lingle brack as he mendit the flail,
At the sicht o' Aiken-drum.
His matted head on his breast did rest,
A lang blue beard wan'ered down like a vest;
But the glare o' his e'e hath nae bard exprest,
Nor the skimes o' Aiken-drum.
Roun' his hairy form there was naething seen,
But a philabeg o' the rashes green,
An' his knotted knees play'd aye knoit between;
What a sicht was Aiken-drum!
On his wauchie arms three claws did meet,
As they trail'd on the grim' by his taeless feet;
E'en the auld gudeman himsel' did sweat,
To look at Aiken-drum.
But he drew a score, himsel' did sain,
The auld wife tried, but her tongue was gane;
While the young ane closer clespit her wean,
And turn'd frae Aiken-drum.
But the canty auld wife cam till her braith,
And she thocht the Bible micht ward aif scaith;
Be it benshee, bogle, ghaist, or wraith--
But it fear'd na Aiken-drum.
"His presence protect us!" quoth the auld gudeman;
"What wad ye, whare won ye,--by sea or by lan'?
I conjure ye--speak--by the Beuk in my han'!"
What a grane gae Aiken-drum!
"I lived in a lan' whare we saw nae sky,
I dwalt in a spot whare a burn rins na by;
But I'se dwall noo wi' you if ye like to try--
Hae ye wark for Aiken drum?
"I'll shiel a' your sheep i' the mornin' sune,[57]
I'll berry your crap by the licht o' the moon,
An' ba the bairns wi' an unkenn'd tune,
If ye'll keep puir Aiken-drum.
"I'll loup the linn when ye canna wade,
I'll kirn the kirn, an' I'll turn the bread;
An' the wildest fillie that e'er ran rede
I'se tame't,' quoth Aiken-drum!
"To wear the tod frae the flock on the fell--
To gather the dew frae the heather-bell--
An' to look at my face in your clear crystal well,
Micht gie pleasure to Aiken-drum.
"I'se seek nae guids, gear, bond, nor mark;
I use nae beddin', shoon, nor sark;
But a cogfu' o' brose 'tween the licht an' the dark
Is the wage o' Aiken-drum."
Quoth the wylie auld wife, "The thing speaks weel;
Our workers are scant--we hae routh o' meal;
Giff he'll do as he says--be he man, be he de'il,
Wow! we'll try this Aiken-drum."
But the wenches skirl'd, "He's no' be here!
His eldritch look gars us swarf wi' fear;
An' the feint a ane will the house come near,
If they think but o' Aiken-drum.
"For a foul and a stalwart ghaist is he,
Despair sits broodin' aboon his e'e-bree,
And unchancie to light o' a maiden's e'e,
Is the glower o' Aiken-drum."
"Puir clipmalabors! ye hae little wit;
Is't na hallowmas noo, an' the crap out yet?"
Sae she seelenc'd them a' wi' a stamp o' her fit,
"Sit-yer-wa's-down, Aiken-drum."
Roun' a' that side what wark was dune,
By the streamer's gleam, or the glance o' the moon;
A word, or a wish--an' the Brownie cam sune,
Sae helpfu' was Aiken-drum.
But he slade aye awa or the sun was up,
He ne'er could look straught on Macmillan's cup;[58]
They watch'd--but nane saw him his brose ever sup
Nor a spune sought Aiken-drum.
On Blednoch banks, an' on crystal Cree,
For mony a day a toil'd wicht was he;
And the bairns they play'd harmless roun' his knee,
Sae social was Aiken-drum.
But a new-made wife, fu' o' rippish freaks,
Fond o' a things feat for the five first weeks,
Laid a mouldy pair o her ain man's breeks
By the brose o' Aiken-drum.
Let the learn'd decide when they convene,
What spell was him an' the breeks between;
For frae that day forth he was nae mair seen,
An' sair miss'd was Aiken-drum.
He was heard by a herd gaun by the Thrieve,
Crying, "Lang, lang now may I greet an' grieve;
For alas! I hae gotten baith fee an' leave,
O luckless Aiken-drum!"
