We are not now going to try our 'prentice hand upon a new theory of
Beauty, after so many masters have failed; but we cannot help thinking
that the dispute would be at an end if it were but allowed at once, that
there are two kinds of beauty, that there is a material and necessary
element of beauty, and another which is contingent and relative--a
natural and a spiritual delightfulness to and through the eye; and that
sometimes we see both together, as in the face and eyes of a beautiful
and beloved woman; and moreover, that there is no more reason for
denying either the sense or the emotion of beauty, because everybody
does not agree about the kind or measure of either of these qualities in
all objects, than there is for affirming that there is no such thing as
veracity or natural affection, because the Spartans commended lying, and
the Cretians practised it, or the New Zealanders the eating of one's
grandmother. Why should the eye, the noblest, the amplest, the most
informing of all our senses, be deprived of its own special delight? The
light is sweet, and it is a pleasant thing for the eye to behold the
sun; and why, when the ear has sound for informing, and music for
delight--when there is smell and odor, taste and flavor, and even the
touch has its sense of pleasant smoothness and softness--why should
there not be in the eye a pleasure born and dying with the sights it
sees? it is like the infinite loving-kindness of Him who made the trees
of the garden pleasant to the eye as well as good for food. We say
nothing here of Relative or Associative Beauty,--this has never been
doubted either in its essence or its value. It is as much larger in its
range, as much nobler in its meaning and uses, as the heavens are higher
than the earth, or as the soul transcends the body. This, too, gives
back to material beauty more than it received: it was after man was
made, that God saw, and, behold, everything was very good.
Our readers may perhaps think we make too much of imagination as an
essential element--as _the_ essential element--in Art. With our views of
its function and its pervading influence in all the ideal arts, we can
give it no other place. A man can no more be a poet or painter in the
spiritual and only true sense without imagination, than an animal can be
a bird without wings; and as, other things being equal, that bird can be
longest on the wing and has the greatest range of flight which has the
strongest pinions, so that painter is likely to have the farthest and
keenest vision of all that is within the scope of his art, and the
surest and most ample faculty of making known to others what he himself
has seen, whose imagination is at once the most strong and quick. At the
same time, if it be true that the body without the spirit is dead, so it
is equally true that the spirit without the body is vain, ineffectual,
fruitless. Imagination alone can no more make a painter or a poet than
wings can constitute a bird. Each must have a body. Unfortunately, in
painting we have more than enough of body without spirit. Correct
drawing, wonderful imitative powers, cleverness, adaptiveness, great
facility and dexterity of hand, much largeness of _quotation_, and many
material and mechanical qualities, all go to form an amusing, and, it
may be, useful spectacle, but not a true picture. We have also, but not
so often, the reverse of all this,--the vision without the faculty, the
soul without the body, great thoughts without the power to embody them
in intelligible forms. He, and he alone, is a great painter, and an heir
of time, who combines both. He must have observation,--humble, loving,
unerring, unwearied; this is the material out of which a painter, like a
poet, feeds his genius, and "makes grow his wings." There must be
perception and conception, both vigorous, quick and _true_; you must
have these two primary qualities, the one first, the other last, in
every great painter. Give him good sense and a good memory, it will be
all the better for him and for us. As for principles of drawing and
perspective, they are not essential. A man who paints according to a
principle is sure to paint ill; he may apply his principles after his
work is done, if he has a philosophic as well as an ideal turn.