Awa! ye wrangling sceptic tribe,
Wi' your pro's an' your con's wad ye decide
'Gainst the 'sponsible voice o' a hale country-side
On the facts 'bout Aiken-drum?
Tho' the "Brownie o' Blednoch" lang be gane,
The mark o' his feet's left on mony a stane;
An' mony a wife an' mony a wean
Tell the feats o' Aiken-drum.
E'en now, licht loons that jibe an' sneer
At spiritual guests an' a' sic gear,
At the Glasnock mill hae swat wi' fear,
An' look'd roun' for Aiken-drum.
An' guidly folks hae gotten a fricht,
When the moon was set, an' the stars gaed nac licht,
At the roaring linn in the howe o' the nicht,
Wi' sughs like Aiken-drum.
[57] On one occasion, Brownie had undertaken to gather the sheep
into the bught by an early hour, and so zealously did he
perform his task, that not only was there not one sheep left
on the hill, but he had also collected a number of hares,
which were found fairly penned along with them. Upon being
congratulated on his extraordinary success, Brownie
exclaimed, "Confound thae wee gray anes! they cost me mair
trouble than a' the lave o' them."
[58] A communion cup, belonging to M'Millan, the well-known
ousted minister of Balmaghie, and founder of the sect of
Covenanters of his name. This cup was treasured by a zealous
disciple in the parish of Kirkcowan, and long used as a test
by which to ascertain the orthodoxy of suspected persons.
If, on taking it into his hand, the person trembled, or gave
other symptoms of agitation, he was denounced as having
bowed the knee to Baal, and sacrificed at the altar of
idolatry.
We would rather have written these lines than any amount of Aurora
Leighs, Festuses, or such like, with all their mighty "somethingness,"
as Mr. Bailey would say. For they, are they not the "native wood-notes
wild" of one of nature's darlings? Here is the indescribable,
inestimable, unmistakable impress of genius. Chaucer, had he been a
Galloway man, might have written it, only he would have been more
garrulous, and less compact and stern. It is like Tam o' Shanter, in its
living union of the comic, the pathetic, and the terrible. Shrewdness,
tenderness, imagination, fancy, humor, word-music, dramatic power, even
wit--all are here. I have often read it aloud to children, and it is
worth any one's while to do it. You will find them repeating all over
the house for days such lines as take their heart and tongue.
The author of this noble ballad was William Nicholson, the Galloway
poet, as he was, and is still called in his own district. He was born at
Tanimaus, in the parish of Borgue, in August 1783; he died _circa_ 1848,
unseen, like a bird. Being extremely short-sighted, he was unfitted for
being a shepherd or ploughman, and began life as a packman, like the
hero of "the Excursion;" and is still remembered in that region for his
humor, his music, his verse, and his ginghams; and also, alas! for his
misery and his sin. After travelling the country for thirty years, he
became a packless pedler, and fell into "a way of drinking;" this led
from bad to worse, and the grave closed in gloom over the ruins of a man
of true genius. Mr. M'Diarmid of Dumfries prefixed a memoir of him to
the Second Edition of his _Tales in Verse and Miscellaneous Poems_.
These are scarcely known out of Galloway, but they are worth the
knowing; none of them have the concentration and nerve of the Brownie,
but they are from the same brain and heart. "The Country Lass," a long
poem, is excellent; with much of Crabbe's power and compression. This,
and the greater part of the volume, is in the Scottish dialect, but
there is a Fable--the Butterfly and Bee--the English and sense, the
fine, delicate humor and turn of which might have been Cowper's; and
there is a bit of rugged sarcasm called "Siller," which Burns need not
have been ashamed of. Poor Nicholson, besides his turn for verse, was an
exquisite musician, and sang with a powerful and sweet voice. One may
imagine the delight of a lonely town-end, when Willie the packman and
the piper made his appearance, with his stories, and jokes, and ballads,
his songs, and reels, and "wanton wiles."
There is one story about him which has always appeared to me quite
perfect. A farmer, in a remote part of Galloway, one June morning before
sunrise, was awakened by music; he had been dreaming of heaven, and when
he found himself awake, he still heard the strains. He looked out, and
saw no one, but at the corner of a grass-field he saw his cattle, and
young colts and fillies, huddled together, and looking intently down
into what he knew was an old quarry. He put on his clothes, and walked
across the field, everything but that strange wild melody, still and
silent in this the "sweet hour of prime." As he got nearer the "beasts,"
the sound was louder; the colts with their long manes, and the nowt with
their wondering stare, took no notice of him, straining their necks
forward entranced. There, in the old quarry, the young sun "glintin" on
his face, and resting on his pack, which had been his pillow, was our
Wandering Willie, playing and singing like an angel--"an Orpheus; an
Orpheus." What a picture! When reproved for wasting his health and time
by the prosaic farmer, the poor fellow said: "Me and this quarry are
lang acquant, and I've mair pleasure in pipin to thae daft cowts, than
if the best leddies in the land were figurin away afore me."
_NOTES ON ART._[59]
[59] Originally prefixed to a Criticism on some paintings in the
Scottish Academy.
"_The use of this feigned history" (the Ideal Arts of Poesy,
Painting, Music, &c.) "hath been to give_ SOME SHADOW OF
SATISFACTION TO THE MIND OF MAN IN THESE POINTS WHEREIN THE
NATURE OF THINGS DOTH DENY IT, _the world being in proportion
inferior to the soul; by reason whereof, there is, agreeable to
the spirit of man_, A MORE AMPLE GREATNESS, A MORE EXACT
GOODNESS AND A MORE ABSOLUTE VARIETY, _than can be found in the
nature of things. So it appeareth that Poesy" (and the others)
"serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, and to
delectation. And therefore it was even thought to have some
participation of divineness because_ IT DOTH RAISE AND DIRECT
THE MIND, BY SUBMITTING THE SHEWS OF THINGS TO THE DESIRES OF
THE MIND; _whereas reason" (science, philosophy) "doth buckle and
bow the mind to the nature of things._"--OF THE PROFICIENCE AND
ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING.
"_To look on noble forms
Makes noble through the sensuous organism
That which is higher._"--THE PRINCESS.
One evening in the spring of 1846, as my wife and I were sitting at tea,
_Parvula_ in bed, and the Sputchard reposing, as was her wont, with her
rugged little brown forepaws over the edge of the fender, her eyes shut,
toasting, and all but roasting herself at the fire,--a note was brought
in, which from its fat, soft look, by a hopeful and not unskilled
_palpation_ I diagnosed as that form of lucre which in Scotland may well
be called filthy. I gave it across to Madam, who, opening it, discovered
four five-pound notes, and a letter addressed to me. She gave _it_ me.
It was from Hugh Miller, editor of the _Witness_ newspaper, asking me to
give him a notice of the Exhibition of the Scottish Academy then open,
in words I now forget, but which were those of a thorough gentleman, and
enclosing the aforesaid fee. I can still remember, or indeed feel the
kind of shiver, half of fear and pleasure, on encountering this
temptation; but I soon said, "You know I can't take this; I can't write;
I never wrote a word for the press." She, with "wifelike government,"
kept the money, and heartened me to write, and write I did but with
awful sufferings and difficulty, and much destruction of sleep. I think
the only person who suffered still more must have been the compositor.
Had this packet not come in, and come in when it did, and had the _Sine
Qua Non_ not been peremptory and retentive, there are many chances to
one I might never have plagued any printer with my bad hand and my
endless corrections, and general incoherency in all transactions as to
proofs.
I tell this small story, partly for my own pleasure, and as a tribute to
that remarkable man, who stands alongside of Burns, and Scott, Chalmers,
and Carlyle, the foremost Scotsmen of their time,--a rough, almost
rugged nature, shaggy with strength, clad with zeal as with a cloak, in
some things sensitive and shamefaced as a girl; moody and self-involved,
but never selfish, full of courage, and of keen insight into nature and
men, and the principles of both, but simple as a child in the ways of
the world; self-taught and self-directed, argumentative and scientific,
as few men of culture have ever been, and yet with more imagination than
either logic or knowledge; to the last as shy and _blate_ as when
working in the quarries at Cromarty. In his life a noble example of what
our breed can produce, of what energy, honesty, intensity, and genius
can achieve; and in his death a terrible example of that revenge which
the body takes upon the soul when brought to bay by its inexorable
taskmaster. I need say no more. His story is more tragic than any
tragedy. Would to God it may warn those who come after to be wise in
time, to take the same--I ask no more--care of their body, which is
their servant, their beast of burden, as they would of their horse.
Few men are endowed with such a brain as Hugh Miller--huge, active,
concentrated, keen to fierceness; and therefore few men need fear, even
if they misuse and overtask theirs as he did, that it will turn, as it
did with him, and rend its master. But as assuredly as there is a
certain weight, which a bar of iron will bear and no more, so is there a
certain weight of work which the organ by which we act, by which we
think, and feel, and will--cannot sustain, blazing up into brief and
ruinous madness, or sinking into idiocy. At the time he wrote to me, Mr.
Miller and I were strangers, and I don't think I ever spoke to him: but
his manner of doing the above act made me feel, that in that formidable
and unkempt nature there lay the delicacy, the generosity, the noble
trustfulness of a gentleman born--not made.
Most men have, and almost every man should have a hobby: it is exercise
in a mild way, and does not take him away from home; it diverts him; and
by having a double line of rails, he can manage to keep the permanent
way in good condition. A man who has only one object in life, only one
line of rails, who exercises only one set of faculties, and these only
in one way, will wear himself out much sooner than a man who shunts
himself every now and then, and who has trains coming as well as going;
who takes in as well as gives out.
My hobby has always been pictures, and all we call Art. I have
fortunately never been a practitioner, though I think I could have made
a tolerable hand; but unless a man is a thoroughly good artist, he
injures his enjoyment, generally speaking, of the art of others. I am
convinced, however, that to enjoy art thoroughly, every man must have in
him the possibility of doing it as well as liking it. He must feel it in
his fingers, as well as in his head and at his eyes; and it must find
its way from all the three to his heart, and be emotive.
Much has been said of the power of Art to refine men, to soften their
manners, and make them less of wild beasts. Some have thought it
omnipotent for this; others have given it as a sign of the decline and
fall of the nobler part of us. Neither is, and both are true. Art does,
as our Laureate says, make nobler in us what is higher than the senses
through which it passes; but it can only make nobler what is already
noble; it cannot regenerate, neither can it of itself debase and
emasculate and bedevil mankind; but it is a symptom, and a fatal one,
when Art ministers to a nation's vice, and glorifies its naughtiness--as
in old Rome, as in Oude--as also too much in places nearer in time and
place than the one and the other. The truth is, Art, unless quickened
from above and from within, has in it nothing beyond itself, which is
visible beauty--the ministration to the lust, the desire of the eye. But
apart from direct spiritual worship, and self-dedication to the Supreme,
I do not know any form of ideal thought and feeling which may be made
more truly to subserve, not only magnanimity, but the purest devotion
and godly fear; by fear meaning that mixture of love and awe, which is
specific of the realization of our relation to God. I am not so silly as
to seek painters to paint religious pictures in the usual sense; for the
most part, I know nothing so profoundly profane and godless as our
sacred pictures; and I can't say I like our religious beliefs to be
symbolized, even as Mr. Hunt has so grandly done in his picture of the
Light of the World. But if a painter is himself religious; if he feels
God in what he is looking at, and in what he is rendering back on his
canvas; if he is impressed with the truly divine beauty, infinity,
perfection, and meaning of unspoiled material nature--the earth and the
fulness thereof, the heaven and all its hosts, the strength of the
hills, the sea and all that is therein; if he is himself impressed with
the divine origin and divine end of all visible things,--then will he
paint religious pictures and impress men religiously, and thus make good
men listen, and possibly make bad men good. Take the landscapes of our
own Harvey. He is my dear old friend of thirty years, and his power as a
painter is only less than his fidelity and ardor as a friend, and that
than his simple, deep-hearted piety; I never see one of his transcripts
of nature, be they solemn and full of gloom, with a look "that threatens
the profane;" or laughing all over with sunshine and gladness, but I
feel something beyond, something greater and more beautiful than their
greatness and their beauty--the idea of God, of the beginning and the
ending, the first and the last, the living One; of whom, and through
whom, and to whom are all things; who is indeed God over all, blessed
forever; and whom I would desire, in all humbleness of mind, to sanctify
in my heart, and to make my fear and my dread. This is the true moral
use of Art, to quicken and deepen and enlarge our sense of God. I don't
mean so much our belief in certain articulate doctrines, though I am
old-fashioned enough to think that we must know what as well as in whom
we believe--that our religion, like everything else, must "have its seat
in reason, and be judicious;" I refer rather to that temper of the soul,
that mood of the mind in which we feel the unseen and eternal, and bend
under the power of the world to come.
In my views as to the office of the State I hold with John Locke and
Coventry Dick,[60] that its primary, and probably its only function is
to protect us from our enemies and from ourselves; that to it is
intrusted by the people "the regulation of physical force;" and that it
is indeed little more than a transcendental policeman. This is its true
sphere, and here lies its true honor and glory. When it intermeddles
with other things,--from your Religion, Education, and Art, down to the
number, and size, and metal of your buttons, it goes out of its line and
fails; and I am convinced that with some benefits, specious and partial,
our Government interference has, in the main and in the long run, done
harm to the real interests of Art. Spontaneity, the law of free choice,
is as much the life of Art as it is of marriage, and it is not less
beyond the power of the State to choose the nation's pictures, than to
choose its wives. Indeed there is a great deal on the physiological side
to be said for law interfering in the matter of matrimony. I would
certainly make it against law, as it plainly is against nature, for
cousins-german to marry; and if we could pair ourselves as we pair our
live stock, and give ear to the teaching of an enlightened zooenomy, we
might soon drive many of our fellest diseases out of our breed; but the
law of personality, of ultroneousness, of free will, that which in a
great measure makes us what we are, steps in and forbids anything but
the convincement and force of reason. Much in the same way, though it be
a more trivial matter, pleasure, in order to please, must be that which
you yourself choose. You cannot make an Esquimaux forswear train oil,
and take to tea and toast like ourselves, still less to boiled rice like
a Hindoo; neither can you all at once make a Gilmerton carter prefer
Raphael and claret to a glass of raw whiskey and the _Terrific
Register_. Leviathan is not so tamed or taught. And our Chadwicks and
Kaye Shuttleworths and Coles--kings though they may be--enlightened,
energetic, earnest, and as full of will as an egg is full of meat,
cannot in a generation make the people of England as intelligent as
themselves, or as fond and appreciative of the best Art as Mr. Ruskin.
Hence all their plans are failing and must fail; and I cannot help
thinking that in the case of Art, the continuance of the Cole dynasty is
not to be prayed for very much. As far as I can judge, it has done
infinitely more harm than good. These men think they are doing a great
work, and, worse still, the country thinks so too, and helps them,
whereas I believe they are retarding the only wholesome, though slow
growth of knowledge and taste.
[60] In the thin octavo, _The Office of the State_, and in its
twin volume on _Church Polity_, there will be found in
clear, strong, and singularly candid language, the first
lines of the sciences of Church and State politics. It does
not say much for the sense and perspicuity of the public
mind, if two such books are allowed to fall aside, and such
a _farrago_ of energetic nonsense and error as Mr. Buckle's
first, and we trust last, volume on Civilization, is read
and admired, and bought, with its bad logic, its bad facts,
and its had conclusions. In bulk and in value his volume
stands in the same relation to Mr. Dick's, as a handful, I
may say a _gowpen_ of chaff does to a grain of wheat, or a
bushel of sawdust to an ounce of meal.
Take the Kensington Museum: the only thing there (I speak in all
seriousness) worth any man spending an hour or a shilling upon, are the
Sheepshank and Turner galleries; all those costly, tawdry, prodigious,
and petty displays of arts and manufactures, I look upon as mere
delusions and child's play. Take any one of them, say the series
illustrating the cotton fabrics; you see the whole course of cotton from
its _Alpha_ to its _Omega_, in the neatest and prettiest way. What does
that teach? what impression does that make upon any young mind? Little
beyond mere vapid wonder. The eye is opened, but not filled; it is a
stare, not a look.
If you want to move, and permanently rivet, a young mind with what is
worth the knowing, with what is to deepen his sense of the powers of the
human mind, and the resources of nature, and the grandeur of his
country, take him to a cotton-mill. Let him hear and come under the
power of that wonderful sound pervading the whole vast house, and
filling the air with that diapason of regulated, harmonious energy. Let
him enter it, and go round with a skilled workman, and then follow the
_Alpha_ through all its marvellous transformations to the _Omega_; do
this, and you bring him out into the fresh air not only more knowing,
but more wise. He has got a lesson. He has been impressed. The same with
calico-printing, and pottery, and iron-founding, and, indeed, the whole
round of that industry which is our glory. Do you think a boy will get
half the good from the fine series of ores and specimens of pig-iron,
and all the steels he may see in cold blood, and with his grandmother or
his sweetheart beside him at Kensington, that he will from going into
Dixon's foundry at Govan, and seeing the half-naked men toiling in that
place of flame and energy and din--watching the mighty shears and the
Nasmyth-hammers, and the molten iron kneaded like dough, and planed and
shaved like wood; he gets the dead and dissected body in the one case;
he sees and feels the living spirit and body working as one, in the
other. And upon all this child's-play, this mere make-believe, our
good-natured nation is proud of spending some half-million of money.
Then there is that impertinent, useless, and unjust system of
establishing Government Schools of Design in so many of our towns,
avowedly, and, I believe (though it is amazing that clever men should do
such a foolish thing), honestly, for the good of the working-classes,
but actually and lamentably, and in every way harmfully, for the
amusement and benefit of the wealthy classes, and to the ruin of the
hard-working and legitimate local teachers.
I have not time or space, but if I had I could prove this, and show the
curiously deep injuries this system is inflicting on true Art, and upon
the freedom of industry.
In the same line, and to the same effect, are our Art-Unions and
Associations for "the encouragement" of Art; some less bad than others,
but all bad, because founded upon a wrong principle, and working to a
wrong end. No man can choose a picture for another, any more than a wife
or a waistcoat. It is part of our essential nature to choose these
things for ourselves, and paradoxical as it may seem, the wife and the
waistcoat and the work of Art our departmental wiseacres may least
approve of, if chosen _sua sponte_ by Giles or Roger, will not only give
them more delectation, but do them more good, than one chosen by
somebody else for him upon the finest of all possible principles.
Besides this radical vice, these Art-Unions have the effect of
encouraging, and actually bringing into professional existence, men who
had much better be left to die out, or never be born; and it, as I well
know, discourages, depreciates, and dishonors the best men, besides
keeping the public, which is the only true and worthy patron, from doing
its duty, and getting its due. Just take our Edinburgh Association, in
many respects one of the best, having admirable and devoted men, as its
managers, what is the chance that any of the thousand members, when he
draws a prize, gets a picture he cares one straw for, or which will do
his nature one particle of good? Why should we be treated in this
matter, as we are treated in no way else? Who thinks of telling us, or
founding a Royal Association with all its officers, to tell us what
novels or what poetry to read, or what music to listen to? Think of a
Union for the encouragement of Poetry, where Mr. Tennyson would be
obliged to put in his _In Memoriam_ or his _Idylls of the King_, along
with the Lyrics and the Sonnets of we don't say who, into a common
lottery, and be drawn for at an annual speechifying? All such
associations go to encourage quantity rather than quality. Now, in the
ideal and pleasurable arts _quality_ is nearly everything. Our Turner
not only transcends ten thousand Claudes and Vanderveldes; he is in
another sphere. You could not thus sum up his worth.
One of the most flagrant infractions of the primary laws of political
economy, and one of the most curious illustrations of the fashionable
fallacies as to Government encouragement to Art, is to be found in the
revelations in the Report of the Select Committee on the South
Kensington Museum. Mr. Lowe, and the majority of the Committee, gave it
as their opinion, that Government should deal in photographs, and
_undersell_ them (thereby ruining the regular trade), and all for the
encouragement of Art, and the enlightenment of the public! Can there be
anything more absurd than this, and at this time of day? and not only
absurd and expensive, but mischievous. All this, you see, would be
avoided, and society left to provide its own Art, as it provides its own
beef and trousers for itself; if men would hold with John Locke, and
Coventry Dick, and _Egomet_, that the Government, the State, has simply
nothing to do with these things, that they are _ultra vires_ not less
than religion, and, I am bold to add, education.
One other drawback to Art taking its place alongside its sisters--Poetry
and Music--is the annual exhibitions. Nothing more thoroughly barbarous
and childish could be devised than this concentrating the mental
activity of the nation in regard to the Art of the year upon one month.
Fancy our being obliged to read all our novels, and all our poetry, and
hear all our music in a segment of our year. Then there is the mixing up
of all sorts of pictures--sacred and profane, gay and sombre, etc.--all
huddled together, and the eye flitting from one to the other.[61] Hence
the temptation to paint down to the gaudiest pictures, instead of up or
into the pure intensity of nature. Why should there not be some large
public hall to which artists may send their pictures at any time when
they are perfected; but better still, let purchasers frequent the
studios, as they did of old, full of love and knowledge. Why will we
insist in pressing our Art and our taste, as we did long ago our
religion and our God, upon our neighbors! Why not trust to time, and to
cultivating our own tastes earnestly, thoroughly, humbly, and for
ourselves, filling our houses with the best of everything, and making
all welcome to see them, and believing that the grandchildren of those
who come to see our Turners and Wilkies and Hogarths will be wiser and
more refined than we? It is most lamentable to witness the loss of
money, of energy, and in a measure of skill, and, above all, of time, on
those engravings, which no one but a lodging-keeper frames, and those
Parian statuettes and Etruscan pitchers and tazzas of all sorts, which
no one thinks half so much of, or gets half so much real pleasure and
good from, as from one of John Leech's woodcuts. One true way to
encourage Art is to buy and enjoy _Punch_. There is more fun, more good
drawing, more good sense, more beauty in John Leech's _Punch_ pictures,
than in all the Art-Union illustrations, engravings, statuettes, etc.
etc., put together. Could that mighty Potentate have been got up, think
you, by a committee of gentlemen, and those drawings educed by proffered
prizes? No; they came out, and have flourished according to a law as
natural and as effective as the law of seed-time and harvest; and Art,
as a power to do good, will never reach its full perfection till it is
allowed to walk at liberty, and follow the course of all other
productions, that of supply and demand, individual demand, and voluntary
supply. It is not easy to tell how far back these well-meaning, zealous,
deluded men who have managed these "encouragements," have put the
progress of the nation in its power of knowing and feeling true Art.
[61] In our excellent National Gallery (Edinburgh), a copy of
Titian's Ariadne in Naxos is hung immediately above Wilkie's
sacred sketch of John Knox administering the Sacrament in
Calder House!
One other heresy I must vent, and that is to protest against the
doctrine that scientific knowledge is of much direct avail to the
artist; it may enlarge his mind as a man, and sharpen and strengthen his
nature, but the knowledge of anatomy is, I believe, more a snare than
anything else to an artist as such. Art is the _tertium quid_ resulting
from observation and imagination, with skill and love and downrightness
as their executors; anything that interferes with the action of any of
these, is killing to the soul of Art. Now, painting has to do simply and
absolutely with the surfaces, with the appearances of things; it knows
and cares nothing for what is beneath and beyond, though if it does its
own part aright it indicates them. Phidias and the early Greeks, there
is no reason to believe, ever dissected even a monkey, much less a man,
and yet where is there such skin, and muscle, and substance, and breath
of life? When Art became scientific, as among the Romans, and lost its
heart in filling its head, see what became of it: anatomy offensively
thrust in your face, and often bad anatomy; men skinned and galvanized,
not men alive and in action. In the same way in landscape, do you think
Turner would have painted the strata in an old quarry, or done Ben
Cruachan more to the quick, had he known all about geology, gneiss, and
graywacke, and the Silurian system? Turner might have been what is
called a better-informed man, but we question if he would have been so
good, not to say a better representer of the wonderful works of God,
which were painted on his retina, and in his inner chamber--the true
_Camera lucida_, the chamber of imagery leading from the other,--and
felt to his finger-tips. No; science and poetry are to a nicety
diametrically opposed, and he must be a Shakspeare and a Newton, a
Turner and a Faraday all in one, who can consort much with both without
injury to each. It is not what a man has learned from others, not even
what he thinks, but what he sees and feels, which makes him a painter.
The moral from all this is, love Art, and if you choose, practise Art.
Purchase Art for itself alone, and in the main for yourself alone. If
you so do, you will encourage Art to more purpose than if you spent
thousands a year in Art-Unions, and in presenting the public with what
pleased you; just as a man does most good by being good. Goldsmith puts
it in his inimitable way--"I was ever of opinion that the honest man,
who married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who
continued single, and only talked of population."
I have said those things strongly, abruptly, and perhaps rudely; but my
heart is in the matter. Art is part of my daily food, like the laughter
of children, and the common air, the earth, the sky; it is an affection,
not a passion to come and go like the gusty wind, nor a principle cold
and dead; it penetrates my entire life, it is one of the surest and
deepest pleasures, one of the refuges from "the nature of things," as
Bacon would say, into that enchanted region, that "ampler aether," that
"diviner air," where we get a glimpse not only of a Paradise that is
past, but of a Paradise that is to come.
There is one man amongst us who has done more to breathe the breath of
life into the literature and the philosophy of Art, who has "encouraged"
it ten thousand times more effectually than all our industrious Coles
and anxious Art-Unions, and that is the author of _Modern Painters_. I
do not know that there is anything in our literature, or in any
literature, to compare with the effect of this one man's writings. He
has by his sheer force of mind, and fervor of nature, the depth and
exactness of his knowledge, and his amazing beauty and power of
language, raised the subject of Art from being subordinate and
technical, to the same level with Poetry and Philosophy. He has lived to
see an entire change in the public mind and eye, and, what is better, in
the public heart, on all that pertains to the literature and philosophy
of representative genius. He combines its body and its soul. Many before
him wrote about its body, and some well; a few, as Charles Lamb and our
own "Titmarsh," touched its soul: it was left to John Ruskin to do
both.[62]
[62] This great writer was first acknowledged as such by our big
quarterlies, in the _North British Review_, fourteen years
ago, as follows:--
"This is a very extraordinary and a very delightful book,
full of truth and goodness, of power and beauty. If genius
may be considered (and it is as serviceable a definition as
is current) that power by which one man produces for the use
or the pleasure of his fellow-men, something at once new and
true, then have we here its unmistakable and inestimable
handiwork. Let our readers take our word for it, and read
these volumes thoroughly, giving themselves up to the
guidance of this most original thinker, and most attractive
writer, and they will find not only that they are richer in
true knowledge, and quickened in pure and heavenly
affections, but they will open their eyes upon a now
world--walk under an ampler heaven, and breathe a diviner
air. There are few things more delightful or more rare, than
to feel such a kindling up of the whole faculties as is
produced by such a work as this; it adds a 'precious seeing
to the eye,'--makes the ear more quick of apprehension, and,
opening our whole inner-man to a new discipline, it fills us
with gratitude as well as admiration towards him to whom we
owe so much enjoyment. And what is more, and better than all
this, everywhere throughout this work, we trace evidences of
a deep reverence and godly fear--a perpetual, though subdued
acknowledgment of the Almighty, as the sum and substance,
the beginning and the ending of all truth, of all power, of
all goodness, and of all beauty.
"This book (_Modern Painters_) contains more true
philosophy, more information of a strictly scientific kind,
more original thought and exact observation of nature, more
enlightened and serious enthusiasm, and more eloquent
writing, than it would be easy to match, not merely in works
of its own class, but in those of any class whatever. It
gives us a new, and we think, the only true theory of beauty
and sublimity; it asserts and proves the existence of a new
element in landscape-painting, placing its prince upon his
rightful throne; it unfolds and illustrates, with singular
force, variety, and beauty, the laws of art; it explains and
enforces the true nature and specific function of the
imagination, with the precision and fulness of one having
authority,--and all this delivered in language which, for
purity and strength and native richness, would not have
dishonored the early manhood of Jeremy Taylor, of Edmund
Burke, or of the author's own favorite Richard Hooker."--J.B.